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Snap reportedly settled with women who alleged discrimination after layoffs

Snap reportedly settled with women who alleged discrimination after layoffs

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Snap reached settlements with three women last year who alleged discrimination at the company after they were laid off, according to The Wall Street Journal. Snap was previously accused of having a “toxic” workplace with a “pervading sexist vibe,” and the new allegations say that women weren’t given the opportunity to rise up in the company’s ranks.

The layoffs were alleged to have disproportionately targeted women, according to the Journal, with one round of job cuts eliminating only women from a pair of small teams. At least three people were given additional cash and stock on top of their severance package after making complaints, the report says.

Snap doesn’t release diversity reports

Snap says that the layoffs “impacted both men and women” and that “the decisions we made when determining the people impacted had absolutely nothing to do with gender.” Men also received additional severance after negotiations, according to a Snap spokesperson.

Of the 218 people Snap laid off during the first half of 2018, 70 percent were men, the spokesperson said. Snap also took issue with the characterization of only women being laid off from the pair of teams the Journal described, and said that some people were given new roles because the team was being disbanded.

Unlike many major tech companies, Snap doesn’t release diversity reports detailing representation among its workforce. That means we don’t know how many of its employees are women, which would give a clearer idea of whether 30 percent is a disproportionate figure. But it’s likely that certain teams within Snap are overwhelmingly male: last year, the company told Cheddar that women only held 13 percent of its technology roles.

Concerns were raised about Snap’s workplace culture after Cheddar leaked an internal Snap email last year, in which a departing engineer accused the company of being unwelcoming to women and people of color. In its report, the Journal adds that women believe leadership roles were given to less experienced male employees, and say they didn’t receive annual performance reviews for years. Snap has implemented a regular review process since the layoffs, according to the report.