Fired Googler says she was told heavy Baltimore accent a “disability” | Hacker News Reader

Fired Googler says she was told heavy Baltimore accent a “disability”

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25 pointselsewhen29 comments

The headline is a bit of clickbait. I read the whole rant on Twitter, and the story with the Baltimore accent was a comment told to her by a colleague, used as an example of the discriminatory behaviour she faced, but it was NOT a reason for her firing.

A black woman from Baltimore was hired to be a affirmative action recruiter and her white manager didn't like her "Baltimore accent"? Well I live in Maryland and I'm not sure what a "Baltimore accent" is, so I'm just assuming she is referring to AAVE? I mean, sure, there are a few words people from Baltimore pronounce slightly differently (like "water") but... hardly enough to call it it's own accent or a disability.

This is yet another he-said she-said story that is impossible to judge for ourselves and stokes racial outrage...

I thought this rang a bell.

Do a video search for “Aaron earned an iron urn.”

PS: fuck Aaron.

> This is yet another he-said she-said story that is impossible to judge for ourselves and stokes racial outrage...

I’d just like to mention that this is part of the point. How many Black people need to come forward with these “he-said she-said” stories for us to realize that casual racism in the workplace is actually extremely plausible?

Whether something is plausible doesn't make it actionable. "He said, she said" shouldn't be actionable because it lacks verifiable evidence, outside of two people's subjective experiences. Those two people are the most vulnerable to bias because they have the most incentive to disregard the whole truth. I think it was Charlie Munger who said, "never expect someone to understand that which their job depends on them not understanding."

You’re jumping the gun here. No one’s talking about any sorts of legal or professional consequences. I’m responding to someone who seems to think it’s impossible to form an opinion about whether a pattern of “he-said she-said” allegations is credible.

nit: It was Upton Sinclair, in fact. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair

> Those two people are the most vulnerable to bias because they have the most incentive to disregard the whole truth.

So no racism claims are valid without either AV recording or, in all statistical likelihood, a non-Black person vouching for her?

If you actually what you want your ethics around this situation to be about then expect POC to start coming to work 24hr recorders on them at all times, just like how recording all police stops is a thing, because that's the kind of world you want to live in.

If someone has a feeling that something was racially motivated but has no evidence, do believe that alone should enable actionable legal consequences?

You didn't mention legal consequences in your original post, that's obviously a different order of action with explicit criterion than whether or not this deserves third-party investigation which may lead to legal action. She also cites specific instances without naming names, I don't know why you're talking about someone "feeling" something is racially motivated. At bottom, you're also kinda missing my ethics point around how minority claims are recognized prima facie.

> that's obviously a different order of action with explicit criterion than whether or not this deserves third-party investigation which may lead to legal action.

To my saying "plausible doesn't mean actionable," you jumped to the following conclusion:

> So no racism claims are valid without either AV recording or, in all statistical likelihood, a non-Black person vouching for her?

I thought it was necessary to find some foundation on which we both agreed before addressing your conclusion. If we didn't at least agree that the concrete example wasn't legally actionable, then our viewpoints would be too disconnected to make the effort worth it.

How about this: if there is a "he said she said" situation where the accuser believes the accused did something racially motivated, and neither the accused nor the accuser have any evidence other than their word, should the accused face a real consequence?

Best example I've heard of the B'More accent is "dog" or as they say it - "dug."

If there were corroboration of her story in the article and not just hearsay from Twitter I would feel more sympathetic. This is the same company that also allegedly squashes conservative voices internally. I guess it seems like google is trying hard to be woke and this allegation is definitely not woke so my initial reaction is skepticism.

Edit: after re-reading the story I think the thing that bothers me the most, not just about this but about employment in general, is employers encouraging self—identification of disabilities so they can meet their 7% quota. I think that’s a regulation that just wasn’t well thought out.

Google employs 100k people. It's entirely possible some of them are assholes on completely different parts of the political spectrum.

(But yeah, it's clickbait.)

Well this event, if true, doesn’t even have anything to do with politics. I guess my point was more that this seems like a major screwup by a company that tries to project itself as a champion of diversity and inclusiveness, so much so that it’s hard for me to believe this lady’s story in its entirety.

Google didn't hire from any HBCU until 2014... while they kept claiming (falsely pretending) they wanted more diversity in the company. That is easily verifiable.

Is that another victim-bait story? Yes, it is.

No one really bothered to investigate the real reason for firing. Quite likely, it is the usual case of toxic-attitude and the management just had enough of that.

Nobody fires employees just because they speak funny or some other stupid background. Especialy after going through the extra "affirmative" effort and having in mind what kind of reaction the company will face after firing a black employee.

I’ve seen cases like this personally. It’s usually not cut and dry either way. A person can have a pretty difficult attitude to work with, or honestly just not be a good fit to work with the other people on that team, and that person can have experienced harassment or inappropriate conduct from those people. Working relationships break down across multiple dimensions, so those things usually go hand-in-hand.

But no one gets to tell someone else what their internal experience is. If I tell you that I bet you never experienced feeling different, or having a difference denigrated and feeling humiliated by it, or never knowing what it’s like to be in a minority in your life, I bet you’d tell me I was wrong or at least have some negative reaction to me telling you what your life is. It’s the same in this case. If the person says they felt they were denigrated for having an accent, that’s how they felt. Might be wrong, might not have been the other person’s intention, but the impact is the same.

I’ve also seen diversity efforts both fail and function well at mid-level companies, and these kinds of conversations are extremely hard to have, and usually bring up difficult feelings for everyone, even if they are interested in advancing diversity at that company. It’s easy to run afoul of everyone’s feelings if that dynamic isn’t taken seriously, that digging into this is like digging into your own psyche in therapy, and you are very likely to dig up some difficult stuff. I don’t know if that happened or is happening here, but it’s so much more nuanced than just “toxic attitude.” Working in this space means dealing with and challenging deep-seeded attitudes that people hold close to their identities. It’s easy to screw up.

Disclaimer: I didn't read the article and am simply responding to your sweeping generalities.

> Nobody fires employees just because they speak funny or some other stupid background.

What planet do you live on?

To make things perfectly clear, all other things being equal, if someone is fired for a mistake that those with a different background wouldn't be fired for, then they were fired for their different cultural background, regardless of the given official reason.

> having in mind what kind of reaction the company will face after firing a black employee.

In case you have forgotten, it is possible to be dishonest about why someone is fired or let go.

Nobody fires employees just because they speak funny or some other stupid background.

White male claims racism no longer exists. World rejoices.

"Quite likely"... yep, you made it all up.

We have the testimony of someone, which you blame as one-sided, but then you come up with your alternate story that is also totally one-sided. You do realize you are as biaised right? Except here, you're siding with one of the biggest corporation in the world to assume that they treated their employee fairly. Excuse me if i'm more likely to believe an employee that share the story publicly under her name, might alleniate future employer, etc. More likely to believe that story of someone who worked at Google for that many years, than an anonymous commenter on HN that just came out with their alternate theory to defend the corporation.

If you had read the twitter thread you would know the language is not the reason of the firing, so it seems you also didn't go very far in your "investigation".

> assume that they treated their employee fairly.

Biggest corporations in the world have rules and processes and to believe that the manager or corp was out there to "get her" instead of her just being toxic (or use whatever other word for "poor culture fit") would be a violation of Occams Razor.

No, it would not. “Her manager was racist” is just as simple an explanation as “she was considered a bad fit despite high performance.”

>Google said it has a "large team of recruiters who work incredibly hard to increase the hiring of Black+ and other underrepresented talent" at the firm.

Maybe they should "work incredibly hard" at reducing the discrimination and firing after they're hired, too, then.

I always assume there's more to the story when I only hear from one side, but there's no excuse for anyone at Google telling someone their accent is a disability that should be disclosed to other employees. That's so incredibly ignorant that it's impossible for me not to be mad about it.

And with that statement, I have no doubt that she's correct about why she was shouted down in meetings and repeatedly denied promotions and opportunities, and eventually fired.

If you fire a white guy nobody cares.

If you fire a person you hired to fill a minority quota - there's a big risk of bad PR or a court case.

How do you think this influences people hiring minorities? It becomes "necessary evil".

BTW I'm Polish, my English pronunciation is very bad, never had problems because of that and I don't consider myself "minority" nor want preferential treatment. I highly doubt it would be different if I worked at Google (especially looking at accents of some people from Google I worked with).

If all that she says is true, then she should obviously file suit and force google to compensate her for this alleged injustice.

I guarantee you that Google has a very large file on her with very detailed evidence of why she was fired and if they tweeted all of it, we might have a different view of this story.

There may be legit concerns regarding how Google handle themselves, but I can't help but notice the patterns of various, disparate and relatively sudden reports of Google's alleged discrimination. It almost feels like a concerted attack. Weird.

I think of stressing the third syllable of "ambulance" as a strong Maryland marker. Pronouncing "island" as "ollin" is said to be Baltimorean, but you can hear that in western Pennsylvania, too.

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