A former Yahoo media executive is suing CEO Marissa Mayer for allegedly purging the tech company of male employees.
Mayer is accused of systemically favoring female employees in an unjust manner and having unfair management tactics in general.
“Mayer encouraged and fostered the use of (an employee performance-rating system) to accommodate management’s subjective biases and personal opinions, to the detriment of Yahoo’s male employees,” the the suit filed by Scott Ard reads, according to The Mercury News.
Ard, who now works as the editor-in-chief for a Silicon Valley-based publication, worked at Yahoo for three and a half years. His main complaint stems from the performance-review process that Mayer imposed. Ard claims that it allowed high-level managers to randomly alter the grading of employees who they had no interaction with.
“We believe this process allows our team to develop and do their best work. Our performance review process also allows for high performers to engage in increasingly larger opportunities at our company, as well as for low performers to be transitioned out,” a Yahoo official told The Daily Caller News Foundation. (RELATED: Yahoo Cybersecurity Team Labeled ‘Paranoids’ Often Clashed With CEO Mayer)
Ard also names two other female executives in the lawsuit — Kathy Savitt, former chief marketing officer, and Megan Liberman, editor-in-chief of Yahoo News.
Ard blames Liberman for “unilaterally” lowering the scores of three males’ performances that Ard had also analyzed, while maintaining the scores of two female employees.
“When Savitt began at Yahoo the top managers reporting to her … including the chief editors of the verticals and magazines, were less than 20 percent female. Within a year and a half those top managers were more than 80 percent female,” the lawsuit says.
“Of the approximately 16 senior-level editorial employees hired or promoted by Savitt … in approximately an 18-month period, 14 of them, or 87 percent, were female,” the lawsuit reads, reports The Mercury News.
Ard asserts that he was given personal performance reviews that expressed full satisfaction, but was later replaced as head of editorial programming for a woman Liberman had just hired.
“While we can’t comment on pending litigation, I can share that fairness is a guiding principle of our annual review and reward process. Our performance review process was developed to allow employees at all levels of the company to receive meaningful, regular, and actionable feedback from others,” the Yahoo official told TheDCNF.
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