Usually, the answer is that companies would rather offer severance or settle than go into discovery if they fire someone for legal, bullshit reasons. Companies

Usually, the answer is that companies would rather offer severance or settle than go into discovery if they fire someone for legal, bullshit reasons. Companies don't want their reasons for firing people in the public. If they said they fired her for performance, she could subpoena not only her own performance history (Google has secret "calibration scores" that are not shared with the employee) but the ratings of others in the company and any HR actions taken toward them-- in order to find out if people were evaluated consistently. No company wants its HR data in discovery, because almost every company has dirt. They'll usually settle.