Employees in Google offices around the world staged a walkout to protest the company's handling of senior executives accused of sexual misconduct. A report by The New York Times [had] found [that] two senior Google executives were paid tens of millions of dollars in exit packages despite being accused of sexual misconduct. A third senior executive named... had been allowed to stay at the company but resigned on Tuesday. A Twitter account, @GoogleWalkout, said that employees were demanding five changes: an end to forced arbitration on cases of harassment and discrimination; a commitment to end pay and opportunity inequity; a publicly disclosed sexual harassment transparency report; a new process for reporting sexual misconduct; and elevating the company's chief diversity officer to report to the company's CEO. Elissa Brown, a Google employee in New York, said she was surprised by how many staffers participated in the walkout and believed the company was listening."I think they’re taking it very seriously and recognizing that this is a problem to be addressed," Brown said."I don’t think it’s unique to Google at all, unfortunately," she [continued].

Sundar Pichai, Google's chief executive...supported the employees' protest. "[e]arlier this week, we let Googlers know that we are aware of the activities planned for today and that employees will have the support they need if they wish to participate," Pichai said in an email. "[e]mployees have raised constructive ideas for how we can improve our policies and our processes going forward. We are taking in all their feedback so we can turn these ideas into action."