4 ms·

SF tech company Okta, worth $14B, accused of retaliatory layoffs

63 points by uladzislau 2y ago

Manuel_D 2y ago
> Wallander also said she was concerned that “two women were laid off due to what was appearing more and more like gender discrimination.” News sources tell me that Okta laid off about 400 people [1]. The fact that three of them were women is not even remotely enough to conclude that the layoffs were discriminatory. 1. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/02/01/okta-to-lay-off-7percent-of-staff-about-400-employees.html https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/02/01/okta-to-lay-off-7percent...
- Affric 2y ago
  If there were layoffs coming 100% these women could have been chosen as retaliatory action as part of a wider campaign of discrimination. A big part of doing layoffs is finding non-discriminatory reasons to lay off people you don’t like. And sometimes it means engineers you like and think are competent will catch strays because you just need to get rid of the incompetents so bad. I am not saying that these women have or have not been discriminated against. Just that the laying off of other workers doesn’t mean they haven’t.
  - lazide 2y ago
    If only 3 out of the 400 people laid off were women, isn’t that defacto evidence of discriminatory layoffs against men? Per the DOJ criteria, anyway. Statistically, 51% (approx) of the group should have been women. Or 204, give or take. So where are the other women that should have been laid off?
    - weard_beard 2y ago
      https://www.bu.edu/diversity/files/2021/12/Equity-636x491.jpg https://www.bu.edu/diversity/files/2021/12/Equity-636x491.jp...
      - lazide 2y ago
        Funny how it applies when someone wants to do something or have a good time, but not when something unpleasant happens eh?
- bedobi 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - cqqxo4zV46cp 2y ago
    Because they’re tech bros.
  - Manuel_D 2y ago
    No, it really doesn't outline anything. Just vague statement from former employees speculating about bias, but not actually any evidence of gender discrimination. The closest it comes to actually layout out specifics is: > The complaint also said male managers and colleagues “repeatedly” removed her from emails and meetings. There's loads of legitimate reasons to remove from meetings and email groups, but the article doesn't go into any details about why these removals were discriminatory.
    - orf 2y ago
      > but the article doesn't go into any details about why these removals were discriminatory. Ok: and your first response to this is to write a bunch of comments completely dismissing what they are saying, because… you know more than the article?
    - bedobi 2y ago
      Oh, case closed then! There is in fact no discrimination against women at Okta or in the industry or even society at large. No need to even investigate to see if there’s any merit to the accusation, we can dismiss it out of hand.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
- trashface 2y ago
  Firing a broad range and then months later hiring people you prefer is a time honored way to launder discrimination.
- n2d4 2y ago
  That is a really gross misrepresentation of the article. The complaint is that women who spoke out about gender discrimination were retaliated against, and they are the only ones who were laid off on their team: > After she was laid off, Ho learned that she and two other female employees who had spoken up about discrimination were the only ones laid off from the team she’d been on, the complaint said. I'm not sure how you could read the entire thing and then end up quoting that sentence as the only thing that sticks out. And either you stopped reading there or you intentionally left out the next paragraph which would explain that these aren't even the same cases: > [Wallander] clarified that the “two women” mentioned in her post were laid off months before Ho. FWIW, those 400 layoffs also almost certainly included more than five women. You need to learn to assume good faith, even if the counterparty politically disagrees.
  - bedobi 2y ago
    Thank you for correcting with facts what is sadly but predictably the highest voted comment. It's infuriating that so many people (men and women alike) in our industry will do absolutely everything to shut down hard conversations about gender and race, everything from just being willfully oblivious to outright deliberately misrepresenting and denying, and even dismissing out of hand actual allegations without even trying to investigate their merit. (even under the deniers own internal logic, how can they be so sure there's no problem if it's never allowed to be investigated?
justinclift 2y ago
Uh oh. Okta seems to be having technical problems over the last few days too (ie automatically logging out the account admin a few seconds after logging in), and the support ticket we've filed about it hasn't even been looked at. :(
goBokegoWroke 2y ago
[flagged]
hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
The courts will have to resolve this. And big companies are gonna do layoff because that's their standard formula. Props to their sales people, but it's surprising they attained as much sales up to and including some of MAANG with a SaaS business model built on the fallacy of outsourcing authentication and authorization of internal tools and systems to an external third-party. At least it should be totally on-prem.

63 points by uladzislau 2y ago

> Wallander also said she was concerned that “two women were laid off due to what was appearing more and more like gender discrimination.” News sources tell me that Okta laid off about 400 people [1]. The fact that three of them were women is not even remotely enough to conclude that the layoffs were discriminatory. 1. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/02/01/okta-to-lay-off-7percent-of-staff-about-400-employees.html https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/02/01/okta-to-lay-off-7percent...

Affric 2y ago
If there were layoffs coming 100% these women could have been chosen as retaliatory action as part of a wider campaign of discrimination. A big part of doing layoffs is finding non-discriminatory reasons to lay off people you don’t like. And sometimes it means engineers you like and think are competent will catch strays because you just need to get rid of the incompetents so bad. I am not saying that these women have or have not been discriminated against. Just that the laying off of other workers doesn’t mean they haven’t.
- lazide 2y ago
  If only 3 out of the 400 people laid off were women, isn’t that defacto evidence of discriminatory layoffs against men? Per the DOJ criteria, anyway. Statistically, 51% (approx) of the group should have been women. Or 204, give or take. So where are the other women that should have been laid off?
  - weard_beard 2y ago
    https://www.bu.edu/diversity/files/2021/12/Equity-636x491.jpg https://www.bu.edu/diversity/files/2021/12/Equity-636x491.jp...
    - lazide 2y ago
      Funny how it applies when someone wants to do something or have a good time, but not when something unpleasant happens eh?
bedobi 2y ago
[flagged]
- cqqxo4zV46cp 2y ago
  Because they’re tech bros.
- Manuel_D 2y ago
  No, it really doesn't outline anything. Just vague statement from former employees speculating about bias, but not actually any evidence of gender discrimination. The closest it comes to actually layout out specifics is: > The complaint also said male managers and colleagues “repeatedly” removed her from emails and meetings. There's loads of legitimate reasons to remove from meetings and email groups, but the article doesn't go into any details about why these removals were discriminatory.
  - orf 2y ago
    > but the article doesn't go into any details about why these removals were discriminatory. Ok: and your first response to this is to write a bunch of comments completely dismissing what they are saying, because… you know more than the article?
  - bedobi 2y ago
    Oh, case closed then! There is in fact no discrimination against women at Okta or in the industry or even society at large. No need to even investigate to see if there’s any merit to the accusation, we can dismiss it out of hand.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
trashface 2y ago
Firing a broad range and then months later hiring people you prefer is a time honored way to launder discrimination.
n2d4 2y ago
That is a really gross misrepresentation of the article. The complaint is that women who spoke out about gender discrimination were retaliated against, and they are the only ones who were laid off on their team: > After she was laid off, Ho learned that she and two other female employees who had spoken up about discrimination were the only ones laid off from the team she’d been on, the complaint said. I'm not sure how you could read the entire thing and then end up quoting that sentence as the only thing that sticks out. And either you stopped reading there or you intentionally left out the next paragraph which would explain that these aren't even the same cases: > [Wallander] clarified that the “two women” mentioned in her post were laid off months before Ho. FWIW, those 400 layoffs also almost certainly included more than five women. You need to learn to assume good faith, even if the counterparty politically disagrees.
- bedobi 2y ago
  Thank you for correcting with facts what is sadly but predictably the highest voted comment. It's infuriating that so many people (men and women alike) in our industry will do absolutely everything to shut down hard conversations about gender and race, everything from just being willfully oblivious to outright deliberately misrepresenting and denying, and even dismissing out of hand actual allegations without even trying to investigate their merit. (even under the deniers own internal logic, how can they be so sure there's no problem if it's never allowed to be investigated?

justinclift 2y ago

Uh oh. Okta seems to be having technical problems over the last few days too (ie automatically logging out the account admin a few seconds after logging in), and the support ticket we've filed about it hasn't even been looked at. :(

goBokegoWroke 2y ago

[flagged]

hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago

The courts will have to resolve this. And big companies are gonna do layoff because that's their standard formula. Props to their sales people, but it's surprising they attained as much sales up to and including some of MAANG with a SaaS business model built on the fallacy of outsourcing authentication and authorization of internal tools and systems to an external third-party. At least it should be totally on-prem.