No longer suffering in silence: Asian Americans denied tech leadership roles go to court

After stints at Disney, Google and Twitter, Vaishnavi Jayakumar joined Facebook and Instagram owner Meta in January 2020.

Her job on the youth policy team was to protect children and teens from bullying, harassment and other forms of abuse. But Jayakumar – an Asian American originally from Singapore – says she couldn’t shield herself from racial bias on the job.

Soon after inquiring how she could move up at Meta, Jayakumar says her supervisor began leaving her out of opportunities and initiatives that used to be in her scope and “layering” her under less experienced employees. 

Despite years of experience and positive feedback as a team player, Jayakumar says her supervisor told her she was not senior or collaborative enough to be promoted, according to a complaint Jayakumar filed with California’s Civil Rights Department.

While her workload and responsibilities increased, Jayakumar says her performance ratings began to slip.

“I've never felt more keenly that as an Asian woman, I'm destined to be a worker, I'm not destined to be a leader,” she said in an interview. “And that's an awful feeling.”

Jayakumar is one of a growing number of Asian Americans in the tech industry breaking their silence and going public with charges of discrimination and retaliation.

In a series of recently filed lawsuits, they say that racial biases spanning decades in Silicon Valley that typecast Asian Americans as worker bees have shut them out of management and executive positions with greater power, profile and pay.

"The pattern of discrimination experienced by Ms. Jayakumar mirrors that faced by the broader Asian American community: others make assumptions about what work Asian Americans are suited for," Jayakumar's complaint said. "Asian Americans are unsupported in the workplace in taking on leadership opportunities."

Through her lawyer, Jayakumar is demanding that Meta make policy changes, from tracking the rates of promotion for Asian Americans to training managers in tropes and stereotypes about Asian American employees. Meta declined to comment.

“These conversations have happened in private rooms, living rooms and in personal spaces for long enough,” Jayakumar said. “The generations of men and women before us had to suffer in silence. I don't think any one of us wants this to continue for a minute longer than it already has.”

The generations of men and women before us had to suffer in silence. I don't think any one of us wants this to continue for a minute longer than it already has.

Vaishnavi Jayakumar

Tech ‘has made virtually no progress in becoming more racially equitable’

Ever since changes in immigration law lifted restrictions on people of Asian descent, especially those who are highly educated and skilled, Asians and Asian Americans have made up a significant portion of engineers and other professionals in the tech industry – but not managers and executives.

Though three of the nation’s most valuable tech companies are run by Asian American CEOs, Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang are the exception, not the rule. 

Research shows that Asian Americans are the most likely to be hired in professional roles yet the least likely of all racial groups to break into tech company leadership. 

In fact, in some companies like Meta, people of Asian descent outnumber white employees. But their numbers fall off sharply in leadership roles, a USA TODAY analysis found.

At Meta, 46% of employees were Asian American in 2021, the most recent year for which data is available, but just 27% of executives. White employees, on the other hand, accounted for 39% of Meta's workforce but 58% of its executives.

“The tech industry has made progress in becoming more racially diverse in its workforce but has made virtually no progress in becoming more racially equitable in its leadership pipeline,” said Buck Gee, an executive adviser to Ascend Foundation, the nation’s largest network of Asian American professionals.

When he worked for Cisco, Gee asked for the racial breakdown of those employees identified as having high leadership potential and found that just 15% were Asian and Pacific Islanders despite comprising 60% of the workforce. 

Until he raised the issue, no one noticed, he said. “People falsely assumed the problem would fix itself,” Gee said.

Gee blames “benign neglect,” a pattern of systemic bias that rewards leadership traits typically associated with white men but not women and minorities.

Asian Americans are left out of diversity discussions and initiatives because there is a perception that they don’t face adversity in the workplace when, in fact, the economic realities for Asians and Asian Americans vary greatly, particularly for those in low-wage and low-opportunity jobs on H-1B visas, said Pawan Dhingra, president of the Association for Asian American Studies president and a professor at Amherst College.

“Asians are seen as an immigrant group that in many ways is doing pretty well," Dhingra said. "There is not a major movement to worry about the plight of Asian Americans outside of hate crimes on the street.”

Anti-Asian hate and violence in the streets prompt activism at work 

That began to change with the groundswell of anti-Asian hate and violence during the COVID pandemic. Participation in employee resource groups and workplace activism surged. More Asian Americans began calling out workplace bias, even in the insular tech industry.

“The pandemic really galvanized the community, especially those of us in tech, because I think we all saw that what was happening in the streets was happening in the workplace,” said Jack Song, who advises tech startups on their communications and branding. 

In 2019 Song left Lime, which rents electric bikes and scooters, to pursue new projects and put the experience behind him. But, he says, it gnawed at him.

The pandemic really galvanized the community, especially those of us in tech.

Jack Song

The former deputy political director for the California Democratic Party and spokesperson for the San Francisco City Attorney's Office says he went from being named the company MVP in 2018 to being stripped of most of his duties the following year. Song − who was born in Taiwan and immigrated to the United States as a child − says he was told he lacked a strong command of the English language, among other criticisms.

In a statement, Lime said it was surprised "to learn of Jack's recollection of the circumstances surrounding his departure." The Lime founders and the company's current CEO identify as Asian American and "diverse perspectives" drive all aspects of the business, according to Lime.

Song says he was inspired to share his story publicly by Justin Zhu, the ex-CEO of tech startup Iterable who is suing his former company and co-founded the nonprofit organization Stand with Asian Americans to help others in a similar situation.

Zhu says he filed a lawsuit alleging retaliation after he says he was fired for raising complaints about anti-Asian discrimination. Investors on the Iterable board of directors told Zhu he didn’t look like a CEO and wanted Zhu's white chief operating officer to take his place, according to Zhu, and one investor suggested he become the chief technology officer instead.

Iterable denies the allegations, saying its current CEO and co-founder is an Asian American entrepreneur and that Zhu was terminated for “multiple instances of violating the company’s policies and values.” 

Not everyone has the resources to fight back, Zhu says. So Stand with Asian Americans is launching a workplace justice initiative.

"A core purpose of the workplace justice initiative is to show that you are not alone in fighting racism in the workplace. We connect people with survivors who have faced discrimination, give moral support, give legal support and we help them tell their story so they can get the support they need in this David vs. Goliath fight," he told USA TODAY.

‘If we want to see something change, we have to do something about it’

Ben Huynh says his troubles began in May 2022 when he was promoted into the management ranks at software company Coda.

Huynh says he didn’t get a pay increase with the promotion unlike his peers and believed he was earning less than his peers. So he complained to human resources. 

“Despite the quality of my work, once I had spoken out, the gates began closing around me,” said Huynh, who is Vietnamese American. “I felt iced out and like a pariah.”

Huynh had trouble sleeping. He started grinding his teeth and having panic attacks.

In August 2022, he was told the company was disbanding his team and he was being demoted. When asked why, his supervisor made vague criticisms, saying Huynh had “weak leadership skills,” Huynh says. Huynh says he went to human resources.

The following November, he was laid off. Huynh says he was told that it was not performance related, that the company was reorganizing. But Huynh and another person who worked for him were the only two employees let go, according to Huynh.

Coda did not respond to requests for comment.

“There's a shift because people are seeing that they have to take action or things will not change,” said Huynh, who filed a lawsuit against Coda in June, alleging discrimination and retaliation based on race. “If we want to see something change, we have to do something about it.”

‘Asian Americans are the engine behind all these tech companies’

But with the industry roiled by large-scale layoffs that are disproportionately affecting people of color, the decision to act can be fraught, said attorney Charles Jung.

Asian Americans often worry that no one will have their back if they come forward, said Jung, a name partner with Nassiri & Jung. The few Asians who make it to the top seem hesitant to rock the boat or bring up diversity issues, he said.

Jung’s client Andre Wong, who is Chinese American, says he found out firsthand the consequences of speaking out in an industry where anti-Asian bias is rarely acknowledged. 

Wong, who worked at Lumentum for more than 20 years, says he led the development of the company’s most profitable product line and helped the company expand into new markets.

After the killing of George Floyd and the Atlanta spa shootings, Wong was asked to participate in the company’s "Courageous Conversation" about race. In preparing for the program, Wong reached out to fellow Asian American employees who shared their frustrations that they were not seen as leaders in the company and were routinely passed over for promotions. 

In 2021, Wong says he helped start the Asian Employee Resource group which obtained demographic data showing that while 60% of Lumentum’s U.S. workforce is Asian, senior executives were mostly white, with less than 15% of them Asian.

The discussions around the data seemed to move the company forward. But Wong says anti-Asian incidents continued. 

The Asian ERG organized a “coming out” party during which Wong spoke. ERG leaders were later chided that Wong's presentation "made white people feel bad," Wong said.

Wong says a senior white manager banned Chinese engineers from conversing in Mandarin then upper management ignored their protests. 

When a product from a section of a Chinese factory failed, Wong says a senior white executive asked: "Are they steaming rice in that section of the production floor?" 

Before Wong, a native English speaker, made a presentation to the board, he said a senior white executive ridiculed his pronunciation of “program,” telling him to enunciate his "Rs." 

In May 2022, Wong said he was given a “glass cliff” assignment – a role that women and minorities are handed with little chance of success – as the only non-white employee on a team. He says he accepted the assignment with assurances he would soon be considered for a promotion to senior vice president. Instead, he was terminated in December. 

Wong is suing Lumentum for $20 million in damages. He says he would donate a big chunk of any award he receives to the cause of fighting anti-Asian discrimination. 

Lumentum did not respond to requests for comment.

“Asian Americans are the engine behind all these tech companies. Many of these technical teams are almost exclusively Asian American employees. But the leadership in strategic or business positions are not minorities," Wong said. "When you finally step back and see it, it’s so stark.”