Employment Discrimination

Amazon, based in Seattle, operates this corporate office building in Sunnyvale, Calif.

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A former Amazon engineer faced a spate of sexist comments from a manager at the logistics giant when she applied for another job there, according to a lawsuit she filed in San Francisco on July 5. The complaint accuses Amazon of gender discrimination, marital status discrimination and retaliation and seeks general and compensatory damages.

The engineer, Rajakumari Chouta, lives in Fremont and had begun working at Amazon in San Francisco in April 2022. According to the civil complaint, she regularly received strong performance reviews until November. Then, she was told her rating had plummeted, and two days later, she learned she’d be laid off if she couldn’t find a different job within Amazon in the next two months, the document says. Chouta’s ensuing internal job search exposed her to “shockingly sexist comments,” the complaint alleges. She began looking for new roles and reached out to a hiring manager named Nagendra Rudravarjhula about an open position, per the lawsuit, which also noted that Chouta and Rudravarjhula were from the same geographic and linguistic background in India.

The suit alleges that when Chouta met with Rudravarjhula to talk about the engineering job, he told her it wasn’t for “people who need to ‘take care of the kids, a husband, and have household chores.’” He also allegedly “presumed that women might not be able to perform well in the position as the job involved frequent on-call status,” the complaint says, and told Chouta the job was only for people who could work 12 hours a day.

Chouta didn’t get the job, and her two months were ticking by. When she learned that two more roles were open on Rudravarjhula’s team, she set up another interview, per the suit. He called her the day after, with positive feedback, the complaint says.But again, the conversation was allegedly tinged with blatant sexism. Rudravarjhula told Chouta the engineering work would be “tedious and might not be suitable for the female candidates,” the suit says, and allegedly made the “remarkable request” that Chouta get “permission” from her family and husband to take on the job. He also asked her to let him know if she’d be “willing to contribute like male candidates and transfer to Seattle using her own expenses,” the complaint says. She told him she’d take the position, but once again, she missed out on the job, the complaint says: On Dec. 21, she was told the position was subject to a hiring freeze, and then, on Jan. 3, she learned it had been filled by a man. On Jan. 5, Chouta complained to Amazon about Rudravarjhula’s comments, per the suit, and she officially lost her job on Jan. 8, with the two-month period lapsing. She learned that she had been put on a “no re-hire” list, which her old manager said was due to her performance, but Chouta believes this was made up to justify her not getting a transfer, the complaint says.

“The hiring manager was looking for excuses to hire a male candidate, and not a married woman, all along,” the suit alleges.

Neither Rudravarjhula nor Chouta’s lawyers responded to SFGATE’s questions in time for publication. Amazon spokesperson Zoë Hoffmann told SFGATE, “We don’t tolerate harassment or discrimination of any kind in our workplace. Anytime an incident is reported, we investigate it thoroughly and take appropriate action against anyone who is found to have violated our policies.”