Fellow men: if you don’t take a stand with the women walking out of Google today, you’re siding with the creeps

We must actively oppose a system in which assholes get seven-figure payoffs, gushing references, and hero emails, and their victims get gagged, and possibly informally blacklisted

With their walkout over sexual harassment, fat payoffs for creeps and non-disclosure agreements that gag those on the receiving end of their creepiness, Google employees are threatening to make the company cool again.

I know, I know, most people would probably say it still is pretty cool. After all, it regularly comes in at the top of those lists of the best companies to work for that people like to publish. Being employed by Google is close behind “astronaut”, “professional athlete” or “YouTuber like DanTDM” when it comes to what kids want to do when they grow up.

But I’m talking about the level of cool it had before it became a gigantic multiheaded monster of a corporation; when it was just that awesome new search engine that soon made those born AG (after Google) wonder whether “Altavista” wasn’t some sort of dance drug cutting a swathe through the clublands of London and New York when the name was mentioned by their parents.

That was when, you may remember, Google piously declared its corporate motto to be “don’t be evil”, before it started tinkering with it because executives got fed up with people holding the company to its word.

With the walkout, Google staffers are showing that the motto still matters to them.

This isn’t the first time they have flexed their muscles. They also kicked up a stink over the business working with the US Defence Department on AI.

But the walkout to protest about creeps, and in support of their victims, which is taking place wherever the company has offices, goes a step further than the angry emails that were sent out, and that got into the media, resulting in a volte face on the controversial project.

Next thing you know they’ll be forming a union (just do it Googlers, you know it makes sense).

We had some discussion over whether I should write on this story. As well as being a columnist, I’m the Indy’s chief business commentator, so it makes sense from that perspective. But I’m also keenly aware that it’s mostly gobby blokes like me who occupy positions like mine, and that a little more gender diversity wouldn’t go amiss, particularly as regards to a story like this.

However, men walking out alongside their female colleagues is undoubtedly one of the positive things about a generally positive story (and damn, I needed to write about one given the complexion of the news lately).

They’re calling them (ugh) “manbassadors”.

It’s a shudderingly rubbish name. It’s the sort of thing people who spend too much time sitting in rooms with branding consultants are apt to dream up.

Still, being a “manbassador” is a lot better than being than an asshole (I’m using the American formulation in deference to the fact that Google is an American company). That’s the point, really.

It matters that Google’s male staff support this effort, because otherwise they’re supporting a system in which assholes get seven-figure payoffs, gushing references, and hero emails, and their victims get gagged, and possibly informally blacklisted.

That sort of behaviour is indefensible. It’s only those twisted “men’s rights” activists or Fox News Channel anchors that would publicly speak in support of it. But there are many more who would sit back and turn a blind eye to it, and that’s basically why it hangs around like a bad smell in the world’s workplaces.

“Learn how we’re building a more diverse and inclusive Google,” says the company’s careers website, set up with the aim of winning the battle to lure the brightest, most talented applicants. Google has got pretty good at that. It’s how the company stays at the top of the corporate pile.

And yet, the apparent tolerance for creeps makes the company look little different to one of those backward-looking, stuffy southern banks where the real business is done on the golf course and the women are seen as there to make the coffee. OK, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but you know what I mean.

Apparently a bunch of Google people have been let go without any payoffs. Good. But Google still needs to do more, and its male staff are either (ugh) “manbassadors”, and part of the solution, or they’re siding with touchy Trevor who forced three female colleagues out before getting paid off.

Harassment at work is, well, evil. But it’s an evil that’s apparently widespread in Silicon Valley. Here’s to the Googlers, female and male, who are taking a stand against it today.