Google Employee In New York Handed Pink Slip For Resisting Woman Boss's Advances: Report

An employee of tech giant Google was fired after allegedly complaining against the sexual advances of his senior. She allegedly touched him inappropriately during a company party.

An employee of tech giant Google was fired after allegedly complaining against the sexual advances of his senior. (Representative image)

A former Google employee has filed a lawsuit in Manhattan alleging that the company fired him after he was subjected to sexual harassment by one of its top executives. The 48-year-old man claimed that Tiffany Miller, the director of Google’s programmatic media, touched him inappropriately and made sexual advances during a drunken company gathering at a restaurant in the US in December 2019, reported New York Post. 

The lawsuit claims that Miller complimented the alleged victim's physique and told him that her marriage lacked “spice". The alleged victim reported the incident to Google's human resources department the following week but he said that no action was taken. 

The alleged victim, a married father of seven, said he was not comfortable initially in reporting the incident as many of his co-workers were drunk. What made matters worse for him was his colleagues passing off the incident as “Tiffany being Tiffany”, the court papers read.

He claimed that Miller began retaliating against him, criticizing him and reporting him to HR for "microaggressions". The lawsuit claimed that Miller also drunkenly berated the man during a company get-together at Fig & Olive on West 13th Street, New York,  in April 2022 and that Google fired him in August 2022 after 16 years with the company.

The lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages, accuses both Google and Miller of discrimination, retaliation, and fostering a hostile work environment. A spokesperson for Miller denied the allegations and called the lawsuit a “fictional account of events filled with numerous falsehoods". “Ms Miller never made any ‘advance’ toward Mr. Olohan, which witnesses can readily corroborate,” the spokesperson was quoted as saying to The Post.

Around a week ago, a Google employee was fired just after his mother passed away battling cancer. Tommy York, a former software engineer at Google, shared a personal account of being laid off last week, describing the experience as a "slap in the face" and highlighting the challenges he faced while dealing with his mother's terminal illness during his time at the company. 

In his post, York shared that he had just returned from bereavement leave after dealing with the death of his mother from pancreatic cancer. He wrote, "It still feels like a slap in the face, like being hit when you're down."