Yahoo accused of bias in use of rating system

San Francisco

ONE of Marissa Mayer's signature policies as chief executive of Yahoo has been the quarterly performance review, in which every employee at the company is ranked on a scale of one to five. The ratings have been used to fire hundreds of employees since Ms Mayer joined the company in mid-2012.

Now, as she prepares to announce a streamlining plan on Tuesday that is likely to involve even more job cuts, one former manager who lost his job is challenging the entire system as discriminatory and a violation of federal and California laws governing mass lay-offs.

In a lawsuit filed in US District Court in San Jose, California, on Monday, Gregory Anderson, an editor who oversaw Yahoo's cars, homes, shopping, small business and travel sites in Sunnyvale, California, until he was fired in November 2014, alleges that the company's senior managers …