Do no evil?
In its IPO Prospectus, Google Inc. famously (and, I think, fatuously) promised to "do no evil." Now here's a news account of an employment discrimination lawsuit based on events right around the time of the IPO.
Christina Elwell was a national sales director at Google. I'm not sure whether it is "a national sales director" or "the national sales director".
She told her boss, Timothy Armstrong, Google's vice president of national sales, about her high-risk pregnancy. She was subsequently demoted and harassed, according to the allegations. Ultimately she lost three of the four fetuses she was carrying.
Just as no one except the parties to a marriage gone bad know the true facts leading up to a divorce, no one except the parties to an employment termination know what really happened. But it seems at least reasonably clear from the lawsuit that Google did nothing to make Christina's life easier during this incredibly stressful part of her life.
This seems more or less situation normal for corporate America. The question in my mind is: why does Google get a free pass when - in contrast to their protestations about doing no evil - they behave just as badly as most other big businesses?
Posted by Harold Davis at August 1, 2005 11:03 AM
