It was only last week when the New York Times reported shocking allegations against Andy Rubin’s (creator of Android) sexual misconduct at Google. Now, Richard DeVaul, a director at unit X of Alphabet (Google’s parent company), resigned from the company, yesterday, after being accused of sexually harassing Star Simpson, a hardware engineer. DeVaul has not received any exit package on his resignation.
As per the NY times report, Richard DeVaul interviewed Star Simpson for a job reporting to him. He then further invited her to a Burning Man, an annual festival in the Nevada desert, the next week. Mr. DeVaul then sexually harassed Simpson at his encampment at Burning Man, as DeVaul made inappropriate requests to Simpson.
Later when Simpson reported to Google regarding DeVaul’s sexual misconduct two years later, one of the company officials shrugged her off by saying the story was “more likely than not” true and that appropriate corrective actions had been taken. DeVaul had apologized in a statement to the New York Times saying that the incident was “an error in judgment.
Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, further apologized yesterday, saying that the “apology at TGIF didn’t come through, and it wasn’t enough” in an e-mail obtained by Axios. Pichai will also be supporting the women engineers at Google, who are organizing a “women’s walk” walkout tomorrow to protest.
“I am taking in all your feedback so we can turn these ideas into action. We will have more to share soon. In the meantime, Eileen will make sure managers are aware of the activities planned for Thursday and that you have the support you need”, wrote Pichai.
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