AWS Sued By Product Manager Who Says She Was Laid Off For Being An Older Woman

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.

After Stockwell raised this concern in a March 2023 email, the complaint says, she was assigned a new manager, at her own level (L7, senior manager rank), the following month. And then, in July of that year, she had her direct reports reduced from ten to four.

What's more, it's claimed, she was prohibited from holding one-to-one meetings with leadership team members, "a practice that had been instrumental to her previous success."

In September 2023, Stockwell was allegedly told she'd have to return to AWS's San Francisco office at least three days a week and by December 2023, she was placed on a performance improvement plan that's typically used to shuffle under-performing workers out of an organization.

Stockwell, the complaint says, challenged the imposition of this so-called focus plan with AWS human resources, and subsequent meetings with her manager "described her leadership as 'bar raising' and 'flawless.'"

And yet, come February 2024, her performance review included comments related to her age, stating that she was closed to new ideas and hesitant to accept suggestions due to her years of experience as an executive communications writer, it is claimed.

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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.

A closer inspection of the employees affected by the layoff revealed that of the 75 employees terminated, 45 were aged forty or older

According to the complaint, the layoff targeted older workers.

"A closer inspection of the employees affected by the layoff revealed that of the 75 employees terminated, 45 were aged forty or older," the lawsuit says. "More significantly, among the 15 employees offered severance packages – indicating their layoffs were not performance-related – 12 were over age forty.

"Put another way, 60 percent of those laid off were aged forty or older, and of those employees laid off for reasons other than performance issues, 80 percent were over the age of forty."

The complaint contends that "at least seven women over forty were targeted for termination."

Such claims may not be outliers. A 2023 meta-analysis of 13 hiring studies found "considerable levels of ageism in the hiring process." And according to the 2019 Working Longer Survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, 58 percent of Americans age 50 and up say older workers are discriminated against at work.

Asked to comment, Amazon spokesperson Montana MacLachlan said, "We don't tolerate discrimination of any kind in our workplace. When an incident is reported, we thoroughly investigate it and take appropriate action against any employee who is found to have violated our policies, up to and including termination."

Stockwell, who alleges wrongful termination, and unlawful discrimination and retaliation, is seeking damages, costs, and more including a court ruling ordering Amazon to train its managers to drop any future prejudices. ®