Google engineer claims he was bullied, fired for being a conservative

By: Lia E.

An ousted conservative Google engineer claims he was the victim of the tech giant’s systematic “bullying” of its more right-leaning employees, according to a new report.

Trump supporter Kevin Cernekee was fired from the liberal Silicon Valley company in June 2018, which he alleges was over his outspoken criticism on internal message boards of others with opposing views, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.

“Historically, there’s been a lot of bullying at Google,” Cernekee said. “There’s a big political angle, and they treat the two sides very differently.”

Cernekee, 41, who was hired in 2015 to work on Google’s laptop lines, began ruffling feathers early on, including when he defended a coworker who suggested the company shouldn’t take into account race or gender when making hires.

“A bunch of people jumped on him and started cussing him out and calling him names,” Cernekee said. “And then his manager showed up in the thread and denounced him in public. I was very disturbed by that.”

He also went after a self-described feminist colleague on one board, telling her she should be more open to criticism, and also urged Google to add banned opinions in its employee handbook so they were clear to the more conservative workers like himself.

Human resources issued an official warning to Cernekee for his conduct, which was deemed disrespectful and insubordinate.

He said he was also targeted by colleagues — one, a senior manager, posted on the same message boards that Cernekee was on a “written blacklist” of employees he refused to work with, while a fellow engineer also described him as “the face of the alt-right” of Google in a circulated document.

Cernekee said he doesn’t agree with the movement.

Cernekee, in turn, flagged such messages to HR, including one post by a manager that asked: “Can’t we just fire the poisonous a–holes already?” — referring to colleagues with conservative views. He’s also filed complaints with the National Labor Relations Board and claims to have spent $100,000 on legal fees.

“I very much regret joining Google,” said Cernekee, who now works for another tech company. “I figured it would be a good place to see intelligent arguments through. It didn’t really turn out how I expected.”

Google said Cernekee was fired for misuse of equipment, including its remote-access software system, and refused to comment on his allegations.

“We enforce our workplace policies without regard to political viewpoint,” the spokeswoman, Jenn Kaiser, said.

An overwhelming majority of Google employees — some 95% — donated to Democratic candidates in the 2018 midterm election, the WSJ reported, citing public disclosures from the Center for Responsive Politics.