A high-level female Yahoo Inc. executive is facing claims from a former coworker that alleges she was sexually harassed and wrongfully terminated. Nan Shi, former principal software engineer at Yahoo, filed suit in California against her former boss Maria Zhang, a senior director of engineering at Yahoo Mobile.
Shi claims in the suit that Zhang attempted to coerce her into having cyber-sex and oral sex on several occasions in return for a “bright future” at the company, and that she could “take everything away from her.” When Shi did not comply with her requests, she says she received poor performance reviews in the second and third quarter of 2013. She alleges Yahoo’s human resources department did not fully investigate reports of improper sexual conduct against Zhang. Instead, Shi was placed on unpaid leave and then terminated. Yahoo is named as a defendant in the suit also.
“There is absolutely no basis or truth to the allegations against Maria Zhang. Maria is an exemplary Yahoo executive and we intend to fight vigorously to clear her name,” a Yahoo representative said in an email to Reuters.
Zhang joined Yahoo in 2013 when her own mobile company Alike was bought by the internet giant. She previously held positions at Microsoft and Zillow before Yahoo, according to her LinkedIn profile. Zhang was staying in temporary housing in Sunnyvale, California, where these incidents are said to have occurred.
The Shi-Zhang case differs from the recent string of male-centric sexual suits in Silicon Valley, including a case against the co-founder of dating site Tinder. Female-female sexual harassment suits aren’t common, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. In January 2013, a former Armani female employee filed a suit against her female boss for sexual harassment.
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