It's not illegal to be in a cult. Maybe it's left out for legal reasons, but there's no suggestion in the article that they did bad anything at all to the author.
Maybe he was afraid of the whiteness of it, or the allegedly rampant gay sex.
Maybe he was afraid of the whiteness of it, or the allegedly rampant gay sex.
The author wasn't personally harmed in a significant way but I don't see how that's relevant.
"I was fired from my team there in February of 2021 because I raised alarm about a cult within Google, a group called the Fellowship of Friends. "
Sounds to me like he freaked out because he was working with weirdos, wanted 'someone to do something about it', and then wouldn't let it go.
He may not have been harmed by the cult members, but he was (again, allegedly) harmed by the culture created by this cult. "I learned of someone being discriminated due to their religious beliefs (or lack of), I reported it and the company fired me" makes a good case for the company supporting and/or engaging in religious discrimination.
I'm not saying the author will win - it is entirely possible, like you say, that he was fired for being disruptive or other hundred valid reasons. But I do think the author raises at least a good initial argument.
He was allegedly harmed. If, as the person you are replying to speculates, he was freaking out and being a bad employee after discovering the affiliation of his coworkers, then potentially that's a righteous firing and he wasn't harmed in a legal sense. If as he alleges, he was fired for having valid concerns, then yes, harm in a legal sense.
> Then, without warning or reason, I was fired. The person who actually gave me the decision didn’t know why they were doing it. They said they had no involvement in the decision. They asked me if I knew why I was being fired. I said “I assume you would know, right?” They didn’t. (A funny detail: The raise for that promotion I was given was processed after I was fired, so I received two last checks at the higher rate. Fired and promoted at the same time.)
> Even though Dan was not in my chain of supervisors, I’m convinced he helped to orchestrate my termination. I believe he saw me as an existential threat, to him, his colleagues and their jobs. The purported reasoning for my termination was an email I had sent requesting the retention of an editor, which was a completely normal business issue. In retrospect, it looks like Dan was looking for pretext to shuffle me off for some time before that.
edit: i might as well just link it here too https://medium.com/@kwilliamlloyd/the-cult-in-google-3c1a910...