When thousands of Google employees walked out in protest against the company’s lenient treatment of senior men accused of sexual misconduct, their action was publicly reinforced by staff on social media. The organisers of Thursday’s demonstration, using the hashtag #Googlewalkout, stated that “we need transparency, accountability and structural change”.
The worldwide Google protest is the most recent example of dissent at technology companies. Different from whistleblowers and external campaign groups of past decades, this form of protest comes from an organisation’s own employees. They are emboldened by the knowledge that their skills are in short supply, they are used to debating online freely — and are even encouraged to do so on internal employee networks.
Speaking at a conference in New York, Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, expressed support for the walkout: “There is anger and frustration within the company . . . we set a very high bar and clearly didn’t live up to it.”