Summary
- Messy situation at Amazon as a lawsuit brings to light unethical actions including discrimination and ignoring copyright violations.
- Allegations of poor managerial decisions and pressure on delayed maternity leave raise serious concerns.
- Beware of rogue team managers, as even well-equipped legal teams can fall prey to individuals’ hubris and unethical behavior.
A complaint filed in a California state court in Los Angeles on behalf of Dr. Viviane Ghaderi alleges senior staff instructed her to ignore a legal department directive to flag violations of internal copyright policy. It also outlines a series of unethical actions against the former team lead, a doctor of electrical engineering who spent two stints at Amazon between 2018 and late 2023.
A messy, troubling situation
According to the complaint (PDF warning), Ghaderi began leading a new team overseeing Alexa search quality in September 2022, and things went south fast (via The Register). Among the grievances in the filing:
- Dr. Ghaderi was transferred from her preferred career path immediately after informing her superior of her pregnancy leave.
- She was pressured to delay leave, only leaving the day of her emergency C-section.
- Her lead made numerous discriminatory parenthood-related comments after her return.
- She was repeatedly denied reinstatement to her previous career path.
- She was demoted after alerting HR to multiple issues, including disparaging remarks about her nationality.
- She was terminated after ultimately alerting HR to myriad management misconduct.
The alleged “ignore copyright violations” instruction
Between January and March 2023, Dr. Ghaderi’s team failed to hit its metrics. In a March meeting with Andrey Styskin, departmental director, Ghaderi mentioned recurring violations of Amazon’s internal copyright policies, and their contributions to subpar performance.
The filing alleges Styskin instructed Ghaderi to ignore the legal team’s directive to flag those violations, arguing, “Everyone else is doing it.” Dr. Ghaderi also indicated that she had previously received instruction to disregard copyright policy from “upper management.”
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Poor managerial decisions abound
There’s so much wrong here
From a business standpoint, Amazon appears to shuffle employees around like playing cards, which in many industries results from internal politics. That’s just bad business. But pressuring delayed maternity leave, demoting and refusing reinstatement on return, and making discriminatory remarks about gender and nationality are simply abhorrent.
But while the alleged discrimination is awful, the industry implications are a different kind of bad.
Beware rogue team managers
AI’s fervent supporters often point out that, as currently written, copyright law and fair use provisions don’t address AI creations, which is true. AI may not be technically illegal, but many critics demand legal clarification that computers are different from human brains. While we don’t know exactly how Amazon’s copyright policies compare to established law, they’re at least as strict.
The takeaway: Even well-equipped legal teams of massive corporations like Amazon can fall prey to individuals’ hubris and dedication to promotion-driven development. If the complaint’s remotely accurate, we feel terrible for Dr. Ghaderi. Moreover, if her superiors hadn’t apparently discriminated against her pregnancy and nationality, they’d likely have ignored copyright policy without consequence.
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