Arne Wilberg (who until his termination of employment was a recruiter for YouTube) has filed a lawsuit against Google, accusing the tech giant of bias against white and Asian men. According to Wilberg, Google seems to prioritize diversity in its workforce over competence, alleging that he was fired as a result of his complaints to managers in which he states the company"s "illegal and discriminatory hiring practices", pointing to management deleting emails that held content regarding various supposedly clandestine hiring choices.
Wilberg makes mention of instructions he and his fellow recruiters had received in 2016 and 2017, directing them to solely hire women, Latino, or black candidates. More specifically, he quotes an email he allegedly received from a YouTube staffing manager in the March of 2017, saying:
"Please continue with L3 [level three] candidates in process and only accept new L3 candidates that are from historically underrepresented groups."
Yesterday, in an emailed statement to Bloomberg, Gina Scigliano, spokeswoman for Google, said:
“We have a clear policy to hire candidates based on their merit, not their identity. At the same time, we unapologetically try to find a diverse pool of qualified candidates for open roles, as this helps us hire the best people, improve our culture, and build better products.”
This isn"t the first time Google has been accused of such discrimination; just six weeks ago, another fired employee, James Damore accused the company of having a favorable bias towards women, after he was fired for saying that women cannot be expected to produce the same quality of work as men due to inherent biological differences.
All of this is amid criticism the company is facing for its struggle to provide a safe workplace for a diverse workforce, and the internal push for said diversity certainly does appear to be rubbing some people the wrong way.
Source: Bloomberg