In New York, more than 3,000 gathered in a city park and carried signs that said, “O.K. Google, really?” In Dublin, dozens filled a sidewalk. And in Silicon Valley, thousands poured out of office buildings into a common outdoor area and chanted: “Stand up! Fight back!”

Similar scenes played out in other cities around the world — from Singapore and Hyderabad, India, to Berlin, Zurich, London, Chicago and Seattle — as Google employees held a wave of walkouts on Thursday to protest the internet company’s handling of sexual harassment.

The backlash was prompted by an article in The New York Times last week that revealed that Google had paid millions of dollars in exit packages to male executives accused of misconduct, while staying silent about the transgressions.

“I am here because what you read in The New York Times are a small sampling of the thousands of stories we all have,” Meredith Whittaker, a Google employee who helped organize the walkout, said to a crowd of colleagues in New York. After she called out the company’s “pattern of unethical and thoughtless decision-making,” protesters chanted, “Time’s up.”