Google stopped hiring white and Asian men to YouTube last year in favour of women and minority applicants, according to a civil lawsuit filed by a former YouTube recruiter. White and Asian men are historically over-represented in the tech world.
We first saw the suit via the Wall Street Journal.
Arne Wilberg claimed he was fired in November 2017 when he complained about the practices, which he said systematically discriminated against white and Asian job applicants.
According to the suit:
“For the past several years, Google has had and implemented clear and irrefutable policies, memorialized in writing and consistently implemented in practice, of systematically discriminating in favor [of] job applicants who are Hispanic, African American, or female, and against Caucasian and Asian men. These policies were reflected in multiple bulletins, memorandum, charts, and other documents prepared by Google’s highest-level managers, and approved by Google’s C-level officers and directors.”
Both Wilberg and other unnamed recruiters on YouTube’s team felt uncomfortable with discriminating against white and Asian men, the suit claimed. In one alleged episode, recruiters felt that the way senior managers were talking about hiring black employees was like “we were talking about black slaves as slave traders on a ship.”
Google told the Wall Street Journal it would defend the lawsuit. “We have a clear policy to hire candidates based on their merit, not their identity,” a spokeswoman said. “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.”
Wilberg’s suit focuses mainly on three pieces of evidence.