Twitter was hit with a gender bias lawsuit on Friday by a female software engineer, the third such discrimination suit to roil the Silicon Valley tech industry in less than a week.
TechCrunch reported that Tina Huang, who worked at Twitter for roughly five years on the mobile and developer productivity teams, says in her filing that the company relies on an opaque 'shoulder-tap system' to promote employees, which results in few women being promoted.
"Twitter has no meaningful promotion process for these jobs: no published promotion criteria, nor any internal hiring, advancement, or application processes for employees," she writes in the suit.
Huang said she emailed Twitter CEO Dick Costolo in March last year about her concerns, and was immediately put on leave for three months while the company conducted an investigation.
"After three months without explanation as to the status of the investigation, or mention of any possible time frame for her return to work, she felt she had no choice but to leave the company for the sake of her career. As a result, Ms. Huang emailed her resignation on May 21, 2014, effective June 4, 2014," says the suit.
A diversity report released last summer by Twitter showed that the company's employees are 70 percent male. For technical positions, employees are 90 percent male.
Earlier in the week, a former Facebook employee — Taiwanese woman Chia Hong — filed a suit against the company for alleged discrimination based on her gender, race, and nationality.
On Saturday, a judge ruled that Ellen Pao, who is suing Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield, and Byers for $16 million, could seek punitive damages if the court rules in her favor.
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