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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."
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?
“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.”
It doesn't say why she was fired, but most companies won't say that.
TFA does have a statement by Tesla about the reason for firing her:
“The termination was based on Ms Vandermeyden behaving in what the evidence indicates is a fundamentally false and misleading manner, not as a result of retaliation for the lawsuit,” the spokesperson added. “It is impossible to trust anyone after they have behaved in such a manner and therefore continued employment is also impossible.”
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.