Engineer alleges culture of sexism and discrimination at Tesla

UPDATE Feb. 28, 2017, 4:25 p.m. ET: Tesla responded to a female engineer's decision to speak to The Guardian about her lawsuit against the company and the sexism and discrimination she alleged with a statement that involved throwing shade at her education (emphasis ours in bold).

"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.”

A Tesla spokesperson said "without this context," the initial coverage of Vandermeyden’s allegations was "misleading." Yet, Tesla declined to comment to Mashableand The Guardianbefore publication.

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Original story

AJ Vandermeyden, a female engineer at Tesla, sued her employer last fall, alleging the car company committed several cases of sexism and workplace discrimination against her, The Guardianreported Tuesday.

The decision to speak out about her case comes a week after former Uber engineer Susan Fowler Rigetti published her own account of sexism by her employer, prompting action from Uber as well as more women in Silicon Valley to share their own stories.

SEE ALSO: Uber's SVP of engineering is out after Recode surfaces previous sexual harassment allegation

Vandermeyden’s lawyer is Therese Lawless, who also represented former Reddit CEO Ellen Pao in her discrimination lawsuit against venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

“Until somebody stands up, nothing is going to change,” Vandermeyden told The Guardian. “I’m an advocate of Tesla. I really do believe they are doing great things. That said, I can’t turn a blind eye if there’s something fundamentally wrong going on.”

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Vandermeyden shared the several cases of sexism she saw from Elon Musk's car company that are also in her lawsuit during an interview with The Guardianat her home in San Carlos, where Tesla was founded.

On the factory floor, for example, she often experienced "unwelcome and pervasive harassment" including "inappropriate language, whistling and catcalls," the lawsuit reads. She also said Tesla denied her overtime pay, rest breaks and meal breaks at her gig in sales.

This isn't the first time such claims have been made by Tesla workers. Workers have also been trying to form a union, Bloombergreported earlier this month.

Vandermeyden told the Guardian that she has repeatedly spoken out about the issues to her superiors.

But the responses she received have been quite unsatisfying:

“'We’re focused on making cars. We don’t have time to deal with all this other stuff,'" she told The Guardian.

Tesla did not respond to The Guardian's questions on Vandermeyden's claims. In an email to The Guardian, a company spokesperson wrote that Tesla “understands the importance of fostering an inclusive workplace that is reflective of the communities we call home" and admitted "there is more we can do to promote diversity."

Tesla also belittled her claim by saying that they have a large workforce. “As with any company with more than 30,000 employees, it is inevitable that there will be a small number of individuals who make claims against the company, but that does not mean those claims have merit,” Tesla's statement reads, according to The Guardian.

Tesla did not immediately respond to a followup request from Mashable.

This culture of sexism and fear of retaliation is pervasive at Tesla, according to an employee speaking with Mashable Monday.

"There's definitely more of a culture of fear here," the employee said. "It’s more top down, and people are generally more scared than anything. It's culture of fear, in my opinion, it’s just comparing to what I know and hear versus Google, Facebook, Uber, we seem less transparent."

Tesla does not publish a diversity report, so it is difficult to know how it compares to other tech giants. The anonymous employee speaking to Mashablesaid Tesla, unlike other tech giants, includes a lot of older workers.

Vandermeyden told The Guardianthat all chief executive positions are held by men at Tesla and only two out of 30 vice-presidents are women.

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