Amazon Fired Me for Reporting Gender Bias. Now Others Are Speaking Out.
By: Cindy Warner
Tags: Amazon, Amazon Web Services, Workplace Culture, Gender Discrimination, Diversity

Dear Andy Jassy and Adam Selipsky,

Congratulations to both of you on your new roles as the CEOs of Amazon and Amazon Web Services (AWS), respectively. This change in leadership invites reflection on where the company has fallen short in recent years while it aims to become “Earth’s Best Employer.” Sadly, Amazon terminated my employment on June 30, a month after I filed a federal lawsuit about gender discrimination and retaliation in AWS’s Professional Services (ProServe) business unit. Therefore, I am acutely aware of the changes Amazon must make to remain an employer of choice for top talent.

A report published today in The Washington Post reveals there is a crisis of confidence brewing throughout much of Amazon’s corporate workforce. In recent weeks, more than 550 current employees in ProServe expressed support for an internal petition that calls out the company’s “underlying culture of systemic discrimination, harassment, bullying and bias against women and under-represented groups.”

These employees have demanded an objective and independent investigation — beginning by the end of this month and to be completed by October 2021 — into the practices that enable some Amazon leaders to discriminate and retaliate against disfavored employees with impunity. I am honored and humbled that the petition identifies me as one of the people whose reports and experiences spurred them to call for change in ProServe and AWS.

To give some context, I started at Amazon in February 2020, just weeks before the pandemic caused lockdowns across the country. As a Director (Level 8) at AWS, I brought with me over 30 years of experience in tech and cloud computing services after working for some of the best brands in the world. My official title at Amazon was Global Leader, ProServe Advisory, Strategic Program Management and Partners. I was responsible for working with Amazon’s corporate customers regarding how AWS could transform their businesses.

It quickly became clear, as explained in my complaint, that our unit had a major sexism problem. Female team members would approach me on a near-daily basis asking for guidance on how to handle persistent discrimination and bullying by male managers and coworkers. The only other female L8-level employee at the time regularly came to me in tears, searching for ways to stop the abuse by her male colleagues. Later, another female L8 joined and almost immediately began looking for another role in the company due to how she was treated in ProServe. White men received preferential assignments while women were frequently undermined and denied promotions and pay increases despite equal or greater work and contributions.

I was determined to turn this situation around and pressed on with my work, trying to create whatever sense of camaraderie among my team that I could while we all worked remotely. In October 2020, I traveled cross-country from Michigan to California, stopping to meet many colleagues in person along the way (while maintaining social distancing, of course).

Despite these conditions, I was able to generate real results for ProServe. Our unit was struggling at the beginning of the pandemic. Within months, I restructured our team to improve clarity around roles and responsibilities and developed several of our most important client relationships. I even ferreted out a male employee who had been secretly working a second full-time job for many months before I started while ignoring his duties at AWS.

None of that seemed to matter to my immediate boss, Todd Weatherby, who apparently felt threatened by me as an outspoken female executive driven to improve the work environment and our unit’s processes for women and other under-represented groups. Weatherby and other white male leaders in ProServe were effectively ignoring persistent issues of harassment and discrimination while putting up inclusive workplace window dressing.

As presented in detail in my federal complaint, in February 2021 I was subjected to one of the worst displays of male aggression I have seen in my professional career: a colleague hurled epithets at me over the phone (with an HR rep also on the line), calling me a “bitch,” “nobody” and “idiot” for having the nerve to question whether he should take a prominent client relationship from me. The HR rep who was on the call said it was the “worst employee on employee assault” he had witnessed in his career. He asked for my permission to file an Employee Relations (ER) complaint. I agreed. This complaint led nowhere, despite my being assured by the ER investigator that this was “very serious and had been reviewed by Andy Jassy.”

An excerpt from my federal court complaint filed against Amazon and Amazon Web Services on May 19, 2021.

The sexism continued within ProServe, and I was under increasing pressure and could sense that retaliation was a strong possibility, and therefore hired an attorney who sent a letter to Amazon on April 7 regarding the events of the past year and outlining my legal discrimination claims. Exactly three weeks later, on April 28, I was suddenly and without explanation, removed from my L8 Director position, stripped of my team and responsibilities, and told that I had two months to find a new job at Amazon or I would be fired.

The company’s explanation for doing this baffles me to this day; it claimed that in February I had expressed an interest in possibly transferring out of ProServe because leaders in the group were mistreating me. Indeed I had clearly expressed to Todd Weatherby and the head of ProServe HR, Toni Handler, that the sexism and discrimination that I personally endured as did so many of my colleagues, was not an environment that I desired to continue to work within I was clear to Weatherby and Handler that ProServe was likely the worst culture I had ever had the misfortune to work within. While this complaint should have led to an HR investigation, nothing ensued.

The company never offered me any help or suggestions in finding a new role. It was crystal clear that Amazon was simply retaliating for my reporting bias against me and other women in ProServe.

On May 19, I filed a lawsuit outlining in detail the discrimination and retaliation that I faced at AWS. The same day, four other women working in Amazon’s warehouses and corporate offices around the country also filed their own individual lawsuits claiming discrimination and retaliation by HR and management after they reported managers’ misconduct.

Retaliatory practices like this are, perhaps by design, well known among the employees in AWS and Amazon more broadly. The ProServe employees’ petition notes that “many staff have expressed concerns that the internal processes relied upon to investigate and defend AWS’s handling of these matters are not fair, objective or transparent, that the system is set up to protect the company and the status quo, rather than the employees filing the complaints.” Hundreds, if not thousands, of my former coworkers at ProServe have woken up to the reality that nothing will change by lodging their concerns solely with HR or ER — they need attention and help from the top. I am a prime example of this, since HR within ProServe has stated in writing that my complaints were thoroughly investigated but lacked any merit. Ironically, this “thorough” investigation failed to include interviewing me or my counsel.

This fact was only further validated in early June 2021, when ProServe employees attended an “Ask the Leaders Anything” videoconference, which was supposed to be an open forum. While Weatherby was originally scheduled to preside over it as an “Ask Todd Anything” meeting, this session was hosted by HR employees after that first meeting was canceled. Unlike past meetings and forums, Amazon opted for a platform (non-Amazon) that did not allow employees to see who else was attending and kept everyone on mute (both audio and video) except for the hosts. As I was still a full-time employee when this “Ask the Leaders Anything” call took place, I was able to watch the replay. HR leaders on the call rephrased and dodged employee questions, even when directly asked about discrimination and other specific details laid out in my lawsuit.

In addition, after my firing, ProServe employees were ordered to stop all communication with me. This is just one more example of Amazon’s pattern of trying to intimidate employees into silence.

Discouraged but not defeated, on June 22 I emailed a letter to Jeff Bezos and Andy Jassy to try and salvage the job that I had no desire to leave. I wanted to let the two most important people in the company know, that in one week, my employment was slated to end because I raised serious concerns about ProServe’s treatment of women. I let them know that I wanted to be a part of the solution at the company, not an adversary, and gave examples of how employee complaints could be better handled. I also asked that the letter be distributed to Amazon’s Board of Directors, since there does not seem to be a means for employees to communicate with them directly.

My letter was all but ignored. I received a brief response from Handler, who handled the opaque “Ask the Leaders Anything” meeting in June, stating she was in receipt of my letter to Andy Jassy and could not address any of my issues since I was represented by counsel. Once again, Handler failed to investigate my complaints directly with me or my counsel.

On June 30, I was involuntarily dismissed from the company. After 18 months of navigating the male-dominated leadership politics in ProServe and trying to make the concerns of my coworkers heard, there was no longer anything I could do as an Amazon employee. The company’s refusal to engage at all shocked and hurt at least as much as the epithets that male manager had thrown at me.

One employee’s claims of discrimination and retaliation might be seen as an isolated incident. It is another thing entirely, though, to ignore hundreds of workers who agree that the organization’s approach to employees’ reports of discrimination must change.

The petition circulating in ProServe shows that my experience at Amazon is not unique and is emblematic of much larger problems at the company. Nearly 10% of the ProServe workforce have used the petition to call for immediate action to stop routine mistreatment of employees and consistent retaliatory practices by the HR/ER functions. The fear and pain of women and other underrepresented groups in ProServe are real. These employees are crying out for help, and addressing this problem only helps the company in the long run.

Andy and Adam, while I hope you will follow through on my former colleagues’ request for an investigation into the culture at ProServe, many questions still remain. Will Amazon’s leaders engage in a frank public discussion with AWS’s workers? Will the company hire a truly independent investigator or ombudsperson who will be granted full, unrestricted access to speak with current and former AWS employees? Will the investigators brought in by Amazon be permitted to make their findings and recommendations publicly available? Does the company truly believe it can call itself a top-flight organization when it promptly fires someone after she reports conduct that she believes is discriminatory and impacts women in her group?

Right up until my last day at Amazon, I held out hope that the company would decide to have a discussion rather than try to intimidate and wear me down. I was disappointed, but not silenced. I will pursue my claims as far as I need to in order to show Amazon how wrong management’s actions were. My wonderful colleagues at AWS will not be intimidated or silenced, either.

All the Best,

Cindy L. Warner

cc: Amazon Board of Directors