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."

Comments

Ballsy

[alvinrod]

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.

Re:Ballsy

[gweihir]

Indeed. Whenever some people are really discriminated against, you find others that are just trying to get a free ride on this. Pretty bad. The worst case is women claiming to have been raped, when nothing like that happened. It is just far too easy to do and apparently many cannot resist.

Re:Ballsy

[Anonymous Coward]

In the US, as long as someone makes a good-faith claim of discrimination, you are legally protected against retaliation in the form of any kind of adverse job action. Firing someone would be the ultimate adverse job action, but it could be as little as giving them a verbal warning. The catch comes in that you have to file a complaint with state and or federal agencies, which are often overworked and understaffed to the point where if you don't have a smoking gun in terms of evidence, they're likely not going to do anything more than sit on your case.

In this instance, the woman skipped all that and went right to a lawsuit (which is an option). However, she's still protected against retaliation unless Tesla can show that her complaint was made in bad faith.Your claim of discrimination doesn't actually have to be proven correct to be given the protection against retaliation, it only has to be made in good-faith. Good-faith, defined in the US legal system basically amounts to you believe it to be the case, and usually have some kind of evidence to support your belief. Based on the reports, this woman definitely has some examples to support her claim, so it's on Tesla to prove that the woman knew it was not true when she made the complaint(s).

Tesla is playing an extremely dangerous game by firing the woman. Unless they have some hard proof that she made the entire thing up, her lawyer will file a retaliation suit in addition to the discrimination suit and it won't be a question of IF Tesla pays out, but HOW MUCH.

Re:Ballsy

[phantomfive]

Looks like they hired a neutral third-party to investigate. They presented some of the evidence:

The investigator had access to Tesla’s compensation data and found that Vandermeyden’s salary was in the middle of the range and while some new hires were indeed paid more than her as her lawsuit claims, the highest paid new hire was a woman and several men were paid less than her. Therefore, Hilbert determined that gender discrimination had nothing to do with her compensation.

It doesn't say why she was fired, but most companies won't say that.

Re:Ballsy

[Anonymous Coward]

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.”

Re:Ballsy

[luis_a_espinal]

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.”

Yeah. Launching a lawsuit like that just to be found w/o merits by a third, neutral party, that's reason enough to fire her. Or him, or whatever. The minimal trust required to keep someone on payroll has been broken.

Bad career move from her part (and if she did it with premeditated malice and dishonesty, she just fucked a whole bunch of women who might be real victims of discrimination.)

Re:Ballsy

[Ol Olsoc]

Tesla is playing an extremely dangerous game by firing the woman. Unless they have some hard proof that she made the entire thing up, her lawyer will file a retaliation suit in addition to the discrimination suit and it won't be a question of IF Tesla pays out, but HOW MUCH.

So what you are saying is that a disruptive employee must be kept on staff based on gender?

We've been seeing cases of disruptive females losing their discrimination cases, Ellen Pao is perhaps the most prominent example.

Being a disruptive employee is not a gender specific thing, I've worked with both. The problem employee does tend to grasp at anything to continue to be disruptive, regardless of gender. Certain groups have extra claims they can make. And when you can play the gender card, you will immediately polarize the issue, with people falling into predictable positions.

We don't know the particulars of this case, so it is difficult to determine who did what. But having a third party investigate the issue was smart on Tesla's part.

Now that being said, and with the firing, I suspect that Tesla has at the least, a solid case. I would not be surprised if they refused to settle and took any resulting lawsuit to open court.

Let's take gender out of the equation, and move to a similar matter. Where I spent most of my career, there were a number of service workers. There were a small but not insignificant number of these workers that were Workman's comp/SS disability cases waiting to happen. Minor injuries - like the kind that required a band-aid and antiseptic, were trumped up by these folk as a injury so severe that they could not ever work again. I recall one person who tried to get disability for a back muscle spasm.

And yup, they were so adamant about the evil place making them work. And yup, almost all were exposed if they did manage to get disability. They keep track of work these days, and if a person is really interesting, they'll have someone tail them and take video and photos. But the point is that there are people out there who are willing to use every tool at their disposal, and the person's sex is now often used as a bludgeon.

Regardless, it will be interesting to see how this one plays out. But if the Pao case is any indication, a person playing the gender discrimination card case is not a slam dunk when a third party is investigating the issue.

Re:Ballsy

[cyberchondriac]

Indeed? Conservatives generally place blame for crime where it lies; on the criminals. They go too easy on white collar crime, but generally acknowledge victims and perpetrators for what they are and the roles they play.
Conversely, liberalism frequently defends violent criminals and twists things to instead portray them as victims, by way of absolving people of personal responsibility (what a concept), and laying blame at the feet of "society", or "Big Pharma", the NRA, "white privilege" (more recently), corporations, and the ever popular "industrial prison complex". They rally for BLM riots, justify the burning of cars, beating of objectors, and destruction of businesses; protest on behalf of Mumia Abu-Jamal, berate and stereotype law enforcement, venerate Che Guevara and Castro, and discount the growing threat of ISIS and Al Queada.
However, if the criminal can be identified (whether correctly or incorrectly) as "right wing", then all bets are off; suddenly personal responsibility is a factor again; there's blood in the water and new heights of Godwinism are achieved, though the aforementioned items might share some blame as well (usually the NRA).
Overall, in liberalism, the murderer/attacker/thief/burglar/rapist/mugger is rarely to blame for their violent, anti-social behavior. It's everything else that drove them to this. This is why since an early age I could never vote liberal, it's the pretzel logic, the disregard for actual, hurting victims and the bizarre coddling of violent sociopaths, the twisted definition of compassion and skewing of priorities, despite the fact that I agree with them on some of the other issues.

There's no good outcome here.

[Gravis Zero]

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.

Entitled

[geekymachoman]

> "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.

Re:Entitled

[markdavis]

+1 Bingo

Just because she says or thinks she is harassed or paid less doesn't make that true. And to make it a media circus doesn't help the situation. No doubt there are PLENTY of people who do this now just to get what they want. It is a shame because there are legit issues that need to be addressed at places that will get overlooked when things are made-up by others and found to be unjustified.

Re:Entitled

[TWX]

I've seen both in tech circles. I've seen women that were harassed, and I've seen women that got special treatment where they were good at deflecting the work that was supposed to be assigned to them to others, or faced no punitive action for severely underperforming to the point that it became obvious to outsiders.

I've also seen men that were bullied in the workplace and did not have any advancement, and men that also managed to underperform for extended periods of time. Gender doesn't really dictate this.

Frankly we're not going to ever know the particulars of this case. Basically none of us were there, and it would behoove anyone that was to not say anything unless it's part of any legal proceedings and behind closed doors, or potentially in-court. At the moment there's only a single datapoint, so there isn't enough information for us to make any real conclusions. She may well be right, and could have been the target of specific harassment that was covered-up by some element of management, or she could be making false claims. There just isn't enough information for us to conclude anything.

Re:Entitled

[deek]

That's very true, but from the actions taken, we can conclude that Tesla are very confident that they're on solid ground here. Hence the chances of her being the type to game the system are pretty high. Not conclusive, certainly, but still quite high.

The lawsuit

[Areyoukiddingme]

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.

Re:The lawsuit

[Areyoukiddingme]

Tesla has yet to turn a profit, claiming growth - yet every other firm manages to grow while it is profitable. Tesla has significant governance issues, so it isn't being managed well at all.

Firms which are profitable while growing are typically growing at single digit percentages per year, while not being in one of the most capital intensive industries in the world. Did you know there's a battery factory in Nevada now? It was empty desert a few years ago. Do you think that was free? Or even cheap? They spent half a billion dollars on capital expenditures in the fourth quarter of 2016 alone, then did it again in the first quarter of this year. They expect to spend an additional $1.5 billion on capital expenditures by September. The incumbent car companies thought they were completely safe from new competition because they knew how much money somebody would have to spend in order to actually compete with them. They believed that everybody was just like you, too cowardly to spend that money in order to build factories. Turns out they were wrong, just like you.

I read your links. They're both a year old, and almost totally obsolete. The SolarCity buy is a done deal. There is no SolarCity anymore. It's all Tesla now. I'm not so sure it was a good purchase, but all "will they/should they" analysis is irrelevant. They did. Meanwhile they made $2.7 billion in GAAP revenue in the first quarter of this year, up almost triple what they made a year ago. They did it by producing cars 64% faster than they did a year ago. And that's with zero ZEV sales in the quarter. Nobody has to buy the zero emissions credits from them anymore. The whining about the board of directors is nothing more than a naked attempt at a power grab. I consider Tesla's ability to tell the usual suspects to go to hell a serious strength, not a weakness. Those people only know how to fuck up old companies by gutting them, not grow new ones.

Badly managed? Not even close. You just don't have any idea how to evaluate them because what they're doing hasn't been done in your lifetime. They're spinning up a global car company from scratch. Fifteen years ago they didn't exist. Of the top 15 car companies in the world (by manufacturing volume), 7 of them are over a century old and 2 of them aren't global (neither SAIC nor Peugeot Citreon sell into the US market). None of them were founded less than 40 years ago. Groupe PSA, formerly Peugeot Citreon, is the youngest, founded in 1976. The rest date from the 1940s or earlier. Two of them, Fiat and Renault, date from the 1800s. When Tesla is a century old, maybe you'll be able to understand them.

Tesla Motors isn't one of the top 15 in the world and may never be, but they're competing directly with those top 15. That's expensive. Really expensive.

I can't deny that markets are delusional though...

Re:Duh

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Engineer?

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Engineer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Found more:

https://electrek.co/2017/02/28/tesla-allegations-discrimination-female-engineer-review/

I couldn't help but notice...

[hyades1]

...Vandermeyden's attorney is Therese Lawless.

Trust deterioration.

[DrYak]

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.

Promote as an engineer WITHOUT a degree

[Anonymous Coward]

“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.”