Ex-Yahoo Employee Says It's Biased Against Men

A fired Yahoo employee is suing the tech company, claiming—among other things—that it discriminates against men, partially resulting in his termination, Ars Technica reports. According to the Los Angeles Times, Yahoo editorial director Gregory Anderson was told in 2014 that he was in the bottom 5% of employees based on quarterly performance reviews and was being fired. Prior to his firing, which he partly blames on gender discrimination, he claims he was given a raise and promoted; he had been with the company four years. "[Chief marketing officer Kathy] Savitt has publicly expressed support for increasing the number of women in media and has intentionally hired and promoted women because of their gender, while terminating, demoting, or laying off male employees because of their gender," Ars Technica quotes Anderson's lawyer.

Anderson's lawsuit, which "itemize[s] the damages at $5 million," his lawyer tells Bloomberg, blames Yahoo's quarterly review process—in which managers rank employees on a scale of zero to five—for allowing firings "to be made on the basis of personal biases and stereotyping." In addition, the lawsuit alleges that the process favors women. Quarterly reviews were implemented by Yahoo chief executive Marissa Mayer in 2012, the New York Times reports. Recently, they may be responsible for the inadvertent firing of up to 30 employees at the end of last month, the New York Post reports. "They put people on firing lists who they didn’t mean to—people who were lower on the performance scale but who weren’t meant to get fired,” an inside source says. Managers ended up firing the employees by mistake. A Yahoo spokesperson denies it. Yahoo announced Tuesday it will be laying off 1,700 employees. (More Yahoo stories.)