Female! ex-Yahoo! coder! says! female! boss! fired! her! for! refusing! sex!

A female ex-Yahoo! employee has filed suit against Maria Zhang, a top company exec, alleging that Zhang retaliated against her and ultimately had her fired from the Purple Palace after she refused Zhang's sexual advances. In documents [PDF] filed with the California Superior Court in Santa Clara on Friday and obtained Monday …

[Anonymous Coward]

Digital Sex

When I saw this story on the Daily Fail, it seemed most of the comments were devoted to confusion over the term "digital sex".

[diodesign]

Re: Digital Sex

"When I saw this story on the Daily Fail"

FWIW on the time delay: we saw this story first emerge on Friday evening (California time), but held off until we were able to obtain the court filing this morning. Just to check, y'know.

C.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Digital Sex

> When I saw this story on the Daily Fail, it seemed most of the comments were devoted to confusion over the term "digital sex".

Clearly it means that fingers were involved.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Re: Digital Sex

somewhere between 1 and 10 bits.

[Eddy Ito]

Re: Digital Sex

Clearly it means that fingers were involved.

Cunnifingus?

[Dick Pountain]

Re: Digital Sex

That's it then, no more boring analog sex for me!

[John H Woods]

Sexual harassment?

... sounds more like sexual assault to me.

[Turtle]

@John H Woods

"sounds more like sexual assault to me"

That's what I'm thinking too. I'd have expected a police investigation and a possible criminal complaint as opposed to merely a civil action...

[KjetilS]

Re: @John H Woods

Yes, but it seems that females are unable to sexually assault. At least that's what society seems to think.

[Charles Manning]

Anything! to! keep! Yahoo! in! the! news!

Bugger the PDFs...

Playmobil or it didn;'t happen.

[asdf]

snap thoughts

Either a jilted lover or another sociopathic executive taking advantage of an H1B would be my guess. Either way it was ethically wrong IMHO for a supervisor to live with a direct report. Yahoo HR should have conducted an investigation regardless. The spokesman immediately jumping to defend her without a decent internal investigation being done (which seems to be the case) also looks unprofessional and shady.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: snap thoughts

"Either a jilted lover or another sociopathic executive taking advantage of an H1B would be my guess."

It is somewhat discriminatory to assume that someone with a foreign-ish name is a H1B visa holder. Nan has a masters from Ohio University. H1B visa holders typically receive their degrees overseas in order to qualify for the H1B visa, in order to get to the US.

But there is a lot more too this issue that appears. Both Maria and Nan joined Yahoo at the same time, because they were both at Alike. So, it appears as part of the Alike acquisition, Maria and Nan both relocated, and accepted Yahoo provided housing.

And prior to Alike, both Maria and Nan worked at Microsoft, where they presumably met. Maria left in 2010 for Alike, and Nan in 2012. Maria worked on Personal Relevance for MSN, and Nan worked on Local Search for Bing. Since MSN became Bing, those are probably the same things.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/mariarenhuizhang

[intrigid]

Absolutely no truth? Does that mean the boss and employee didn't live together? That seems pretty easy to verify, one way or the other. If they lived together then that's strange in itself.

[Khaptain]

Palace ?

Are you sure that it is Purple and not Pubian...

[Destroy All Monsters]

Holy shit!

This is getting interesting!

[Herby]

We intend to fight vigorously to clear her name....

After a private confidential settlement of $n million. Assuming it is true.

[Denarius]

cant be

manglement is always right

[Anonymous Coward]

Yahoo! Strangest company ever...

[Gert Leboski]

Blimey!

All this story needed was some involvement by Marissa Mayer and I'd have closed the curtains and "worked" from home today.

[Valeyard]

Well if it's true I certainly hope it gets dealt with properly and not trampled by expensive lawyers, sounds awful

[TitterYeNot]

Expensive lawyers

"hope it gets dealt with properly and not trampled by expensive lawyers"

Ahem. This is in the US of A, and California no less. I wouldn't hold your breath...

[Charlie Clark]

Broken law

This is another example of why American law is so fucked. Sexual harassment should be a criminal offence: report it to the cops and let the public prosecutor take over and not a feast for civil action lawyers fighting not for right or wrong but for the biggest payout.

[Henry Minute]

Yahoo Management Take Action

Given the customary lassitude of Yahoo Management I would suggest that in order to meet the deadline for the court hearing they will have to get their (collective) finger out.