A former employee of tech giant Google has alleged that he was denied a promotion at the company for ‘being a white man’. Shaun Maguire, who as per a report in The New York Post, worked at Google’s headquarters in Mountain view, California in the United States between 2016 and 2019. Maguire created a poll on social media post X (formerly Twitter) in December 2023 asking,”Should I go public with the story about the time I was told I can’t be promoted for being a white man?”. The respondents overwhelmingly voted ‘yes’.

On Friday (Feb 23), Maguire started a thread quoting this 2023 poll and claimed that he received such a treatment at Google calling the company “an absolute trash can dumpster fire”.

He subsequently made more posts describing the incident and the treatment he claimed he got.

He further claimed that since he made posts about his experience ‘up to 5’ ex-Google employees contacted him and said that they have experienced similar treatment from the company.

The New York Post cited a source within Google who said that when Maguire was at Google, the company was facing problem with #MeToo scandals which led to formation of ’employee resource groups’ which demanded that Google hire more women and other diverse candidates. The source reportedly claimed that the pressure campaign even reached the company’s top management, including founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

Google had termed this “completely untrue”.

“The founders and Board have never spoken to [Google Ventures]  about personnel matters. Shaun is a talented investor and we wish him well at Sequoia, but decisions about his promotion and career advancement at GV not once ever involved consideration of his race or gender,” representative of the company said as reported by The New York.

After leaving Google in 2019, Maguire sold his cybersecurity firm Expanse for USD 1.05 billion.

(With inputs from agencies)