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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."
Fred Garvin...
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I think she's lying about the whole thing. Generally when people try suing over discrimination, it's a false accusation and it's extremely difficult to prove.
I also don't believe that she was being harassed or catcalled after seeing a picture of her.
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.
Just because you don't find her attractive doesn't mean other me don't.
> "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'
Your standards are very low and I don't think you should have made your comment.
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?
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.
...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 ]
OMG, whatever. Cat-calling isn't a power play, it's annoying slobber. It is what you do when you have no power over someone, and you don't expect to get any. Sexual harrasment is when you have power and you use it make your advances difficult to avoid. You can't catcall and sexually harass - it's one or the other.
“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.”
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".
catcalling, such as whistling, is pretty much never about power. catcallers don't have any power. if they had power they would just ask them to their office. or do you think that construction workers have POWER?
it doesn't make any sense really, this case. like, there isn't a single happening or something, she was basically suing the general culture in the company.
the catcalling incident was "âoeThey all started hooting and hollering and whistling,â she said. âoeThat canâ(TM)t happen without somebody noticing ⦠Itâ(TM)s disturbing.â ". thats from a platform above while she walked with some other woman. dunno if the platform was construction workers in which case yeah I might believe it happening OR she just copied it off family guy.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I know it's not a popular opinion in this day and age, but cat-calling is also just banter. Take it in stride.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
She's disgustingly ugly. That's just a fact. Sex with her would be on the same level as bestiality. Again this also cannot be denied.
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.
Actually I don't think I've ever seen a cat-caller who had power in their favour.
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
Yeah guys that catcall women like that bring us all down. This is one fugly specimen.
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.
I've worked at multiple places where just being a woman got you catcalled. Based on my experience, her story is entirely believable.
I also don't believe that she was being harassed or catcalled after seeing a picture of her.
I'm not sure that the harassment was specifically on her according to what she told TG back in February. Who knows?
Vandermeyden recounted to the Guardian an incident in 2015 when she said a group of roughly 20 men standing on a platform above her and a female colleague began taunting as they walked past.
Though, why did she expect that the company would keep her when she was actually damaging the company's image whether or not it is true. Companies are always companies; especially when they are big (e.g. corporation)...
Vandermeyden recently took out a hefty loan to buy the cheapest version of the Model S Tesla car and has a reservation for the upcoming Model 3. She is hopeful her lawsuit and public comments won’t end her career at a company she loves: "I think they’re a revolutionary and innovative company."
She can apply to take Elon Musk's place in President Trump's advisory council
Oops. She chose poorly. The even bigger issue is that she is now toxic. If she loses her case, it'll be a very hard sell to get hired again a la Ellen Pao.
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
Sexual harassment also includes making a hostile work environment. It's typically hard to prove, but it's part of the law. Catcalling can be part of a hostile work environment, and therefore can be sexual harassment.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
If the woman is stuck in a workplace with cat-callers, there's power on the cat-caller's side.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Because it's clearly illegal to fire someone because they file a lawsuit against the company.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
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 woman is stuck in a workplace with cat-callers, there's power on the cat-caller's side.
In the work place of all places that is not true. Not only is that the most likely place a woman can find someone who gives a crap, but it is also highly dependent on level and interpersonal relationships.
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'
Oops. She chose poorly. The even bigger issue is that she is now toxic. If she loses her case, it'll be a very hard sell to get hired again a la Ellen Pao.
Possibly, or maybe not. Certainly being in the news makes her name show up on searches, but that doesn't necessarily kill her career, especially if the courts agree with her on one or both lawsuits. And based on what both sides have publicly released so far, she has incredibly strong lawsuits.
The earlier harassment filings have some paper trails within the company. Under the law there are a few things that need to be satisfied, but the biggest is a clear communication that the actions are unwanted. Since she made sure there was a documented history, that will be very hard to fight if they actually reach the court. Yes, the company is in the process of putting her and her family through the wringer for that, but she did the absolute best thing she could: She left a paper trail with HR at the company, and she collected a ton of evidence while she was there.
The company then did what companies do. Even though they aren't supposed to fire in retaliation, they will make up other excuses and make the employee miserable. Bonuses were denied (and documented), she was not paid for overtime (which were documented as violating company policy) denied rest breaks and meal times. Then she was told her performance was unacceptably bad, a common tactic to get rid of employees companies don't like but can't readily fire. Still, she didn't leave.
But then the company finished it off and fired her. Unfortunately for Tesla, they opened their big mouth and made press statements.
The unlawful firing aspect has become an open-and-shut case thanks to Tesla's PR department. The press releases and spokespeople have clearly stated to multiple news outlets that they reviewed the complaints for the pending lawsuit, claimed they have no merit, and that was the reason they fired her. Not poor performance, not policy violations, but because the company didn't want to be sued for the alleged violations. The quote to The Guardian is right there in the story: "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." Under both federal law and California law, that action is illegal. I'm guessing the company's legal team is furious at the PR team right now, but it is out there in many public statements.
So at this point it doesn't matter if her harassment lawsuit is dismissed or not, that is irrelevant for unlawful firing. With the collection of public statements, there is no way any judge would find against her, Tesla's media statements are a textbook definition of an illegal retaliation.
Doubtless some companies won't hire her because she filed lawsuits, but if in the end the judge says she was right, or if they reach a settlement where Tesla is seen as losing, most employers won't care. It changes from being a troublemaker to someone who will stand up to bullies, which can be an asset in management, at least in smarter companies.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
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
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.