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Tesla Fires Female Engineer Who Alleged Sexual Harassment (theguardian.com)
Tesla has fired a female engineer who accused the company of ignoring her complaints of sexual harassment and paying her less than her male counterparts. AJ Vandermeyden, who went public with her discrimination lawsuit against Tesla in February, was dismissed from the company this week. The Guardian reports: Vandermeyden had claimed she was taunted and catcalled by male employees and that Tesla failed to address her complaints about the harassment, unequal pay and discrimination. "It's shocking in this day and age that this is still a fight we have to have," she said at the time. In a statement to the Guardian, Tesla confirmed the company had fired Vandermeyden, saying it had thoroughly investigated the employee's allegations with the help of "a neutral, third-party expert" and concluded her complaints were unmerited. "Despite repeatedly receiving special treatment at the expense of others, Ms Vandermeyden nonetheless chose to pursue a miscarriage of justice by suing Tesla and falsely attacking our company in the press," a Tesla spokesperson said. "After we carefully considered the facts on multiple occasions and were absolutely convinced that Ms Vandermeyden's claims were illegitimate, we had no choice but to end her employment at Tesla."
Now THAT is an employer I want to work for.
Fred Garvin...
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Tessa must have some pretty damning evidence against her to fire her for this, because it does open up a legal case against them for retaliation, which their HR department and legal team are no doubt well aware. They'd have to have solid proof that she made it all up or so flagrantly lied about parts of it to be able to fire her over it without legal repercussion.
Regardless of the claims legitimacy, she was becoming increasingly hostile toward the company and thus a liability. That said, I really hope there was no discrimination here.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
You wanna give some credible references or is this just more feminazi/peecee bullcrap?
Penis = Better worker
It'll be an embarrassing mix white knights, trolls, basement dwellers and boring reasonably minded people.
> "Despite repeatedly receiving special treatment at the expense of others, Ms Vandermeyden nonetheless chose to pursue a miscarriage of justice by suing Tesla and falsely attacking our company in the press," ...
Some of them expect special treatment even, and then bitch about it, or in this case, try to milk some money out of the company.. because .. women harassment, and "wage gap" is hip nowdays.
Plain bullshit, is what it is.
Hint: Search Youtube for 'Fred Garvin male prostitute'
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
n/t
Comment removed based on user account deletion
that HR is not on your side
We might actually get to hear all the nitty gritty details on this one, rather than the usual handful of accusations in the press followed by the company settling the lawsuit with a gag clause. If Tesla's lawyers think they're on firm enough ground to fire her after she filed suit, they must also think they're on extremely firm ground regarding the suit itself, in which case they should fight it out to a conclusion. Which is damn rare. We're going to get an unusually detailed look at the HR practices of a billion dollar company. Should be fascinating.
I wonder what the market will think of it tomorrow... Their stock hit a new 52 week high today of $344.88. Which happens to also be an all-time high. The previous high was $342.89.
Hiring quotas result in employees that take their jobs for granted, don't produce, and cause trouble....and they get away with it because the company can't fire them due to the quota.
It IS true that some places tolerate harassment and pay women unfairly. It is ALSO true that some women make these accusations when they aren't true, to get EVEN MORE pay and EVEN MORE special treatment. Abuses exist on both sides, and so we should not try to fix them with a one-sided solution.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/aj-vandermeyden-89a90163
Some how she is an MRI aide then a sale rep then without any gap in work she becomes an engineer, I guess she could have gone into sales straight from engineering school but this seems unlikely. Can we please stop calling everyone who works in the Bay area and engineer. Are the homeless there street engineers?
this is slashdot. the comments are immediately a shit show. always.
And entertaining, in a somewhat ghastly way.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
This is why you don't hire SJW feminist snowflakes.
I wish they would include a photo of the employee in the article instead using someones facebook photo of a Tesla car. Do they expect us to believe that someone who wears ballet flats with full length jeans that don't fit is being sexualized?
...Vandermeyden's attorney is Therese Lawless.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Whenever some people are really discriminated against, you find others that are just trying to get a free ride on this. Pretty bad.
The free rider are pretty bad indeed. Even more so, because they contribute to reduce the trust in actual victims.
The couple of stupid women claiming "rape" just to get some money, will make it all more difficult for all the *actual real* rape victims out-there to speak, because the victims will fear they won't be believed.
It's a sort of Girl who cried wolf, except that the consequences of "excessive wolf-crying" will fall on someone else.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
... there ain't gonna be any good outcome
“Tesla is committed to creating a positive workplace environment that is free of discrimination for all our employees. Ms. Vandermeyden joined Tesla in a sales position in 2013, and since then, despite having no formal engineering degree, she has sought and moved into successive engineering roles, beginning with her work in Tesla’s paint shop and eventually another role in General Assembly. Even after she made her complaints of alleged discrimination, she sought and was advanced into at least one other new role, evidence of the fact that Tesla is committed to rewarding hard work and talent, regardless of background. When Ms. Vandermeyden first brought her concerns to us over a year ago, we immediately retained a neutral third party, Anne Hilbert of EMC2Law, to investigate her claims so that, if warranted, we could take appropriate action to address the issues she raised. After an exhaustive review of the facts, the independent investigator determined that Ms. Vandermeyden’s “claims of gender discrimination, harassment, and retaliation have not been substantiated.” Without this context, the story presented in the original article is misleading.”
they are an at will employer. even in california they dont have to do so much. every organization collects their parasites, its inevitible
For the most part I agree with you regarding markets, but I should point out that for years Amazon didn't make any money, Mr. Bezos put out a ton of promises and ... Look at where they are now. Maybe they're the exception that proves the rule.
Tesla might not be making any money right now, but I would think it's a pretty safe bet to invest in long term.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
What really happened is irrelevant especially to the side in the wrong who will do everything in their power to win. You don't know what happened. Only a very small number of people involved with this case do. "neutral, third-party expert"? LOL! Who is paying them? Expert in what exactly? Were they there when "it"
happened? Come on!
Cases like this are won and lost in the public arena but Tesla by playing hardball and not showing a scrap of evidence has been able to convince you, Dear Alvin, prospective juror and member of the public whose goodwill and car budget Tesla seeks, that Tesla is in the right here.
Tesla's lawyers will pile on pressure until she cracks and drops the suit. It's their job to do that even if they know she's been screwed over.
Has she? It's irrelevant. Welcome to "The Law".
Lose some weight and she'd be a good lay.
That photo has an extreme camera angle (shot from knee level), plus her right cheek is in bright sunlight, and her left cheek is in shadow. Try an image search her name. The first two pics are that same red shirt with knee-level shots (one sitting in a car, and one sitting on a table), but the third is a flash photo close-up of her face from some other time.
Once you see the closeup shot, you'll realize that (1) it's obviously the same person, and (2) she definitely looks like a woman, and (3) she's way out of your league.
another sjw blown the fuck out.
sorry, not sorry.
Nobody cares that you're transphobic and worried about your own masculinity. You don't need to advertise.
Who'd cat call her? She looks like a potato.
Does Tesla employ perverted sexually deprived chub chasers ?,It would be extremely strange that anyone would cat call her... maybe it was meant to someone else?
Poor woman, she took on Elon with his thousands of male-Orks in his wings and on the general IT cancerous industry with its 99% brogrammer attitude.
She clearly is faking it or she is crazy. I don't see any trouble at all in any of that.
You get paid what you negotiate for when you get hired. Want more? Ask for more at the start.
If you are an engineer that agreed to $90k a year and I'm an engineer that held out for $125k a year (numbers are for illustration, I have no idea what she makes), and the company decided they needed us both, that isn't discrimination.
If you accepted $90k a year and were asked to take over the job I was doing, same job as you by your own admission, why should the company raise your salary?
You're doing the same work that you agreed to do when you were hired and accepted $90k.
Most companies have an across the board merit increase pool each year, 3-5% seems most common, so you and the guy next to you likely both go up the same percentage unless you either get promoted or do an above and beyond job.
Now if you requested $125k and I requested $125k and they said yes to me and no to you, but our backgrounds were equivalent, then maybe you have a case
If you see gender studies or similar on their resumes - DON'T HIRE.
Traditional discrimination doesn't simply go away on its own or because the discriminated raise their demands.
Sue the bitch and force a public apology court ordered.
I bet the tone of voice in this comment section would be different if it were a male engineer unfairly treated and fired. AC
I don't know which I find most likely:
1) That a Californian feminist would get self-righteously offended at anything/everything and conveniently mislabel it all as sexual harassment.
2) That Elon Musk is screwing his own workers as hard as he can.
I mean there are already plenty of real-world examples of both.
Yes, at will employment (which is the default in every US state, unless the employee signs away the rights) means both sides can end at any time; employers can fire at any time for "any reason or for no reason". Employees can also quit at any time for "any reason" or "no reason". Laws and lawyers are tricky in the details. The "any reason" and "no reason" actually have some limits that make it illegal. The law allows for several reasons which people cannot be fired.
Even if the company gives a totally different reason or gives no reason, people cannot be fired based on several factors:
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
In the USA, it's been my experience in the workplace that males are generally VERY careful about what they say in the presence of females, to the point that males prefer to remain silent in their presence.
You get paid what you negotiate for when you get hired. Want more? Ask for more at the start.
Generally that is true and I have said it to many people. It is a sadly common reason women frequently are paid less than men, and I recommend books like "Women Don't Ask" and "Nice Girls Don't Get The Corner Office" when women short-change themselves. But that isn't what the lawsuit is about.
After she had the job she was harassed both sexually and generally, including cat-calling and proposition, and she make sure to get the complaints documented so they have been confirmed. She says she was passed over for bonuses and got less than her peers which is illegal in her state. She says she was passed over for promotions, which is also potentially illegal but generally hard to convince a judge.
The most damning thing here is the case of the termination. The company spokespeople have now said to multiple news outlets that they fired her because they didn't think her discrimination case had merit. That is illegal under both federal law and California law, even if a lawsuit is dismissed the law absolutely forbids companies for firing over it. If a person sues or claims there was a safety violation and investigators can't confirm it, or a person claims there was harassment or discrimination and it can't be confirmed, the company is still forbidden for firing over it. But here their PR machine is telling the media they fired over something illegal to fire over.
Those are very different from negotiating wages. Negotiating wages and asking for more are legal and proper. The other things that are described in the lawsuit and even items in the public statements by the company are illegal and prohibited.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
Neutral my ass.
Dogs know where they get their food from.
Who'd cat call her? She looks like a potato.
The Irish?
If a man negotiates poorly with respect to his peers and consequently gets paid less than them, is he being discriminated against?
If it's not discrimination for him, why is it discrimination when this scenario plays out with a woman in the role?
http://cylan.deviantart.com/gallery/
If the complaint was made in 'bad faith', out the door she goes.
All they need is one video that proves she lies and she is gone.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I grew up in a majority conservative area thinking ... I got older, earned money and traveled more, discovering that the liberals I met...
Take a wider view, insted of denigrating an entire ideology because of its loudest, stupidest perpetrators.
This is a universal truth. When people start throwing around labels of liberal or conservative, or political labels of democrat or republican, or anything else, they have just set themselves up for being those loud, stupid people. The extreme people who refuse to see the other side, and take viewpoints of 'my way or death', that complicates the issues.
Most people want reasonably intelligent things. While there is always a bit of natural greed, and everyone is certainly due their rewards for successes, collectively as humans we still are willing to show compassion when we know details. Your comparison of the priest versus the people in the pews is good. When it comes to societal issues, the people in the pews vocally decry the 'bad' things because they come with generic ideological labels; people hate taxes generally, people hate when taxes go up, people hate crime generally and some want heavy sentences to punish people who hurt others, people hate healthcare costs. But when pressed for details the same people will admit to the opposite side; we love having great schools, we love having reliable safe roads without potholes, and infrastructure that means power outages and network downtime are newsworthy, we love having police and fire services that respond almost instantly, we want secure high paying jobs for ourselves and our family and friends, we want the fallback of social programs when we lose our jobs or become injured we can keep our homes and family support until we get back on our feet, when diagnosed with a medical problem we want medical care that is the best in human history, when someone we know and love is accused of a crime we want mercy and really don't want extreme punishments because if you only knew them you'd see otherwise. When we drop the labels and make it real, people are generally kind and generous and thoughtful.
When people look only at the labels, it is generic conservative or generic liberal, it is the generic political party, it is generic taxes, it is generic crime, it is generic whatever, we see them as bad for us. But once you know the details, once you see the person who is suffering, once you see the benefits of helping and learning and understanding, suddenly they become positive again.
It is certainly easy to throw up the labels. It is easier to blame problems on the political party, or to blame it on the left/right. It is easier to claim that people in my own group are good and people in other groups are bad. Sadly the extreme groups, even extreme politicians, have gained a large pulpit. Too many take the lazy route; my party proposed it so I support it, my opponent proposed it so I oppose it, rather than both sides looking at details and seeing what helps the most people across the board. I cheer for my team and against your team, the losing team burns cars, instead of both groups watching for the best plays regardless of who made them, cheering their opponents for the hard-fought process.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
"If a man negotiates poorly with respect to his peers and consequently gets paid less than them, is he being discriminated against?"
Yes
loose there jobs
Illiterate fool detected. Opinion validation failed. Opinion discarded. Please try again.
This is full of inaccuracies, but since its a huge post, I'll cherry pick my favorite-
"Science" proved that polygraphs don't work.
You see, you can't just invoke science like it's some sort of omniscient, infallible entity that dictates truth and fiction. You might as well say "God" instead of "Science" if you're going to use the word that way.
People that apply the scientific method to asking and answering questions arrive at conflicting conclusions all the time. What you should invoke is the particular scientific study or group of studies that support your assertion, and the names of the people who conducted the study.
By the way, the polygraph examination was developed using the scientific method in the first place.
Also, the assertion that "courts" (which ones?) are not allowed to use polygraph exams (by which I assume you mean rely on them in any way as evidence in a case) is completely false.
Finally a company that can come to its senses. This whole "discriminate the others in my favor just because I carry a vagina" part of our lives needs to be nuked. I can't believe there are still many other companies or there who believe bullshit like this when it happens, without actually investigating first. Justice, dear lady, had just been served.
For the sake of business, leave California behind.
0 ?
I thought the answer was clear and someone was just trying to get me to explain the obvious:
The man would be discriminated against when compared to workers with the same skills who get payed more based on their ability to negotiate, in other words, the man's lower salary is based on his ability to negotiate rather than his ability to do the job.
In Tesla, her position was "Operations Commodity Manager". And before that she was working as "Inside Sales Product Specialist" and "Engineering Project Coordinator". It's project management and talking to customers, it has nothing to do with engineering. Before Tesla, she was working as Sales Representative.