February is a month dedicated to Black History in the United States. And, in this month, two senior engineers at Google resigned, citing the treatment given to two black professionals as justification for their departure.
Engineers David Baker and Vinesh Kannan said in a letter seen by Reuters that their resignations are related to the firings of the AI ethics expert, Timnit Gebru, and diversity recruiter April Christina Curley recently at Google.
Both professionals, who identify as Black, said they were cut from Google because of disputes over work or with managers.
To explain his resignation to his team, Baker, who spent 16 years at Google, says that “we can’t say we believe in diversity and then ignore the absence of many voices within our walls,” stating that the departures of the two professionals made him lose the desire to continue as an engineer at the company.
Kannen used his Twitter profile to say that Google's mistreatment of colleagues crossed a personal line.
Dissatisfied professionals
Google employees are not happy, and this has been the case for some time now. Proof of this was the formation of a union in January, with around 800 employees. Worldwide, Google directly employs around 132.121 professionals, according to its quarterly reports, which are made public. Recently, Google (or rather, Alphabet) gained its first union.
What the CEO says
Google has not commented directly on the dismissal of the two engineers, but it disputes the allegations made by the black professionals. It is worth remembering that in June of last year, when the Black Lives Matter protests began, Google CEO Sundar Pichai released a statement in which the company committed to building sustainable equity for the Black community by making the company's products and programs useful to Black people.
Pichai said the company aims to increase leadership representation from underrepresented groups by 30% by 2025, as well as investing in education and training programs for the most disadvantaged communities.
Through which channels you reach those people, classic and out of the box. Business Insider, Reuters e Google
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