AWS sued by product manager who says she was laid off for being an older woman - The Register

[justaprogressive]

A former senior product manager at Amazon Web Services has sued the cloud colossus in the US, claiming she faced retaliation from bosses and was ultimately laid off due to her gender and age.

The complaint [PDF], filed this week in federal court in San Francisco, on behalf of plaintiff Joanne Stockwell, alleges the discrimination stemmed from an internal shake up of management and responsibilities that included a "large reduction of women in leadership positions as a result of the layoffs that occurred in or around the beginning of 2023."

Those layoffs, it's claimed, slashed the representation of women in leadership positions from 62.5 percent to only 28.6 percent.

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By March 12, HR allegedly notified Stockwell that her managers had agreed to remove her from the focus performance plan because she had met the requirements. Yet three days later, HR "informed the plaintiff that the feedback underpinning the focus plan had been validated by HR and as a result, it could not be removed from the plaintiff’s permanent record."
More accolades followed, it's claimed, when her manager "awarded her the 'all-star' honor, citing her exceptional leadership qualities and her successful efforts in launching the new sales and marketing enablement project, AWSentral."

Then in April 2024, AWS announced a reorganization and Stockwell, at the time 56, was informed she would be laid off in June.

https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/21/aws_sued_for_alleged_discrimination/