A rising tech star at Google left the “woke” company after being told he wouldn’t get promoted because he is a white man – only to get the last laugh by going on to sell his future startup for $1 billion.
Shaun Maguire, who worked at Google’s Mountain View, Calif.-based headquarters from 2016 to 2019, took to social media in the aftermath of the search giant’s Gemini fiasco to reveal that his then-boss at Google Ventures told him his “hands were tied.”
The supervisor said that despite Maguire being “one of the highest performing people here,” he could not promote him “because I have a quota,” according to his post on Thursday.
“I’m really not supposed to tell you this. It could get me fired,” Maguire quoted his then-boss as telling him in 2019.
A source close to the situation told The Post that during Maguire’s tenure at Google, the company was roiled by the #MeToo scandals that engulfed Hollywood figures and senior executives in several industries who were accused of a range of sex crimes.
The tumult surrounding #MeToo led to the formation of “employee resource groups” that began meeting regularly on Google’s campus, the source said.
These groups would then draw up a list of demands for management to hire more women and other diverse candidates throughout the company, according to the source.
His boss had resisted calls to meet hiring quotas that favored women and minorities but was forced to back down after employees at Google Ventures threatened to quit, according to the source,
The pressure campaign extended to the company’s board, including founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the source claimed.
A spokesman for Google called the entire account “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,” the rep said.
Maguire fired back when reached by The Post on Friday about Google’s denial.
“My response is they’re lying through their teeth,” he said.
A promotion would have more than doubled Maguire’s salary from around $500,000 a year at the time he was interviewed to “millions” annually, the insider said.
The Post has sought comment from Maguire.
Maguire would quickly rebound, selling his cybersecurity company, Expanse, to Palo Alto Networks for $1.05 billion in December 2020.
He is currently a partner at Sequoia, the venture capital giant that has helped spawn Silicon Valley unicorns such as Apple, Google, Oracle, PayPal and WhatsApp.
But Maguire didn’t spare his wrath over the misguided culture that continues to permeate his former company.
“Gemini is the tip of the iceberg,” Maguire wrote on his X account on Thursday.
He blasted Google as an “absolute trash can dumpster” after it was forced to pause its “absolutely woke” artificial intelligence bot Gemini, which produced depictions of black founding fathers and a Native American pope.
Last week, Maguire teased that he would go public with his claim, posting a poll on X which read: “Should I go public with the story about the time I was told I can’t be promoted for being a white man?”
The results were overwhelmingly for him to spill the dirt.
Maguire wrote on X that at least five former and current Google employees reached out to him since his original post and shared “similar stories.”
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Ariel Zilber
