Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) is sued for practicing age discrimination in the organization. The company’s former manager of data center deployment Peter H. Taylor, 57 accused the microblogging site of sacking him unethically last September based on his age and physical disability.
“Plaintiff’s supervisor made at least one critical remark about plaintiff’s age,” the suit alleges.
Young employees preferred
The lawsuit, also, said that the colleagues of Taylor were younger in age to him and that he was replaced by several employees in their 20s and 30s. Taylor alleges that Twitter dumped extra work on him, which grew to an unmanageable level, and fired him when he could not deliver due to ill health caused by kidney stones for which he was being treated.
Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) spokesperson said that the allegation filed is “without merit” and the company will aggressively defend against it.
The latest case, irrespective of who wins, reflects the idea that it’s not just a race or gender, based on which employees are discriminated, but also the age. Older tech employees confessed that they seek one or other tactics to match with the young brains in the Silicon Valley, where college culture is the latest trend.
A report from Noam Scheiber reported in the New Republic, in March, reveals that employees even in their twenties seek methods to look very young, and resorting to cosmetic touch is one of them. Although proving age discrimination is a difficult one, but going by the current cultural problem the case will certainly get some attention.
Twitter is not just one
Back in 2011, Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) was caught into a similar trouble and ended up settling a multimillion dollar claim with the computer scientist Brain Reid, who was fired from the company in 2004 at the age of 54. Reid accused Google employees of making offensive remarks against his age; firing on him with words like “obsolete,” “sluggish,” and an “old fuddy-duddy,” whose ideas were “too old to matter.”
Not just Google and Twitter, other tech-giants like Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) and Yahoo have invited rage by posting job listings with “new grad” in the requirement. Facebook, also, settled a similar claim in 2013 with California’s Fair Employment and Housing Department over a job listing that read “Class of 2007 or 2008 preferred.”
