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Comment by Ecstatify | Hacker News Reader

Not the best move but at the same time what else is there she can do?

Being young, in your "dream job" and then being told "there’s someone waiting outside to collect your corp devices" without any real explanation. It's 100% HR + Managers fault that this situation has escalated to this.

If a future employer asks for a reference from Google she's screwed.

This whole "don't say anything bad about X, it will reflect badly on you" is how the Epsteins and Weinsteins of the world go undetected for years.

If what she says is true she should probably go to a lawyer and sue.

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This is a weird one. Google is notoriously slow to fire people for performance reasons. People get Needs Improvement ratings. They go on PIPs. It takes ages. A sudden termination typically means something else. This can either mean that the individual did something especially foolish or a lot of people are doing the wrong thing to get this person fired (a manager, a skip, some people in HR, and probably a director would be involved in this sort of thing).

But the complaints here seem to be related to performance management. Getting a frustratingly low rating. Being told that they aren't doing enough work. For this sort of situation I'd expect the firing process to take months.

"CME for missing a meeting" is strange, but the good news is that manager calibration notes are stored in durable systems and in many locales people have the legal right to see them. So it'd be possible to see if this was actually the reason for a rating.

We'll see if more information comes out.

The individual was very likely on a PIP. They mentioned "performance issues". It could've went on for months.

If a manager really wants you gone they can manufacture evidence and have you yanked quickly by constructing unobtainable and/or subjective PIP targets.

It may depend on the org, but in my org at Google there is a ton of oversight in PIP construction. I've not ever personally seen unobtainable or subjective PIP targets.

It'd also be extremely odd to be on a PIP after receiving a Consistently Meets Expectations rating. Only a subset of Needs Improvement ratings actually get PIPs. CME, by definition, means that you are doing your job sufficiently.

> If a future employer asks for a reference from Google she's screwed.

If a future employer checks and see she was asking people to go and harass her former managers and HR, it'd reflect pretty badly on her; I know I wouldn't want her in my team.

And as for what she can do, isn't wrongful termination illegal? Like she could instead open a civil case against Google

Admittedly, being fired when on an h1b visa is stupendously stressful because you need to get a new job immediately or be booted from the country. Opening a civil case won't achieve any rapid goal of getting employment. We'll see whether this strategy helps or hurts. There are enough people out there who really don't like Google that I would not be surprised if this sort of strategy allows for rapid connection to these people even if it sours most companies on this person.

I don't think calling for harassement would help getting a new job (unlike the rest of her complaints)

i’ve been in high stress situations, and angry, where I made a bunch of correct decisions, and a bunch of mistakes. in this case, especially since I’m not the one who is in the crosshairs, i understand her pain

this lady is not going to have a problem finding employment. google is losing an asset, possibly a major one, for whatever reasons they have to do so

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