has been hit with a class action suit. It was filed in San Francisco by a
former software engineer, Tina Huang on Thursday. She alleged that Twitter was
involved in gender discrimination in its promotion policies towards women.
Tina
Huang was employed by Twitter in various engineering roles between 2009-2014.
This lawsuit was filed a few days after Facebook was also slammed with a legal
complaint involving a female employee who was discriminated against based on
her gender and eventually fired. Recommended post : How To Backup WhatsApp Messages on Android,Symbian,Java,ios
She claimed that she was passed over for a promotion to the position of senior
staff engineer. She made a complaint to the CEO, Dick Costolo after which she
was put on administrative leave and eventually she was sacked by Twitter. Related Post ; Facebook Reveals Improved Guidelines for its Site
Tina Huang described Twitters promotion process as being a “black
box” style of promotion. With this system of promotion, there are no
formal postings of open positions, instead what exists is a “shoulder
tap” kind of notification or unless you are told about open positions by a
manager. With this kind of system in place, with this type of situation in
place, an employee will be unaware of job openings because no heads up was
given by those in the know.
She further went on to say that on behalf of herself and all current and former
female Twitter employees who have been subjected to Twitters sex discrimination
practices, the promotion process discriminates against female employee as it
fails to promote equally or better qualified women to engineering leadership
position as a predominant male upper management is responsible for their hiring
decisions and this creates an environment that favours men, intentional or not
and this explains why few women in Twitter make it to senior and leadership
positions.
Twitter however responded that Huang was not forced to leave, as she left
Twitter of her own volition. Twitter went on to say that their leadership even
persuaded her to stay but to no avail.
Tina Huang’s lawyers say that the class should include all the current and
former female employers that Twitter had denied promotions to the positions of
Software Engineer II, Senior Software Engineer, Staff Software Engineer, Senior
Staff Software Engineer or similarly titled positions in Canada in the three
years prior to the filing of the complaint.
In the other lawsuit filed by former employee Chia Hong who was employed by
Facebook as a program manager and was later promoted to be a technology
partner. She filed a lawsuit against Facebook, a Facebook employee Anil Wilson
and some other unnamed Facebook employees on March 16th, she claimed she was
ordered to organize parties and serve drinks to her male co-workers, which was
not part of her job description and it was not also required of her male
colleagues.
Hong said “she was belittled at work and asked why she didn’t stay home to
take care of her kids.” She was also admonished for taking a day off per
month to volunteer at her child’s school. She was ultimately fired in October
2013 because of her gender, race and national origin and replaced with a less
qualified man. According to Hong, her professional opinion were either
belittled or altogether ignored during group meetings, where she was the only
person of Chinese descent.
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