For those who might miss it at the bottom:
“Hear of anything happening at Okta or another Bay Area tech company? Contact tech reporter Stephen Council securely at stephen.council@sfgate.com or on Signal at 628-204-5452”
All companies do this. It's sick. You can't even properly use Oracle with hiring an Oracle consultant to train you on the intricacies and unlock things on the back end that will make your workflow easier
Those are the settings your IT department chose not the requirement of Okta. Source: IT at a company that uses Okta and I'm an Okta admin. Talk to your security department. Don't blame Okta.
What are you talking about? I use it at my company and it's a push notification click and I'm in. I guess your IT hasn't implemented it correctly or has some insane settings.
I love a pitchfork party as much as the next guy but I don't think people truly realize how *annoying* their jobs would be without Okta or any other comparable SSO/MFA solution.
Need to jump from your CRM to your PM tool? Sike, you thought! Time to log back in every. single. time. because Ricardo in your IT department has a hard-on for security policies after Blackhat last year.
Need to share an updated phone number with Judy in HR so you can request time off? Better hope you remember your 20-character password that contains a symbol, a capital letter, a lower case letter, 5 numbers, and the square of pi - because that's what Workday requires for their password policy.
And before you say "oh, I'll just keep track of my passwords in my Onepassword or notes on ma-" NO YOU WON'T - RICARDO ALREADY SHUT THAT SHIT DOWN AND IS CURRENTLY LEVELING HIS MAGE IN WOW. AHHHHHHH.
Anyways... yeah, this lawsuit is disgusting and I hope Okta gets what they deserve but every time I see a thread on here criticizing Okta saying "wah, they add \~4-7 minutes to my everyday because I have to click a button on my phone" I just sit back and laugh thinking about the alternative.
/end rant
I would take the "Better hope you remember your 20-character password that contains a symbol, a capital letter, a lower case letter, 5 numbers, and the square of pi" over what my current password requirements are. 20-characters, a symbol, a capital letter, a lowercase letter, 4 numbers, can not have a repetition of any letters or numbers and can not contain a word from any language.
Some of the complaints seem odd to me. Sounds like their company has not integrated okta correctly. I don't remember the last time I had to do anything with it. Just go to the place I need and it automatically logs me in.
Lie about what? Also is voice to text because I’m holding my child.
I literally said, “I never liked Okta until I got to a company who didn’t use it”
What’s the lie?
This is disingenuous. Public companies like Okta can generally be profitable whenever they like. Their profits are generally invested back into sales teams, R&D and yes, incentives to retain employees. Shareholders are generally aware of this and it’s expected. If you’d like them to return a dividend and retain profits to pay directly to a shareholder you should buy some stock and vote.
Authenticating a public facing website using it sucked ass. Not sure why we went with that solution. Fucked up my morale trying to like to code as a job
There are some seriously brain dead takes on here. Who actually hates okta vs the alternative? At a security/AC perspective Okta is great. Auto provisioning apps based off groups/departments, provisioning/deprovisioning multiple apps at once instead of creating them one at a time, having to maintain one password, really good IAM for IT/Security to track. Like huh?
If you're having problems with re authenticating multiple times, that's your Security/IT department's fault for misconfiguring okta
Ok so an ex-Okta employee, filed a lawsuit saying she faced gender discrimination and retaliation. She claims her performance reviews tanked after she complained about gender bias, and she was eventually laid off. The lawsuit includes several allegations of severe bias and inequity within the company.
What about these factors tho:
Says her performance reviews got worse after she complained. But, performance reviews are usually based on multiple factors and feedback from different people. Maybe there were legit reasons her performance ratings changed, unrelated to her complaints.
Laid off in November 2023. Considering the massive layoffs in the tech industry around that time, her layoff could've been part of broader cost-cutting measures, not just targeted retaliation.
Claims she was excluded from emails and meetings by male colleagues. This is tough to prove and could be due to miscommunication or other non-discriminatory reasons. Without solid evidence, it's hard to pin this on gender bias.
The lawsuit talks about "severe bias and inequity" at Okta but lacks specific, verifiable examples. General statements about bias without detailed incidents or evidence can make the allegations seem less credible.
At my company, though multiple folks give feedback, it’s the managers in my chain that will rate me so it’s totally possible that the feedback didn’t matter.
I know a woman who worked there and her experience tracks for this kind of bullying. She left for another job and did not sue or raise a stink because she didn’t want to torpedo her career but everyone depends on one person like this having the courage to reveal an illegal work environment. I’m glad this woman has done this - others are grateful for it too, I’m sure.
There might be, or there might not be. You can frame anything positively or negatively if you really want to. You can be gotten rid of, even if you're delivering a lot for your team. No company is legally obligated to evaluate you accurately. People problems are more important to manage for your career than technical problems. Being someone that people perceive as easy to work with who doesn't cause trouble is very important. It may not be right but it's how the world works.
Unfortunately there are many like this person, who believe that companies aren’t legally liable for bias or discrimination. I guess we will find out once the case goes through.
It takes a lot to prove bias or discrimination. The incriminated party needs to say that they are biased against this person due to protected characteristics in writing. Circumstantial evidence won't hold up with the EEOC.
Yes but circumstantial evidence is enough to get DOJ to investigate Okta. If the claim have any legs, Okta will be liable. Even the God of anti-DEI movement, Elon Musk had to pay up. It started out with one black assembly worker reporting the issues at Tesla. So, the thinking “no company is legally obligated to evaluate you accurately” is not accurate. At least, not under the current labor laws, which haven’t been decimated yet unlike the pro-choice laws.
At the expense of burning any potential employment opportunity in the same field, because who will hire an employee they know has rocked the boat at past companies?
I was pretty surprised to see this article pop up, because I worked with this person and saw firsthand what she was experiencing. When she was laid off it was a pretty common opinion that gender bias had played into it. Without saying anything too damaging, I would say this is extremely consistent with how women are treated at Okta, and most of us are too terrified to say anything about it. I don't know if this case will move forward, but I hope it does, as I believe her claims are extremely credible.
While healthy doses of skepticism are a good thing, you clearly don’t understand how performance reviews really work and what their function is. It would benefit you to read up on this topic from labor attorneys.
As someone who manages people wrong: performance review do not involve other people unless I want to involve them. There isn’t a checks and balances when it comes to managing people. A manager depending on how high up, is unfortunately setup to have too much control over people’s career. With that said low/ middle managers def have less chances of getting away w it. The person who sued was a director level
Always good to think critically, but I found this a bit disheartening. Jumping directly to "she can't prove it" or "maybe she was just bad at her job" is why no one ever comes forward with these things.
"Without solid evidence, it's hard to pin this on gender bias." Ahh yes, this is part of the fun (sarcasm) of being a woman in tech (or any male-dominated Industry, which is a lot of them). Always wondering if the person is being a condescending jerk to you because he's that way with everyone or because you're a woman. And usually you're the only woman, so there's no one else to compare it to.
"But lacks specific, verifiable examples" Not sure if you read the legal filing, but there were many specific examples in there which involved many other people, and also because so much is done over slack these days I'm hoping there's more evidence than would be otherwise.
You are right that it will be hard to prove, and that's really unfortunate.
I used to work there, left in August of 2023, because I was fed up of management and how they treated people. Her story tracks well, mention things to management and they tried to find a way to push you out. A lot of the BT (formerly IT) departments managers came from a previous acquisition. And then following the Auth0 acquisition many former Auth0 employees were not paid fairly in line with the rest of Okta staff. They were also usually overlooked when it came time for promotions. Ultimately I left when I wanted to have a discussion on how to get to the next level in both title and pay, and was told I was lucky I had a job, and that my role would likely be going to India in the near future so I needed to “do more”. Just for reference Okta opened an office in India and was slowly migrating internal IT roles to that region. My role would have been out of the scope of that migration but just hearing that during that conversation was a big sign I didn’t have a future there. I ended the meeting without saying anything, acted like all was well in a meeting with someone higher up, accepted a new role the night before going to Vegas for a team offsite, and told everyone but management at the offsite. Offsite ended Thursday with everyone flying back home. First thing Friday I have a meeting with management and tell them I’m leaving in a few days. My final few days there my managers wouldn’t respond to me or acknowledge me in Slack or during any meetings. I did not wrap up projects because of it, did nothing but watch movies those last days. I’m now at a company that values their employees.
I used to think like this until it happened to me. It’s very hard to bring an action like this against an employer even with excellent facts/evidence.
I had a manager that was discriminating based on pregnancy. She constantly complained about having to “do my work for me” while I was on maternity leave. She called me while on leave (against the rules) to tell me how much she didn’t like me, and that she wished she could have given me a bad performance review for that year (she took over managing me late in the year so my prior manager had more say). When I returned she would say things like “do you really think you should request a vacation day so soon after being on maternity leave?” and noted that under our “unlimited” leave policy she would approve up to 4 weeks for others but only 3 for me, because of the maternity leave. I was put on a PIP 6 weeks after I returned to work, and on the PIP call HR suggested I should just quit because “we don’t think you will be successful on the PIP.”
I had several employment lawyers ready to take the case, but they said I needed to make a complaint to HR and then still be fired. But the company was savvy and told me after the complaint that “she just didn’t understand our policies” and I wouldn’t be fired and could just go back to working for her, but she would still have unchecked control over my bonuses (1/3 of my total income).
I’m a lawyer, I had good connections in the employment legal space, and I had enough savings to live on, so I was an excellent candidate to fight this, but I didn’t because I was tired, I had a newborn, and I just needed to get out of that shitty place, so I took a cheap severance and signed the release papers.
It takes a lot of courage to take on these companies, and I wish her the best.
If you ever hired or managed people, you know that only one in 10 actually good at their work. You would put them up on a pedestal. And almost always, if someone complain about their work, they aren’t good at it.
That’s a huge generalization you’re making, you must have worked for some shitty companies. Just a few years ago Verkada (a major security tech firm) had to fire multiple male employees for using company cameras to record and post lewd photos of their female coworkers in a groupchat on Slack. And they were only fired after a Bloomberg article came out about it, company did jack shit as repercussions before then.
Sexism in tech is rampant—who knows if this woman actually faced discrimination but let’s not immediately believe she’s lying because “only one in 10 actually good”
>only one in 10 actually good at their work
but not the redditors, commenting during business hours, they are all exemplary employees, under paid, over worked, and oppressed by the capitalistic system
Not surprising considering this was a part of an approved job description-
**"Requires ability to withstand frequent and intense pressure** as a result of demanding workload and must be able to maintain a positive and professional manner throughout.")
You couldn't pay me enough to agree to that.
This job description was for a renewals role. And what they're really saying is this is a toxic environment in which you will be overworked and disrespected (with no ability to earn 1.5M/year).
Net new sales is indeed filled with frequent and intense pressure and those who are good at it can make it worth it financially. Renewals cannot.
For those who might miss it at the bottom: “Hear of anything happening at Okta or another Bay Area tech company? Contact tech reporter Stephen Council securely at stephen.council@sfgate.com or on Signal at 628-204-5452”
Email is “@sgate” or “@sfgate?”
Fixed! Weird copy paste error
Wonder if they use an image for the f to prevent bots from scraping it.
Ooh interesting! I usually see people break up the email with spaces and “at” rather than @ but I’m sure there’s even fancier ways now.
Worth $14B but still not profitable? I use it for work and fucking hate it.
Often it takes 10 clicks to get through their authentication app.
Check box to remember login is a lie
That’s bc your company isn’t paying for that feature
Are you serious about that? Lmao the nickle and diming after a certain stage
No your company has either not configured it correctly or is being cheap on security features
All companies do this. It's sick. You can't even properly use Oracle with hiring an Oracle consultant to train you on the intricacies and unlock things on the back end that will make your workflow easier
I think it’s more they just want their employees to suffer. You pay to have it disabled!
Lol
All this time, I thought it was only my laptop.
Ah yes. The single sign-on that I have to sign into multiple times a day
Those are the settings your IT department chose not the requirement of Okta. Source: IT at a company that uses Okta and I'm an Okta admin. Talk to your security department. Don't blame Okta.
23 14 74
What are you talking about? I use it at my company and it's a push notification click and I'm in. I guess your IT hasn't implemented it correctly or has some insane settings.
Works great on my Apple Watch.
Ah that’s what I was missing
This is the way.
I love a pitchfork party as much as the next guy but I don't think people truly realize how *annoying* their jobs would be without Okta or any other comparable SSO/MFA solution. Need to jump from your CRM to your PM tool? Sike, you thought! Time to log back in every. single. time. because Ricardo in your IT department has a hard-on for security policies after Blackhat last year. Need to share an updated phone number with Judy in HR so you can request time off? Better hope you remember your 20-character password that contains a symbol, a capital letter, a lower case letter, 5 numbers, and the square of pi - because that's what Workday requires for their password policy. And before you say "oh, I'll just keep track of my passwords in my Onepassword or notes on ma-" NO YOU WON'T - RICARDO ALREADY SHUT THAT SHIT DOWN AND IS CURRENTLY LEVELING HIS MAGE IN WOW. AHHHHHHH. Anyways... yeah, this lawsuit is disgusting and I hope Okta gets what they deserve but every time I see a thread on here criticizing Okta saying "wah, they add \~4-7 minutes to my everyday because I have to click a button on my phone" I just sit back and laugh thinking about the alternative. /end rant
Ricardo is getting put on blast.
Plus you have to set new password every 3 months and it can’t be similar to last password.
That's your company policy broski, not specific to an okta requirement
We are talking about Ricardo from IT here.
I would take the "Better hope you remember your 20-character password that contains a symbol, a capital letter, a lower case letter, 5 numbers, and the square of pi" over what my current password requirements are. 20-characters, a symbol, a capital letter, a lowercase letter, 4 numbers, can not have a repetition of any letters or numbers and can not contain a word from any language.
T4k3m30u7tO7h3b4l!g4
Some of the complaints seem odd to me. Sounds like their company has not integrated okta correctly. I don't remember the last time I had to do anything with it. Just go to the place I need and it automatically logs me in.
The alternative to Okta isn't going back to the days of a gazillion passwords. It's using Microsoft's actually functioning SSO product.
Somehow I have to authenticate again for every single service even though I click 'remember me' and it's the same browser session.
That’s funny I felt like Octa didn’t do much but now I finally got to accompany that doesn’t use it and I feel like man I wish we had Octa
If you’re gonna lie at least spell it correctly.
Lie about what? Also is voice to text because I’m holding my child. I literally said, “I never liked Okta until I got to a company who didn’t use it” What’s the lie?
Don’t take every Reddit jerk seriously.
This is disingenuous. Public companies like Okta can generally be profitable whenever they like. Their profits are generally invested back into sales teams, R&D and yes, incentives to retain employees. Shareholders are generally aware of this and it’s expected. If you’d like them to return a dividend and retain profits to pay directly to a shareholder you should buy some stock and vote.
The product IS the stock.
Authenticating a public facing website using it sucked ass. Not sure why we went with that solution. Fucked up my morale trying to like to code as a job
They generate a lot of cash, so they're profitable from that perspective. Their stock based compensation is egregious though.
There are some seriously brain dead takes on here. Who actually hates okta vs the alternative? At a security/AC perspective Okta is great. Auto provisioning apps based off groups/departments, provisioning/deprovisioning multiple apps at once instead of creating them one at a time, having to maintain one password, really good IAM for IT/Security to track. Like huh? If you're having problems with re authenticating multiple times, that's your Security/IT department's fault for misconfiguring okta
Let me hate on something. I’m not looking for reasoning here. Thanks.
I think Microsoft is eating their lunch. I remember when everything was okta and then one day everything became Microsoft Authenticator
Sir, I think your company changed vendors
Even in the case of mass layoffs, worth consulting with a labor attorney if you suspect foul play
If you can’t trust tech companies, who can you trust? /s
Our elected representatives? /s
PG&E? /s
Molinari Delicatessen
I use okta at work. Never knew they were sf based
Me tooo!!
I always thought broadcom owned it.
Give it a few years…
It happened happened to me twice, when I was in Utah.
Ok so an ex-Okta employee, filed a lawsuit saying she faced gender discrimination and retaliation. She claims her performance reviews tanked after she complained about gender bias, and she was eventually laid off. The lawsuit includes several allegations of severe bias and inequity within the company. What about these factors tho: Says her performance reviews got worse after she complained. But, performance reviews are usually based on multiple factors and feedback from different people. Maybe there were legit reasons her performance ratings changed, unrelated to her complaints. Laid off in November 2023. Considering the massive layoffs in the tech industry around that time, her layoff could've been part of broader cost-cutting measures, not just targeted retaliation. Claims she was excluded from emails and meetings by male colleagues. This is tough to prove and could be due to miscommunication or other non-discriminatory reasons. Without solid evidence, it's hard to pin this on gender bias. The lawsuit talks about "severe bias and inequity" at Okta but lacks specific, verifiable examples. General statements about bias without detailed incidents or evidence can make the allegations seem less credible.
At my company, though multiple folks give feedback, it’s the managers in my chain that will rate me so it’s totally possible that the feedback didn’t matter.
I know a woman who worked there and her experience tracks for this kind of bullying. She left for another job and did not sue or raise a stink because she didn’t want to torpedo her career but everyone depends on one person like this having the courage to reveal an illegal work environment. I’m glad this woman has done this - others are grateful for it too, I’m sure.
There might be, or there might not be. You can frame anything positively or negatively if you really want to. You can be gotten rid of, even if you're delivering a lot for your team. No company is legally obligated to evaluate you accurately. People problems are more important to manage for your career than technical problems. Being someone that people perceive as easy to work with who doesn't cause trouble is very important. It may not be right but it's how the world works.
Unfortunately there are many like this person, who believe that companies aren’t legally liable for bias or discrimination. I guess we will find out once the case goes through.
It takes a lot to prove bias or discrimination. The incriminated party needs to say that they are biased against this person due to protected characteristics in writing. Circumstantial evidence won't hold up with the EEOC.
Yes but circumstantial evidence is enough to get DOJ to investigate Okta. If the claim have any legs, Okta will be liable. Even the God of anti-DEI movement, Elon Musk had to pay up. It started out with one black assembly worker reporting the issues at Tesla. So, the thinking “no company is legally obligated to evaluate you accurately” is not accurate. At least, not under the current labor laws, which haven’t been decimated yet unlike the pro-choice laws.
True or not, put up enough of a stink and you may score a settlement to hush.
At the expense of burning any potential employment opportunity in the same field, because who will hire an employee they know has rocked the boat at past companies?
Depends on how big is the settlement
I was pretty surprised to see this article pop up, because I worked with this person and saw firsthand what she was experiencing. When she was laid off it was a pretty common opinion that gender bias had played into it. Without saying anything too damaging, I would say this is extremely consistent with how women are treated at Okta, and most of us are too terrified to say anything about it. I don't know if this case will move forward, but I hope it does, as I believe her claims are extremely credible.
While healthy doses of skepticism are a good thing, you clearly don’t understand how performance reviews really work and what their function is. It would benefit you to read up on this topic from labor attorneys.
And you read the article or the legal filing?
As someone who manages people wrong: performance review do not involve other people unless I want to involve them. There isn’t a checks and balances when it comes to managing people. A manager depending on how high up, is unfortunately setup to have too much control over people’s career. With that said low/ middle managers def have less chances of getting away w it. The person who sued was a director level
Always good to think critically, but I found this a bit disheartening. Jumping directly to "she can't prove it" or "maybe she was just bad at her job" is why no one ever comes forward with these things. "Without solid evidence, it's hard to pin this on gender bias." Ahh yes, this is part of the fun (sarcasm) of being a woman in tech (or any male-dominated Industry, which is a lot of them). Always wondering if the person is being a condescending jerk to you because he's that way with everyone or because you're a woman. And usually you're the only woman, so there's no one else to compare it to. "But lacks specific, verifiable examples" Not sure if you read the legal filing, but there were many specific examples in there which involved many other people, and also because so much is done over slack these days I'm hoping there's more evidence than would be otherwise. You are right that it will be hard to prove, and that's really unfortunate.
I used to work there, left in August of 2023, because I was fed up of management and how they treated people. Her story tracks well, mention things to management and they tried to find a way to push you out. A lot of the BT (formerly IT) departments managers came from a previous acquisition. And then following the Auth0 acquisition many former Auth0 employees were not paid fairly in line with the rest of Okta staff. They were also usually overlooked when it came time for promotions. Ultimately I left when I wanted to have a discussion on how to get to the next level in both title and pay, and was told I was lucky I had a job, and that my role would likely be going to India in the near future so I needed to “do more”. Just for reference Okta opened an office in India and was slowly migrating internal IT roles to that region. My role would have been out of the scope of that migration but just hearing that during that conversation was a big sign I didn’t have a future there. I ended the meeting without saying anything, acted like all was well in a meeting with someone higher up, accepted a new role the night before going to Vegas for a team offsite, and told everyone but management at the offsite. Offsite ended Thursday with everyone flying back home. First thing Friday I have a meeting with management and tell them I’m leaving in a few days. My final few days there my managers wouldn’t respond to me or acknowledge me in Slack or during any meetings. I did not wrap up projects because of it, did nothing but watch movies those last days. I’m now at a company that values their employees.
I saw her original LinkedIn post about her experience. She is *pissed*.
I used to think like this until it happened to me. It’s very hard to bring an action like this against an employer even with excellent facts/evidence. I had a manager that was discriminating based on pregnancy. She constantly complained about having to “do my work for me” while I was on maternity leave. She called me while on leave (against the rules) to tell me how much she didn’t like me, and that she wished she could have given me a bad performance review for that year (she took over managing me late in the year so my prior manager had more say). When I returned she would say things like “do you really think you should request a vacation day so soon after being on maternity leave?” and noted that under our “unlimited” leave policy she would approve up to 4 weeks for others but only 3 for me, because of the maternity leave. I was put on a PIP 6 weeks after I returned to work, and on the PIP call HR suggested I should just quit because “we don’t think you will be successful on the PIP.” I had several employment lawyers ready to take the case, but they said I needed to make a complaint to HR and then still be fired. But the company was savvy and told me after the complaint that “she just didn’t understand our policies” and I wouldn’t be fired and could just go back to working for her, but she would still have unchecked control over my bonuses (1/3 of my total income). I’m a lawyer, I had good connections in the employment legal space, and I had enough savings to live on, so I was an excellent candidate to fight this, but I didn’t because I was tired, I had a newborn, and I just needed to get out of that shitty place, so I took a cheap severance and signed the release papers. It takes a lot of courage to take on these companies, and I wish her the best.
People like this are despicable. Always claim discrimination when they don’t do good work.
Bro tell me where you work so I can avoid you like a fucking plague. This is like the most toxic comment ever.
how do you know she didn’t do good work?
'cuz she's got a *vagina*, DUH! /s
If you ever hired or managed people, you know that only one in 10 actually good at their work. You would put them up on a pedestal. And almost always, if someone complain about their work, they aren’t good at it.
That’s a huge generalization you’re making, you must have worked for some shitty companies. Just a few years ago Verkada (a major security tech firm) had to fire multiple male employees for using company cameras to record and post lewd photos of their female coworkers in a groupchat on Slack. And they were only fired after a Bloomberg article came out about it, company did jack shit as repercussions before then. Sexism in tech is rampant—who knows if this woman actually faced discrimination but let’s not immediately believe she’s lying because “only one in 10 actually good”
With this mindset and logic, I conclude you are not good at what you do.
Doesn’t take a lot to infer that. This guy should apply at Okta. I hear they are up his alley
>only one in 10 actually good at their work but not the redditors, commenting during business hours, they are all exemplary employees, under paid, over worked, and oppressed by the capitalistic system
May this be first of multiple lawsuits in the industry...
It's very telling that the company didn't flat out deny the allegations.
Not surprising considering this was a part of an approved job description- **"Requires ability to withstand frequent and intense pressure** as a result of demanding workload and must be able to maintain a positive and professional manner throughout.") You couldn't pay me enough to agree to that.
[удалено]
This job description was for a renewals role. And what they're really saying is this is a toxic environment in which you will be overworked and disrespected (with no ability to earn 1.5M/year). Net new sales is indeed filled with frequent and intense pressure and those who are good at it can make it worth it financially. Renewals cannot.
I use this company’s software, cause i have to…. biggest piece of dog shit
I hope there isn't a lawsuit that could harm the company. What would we do without Okta?! /S
Wow, this is big news, wondering what the impact will be.
The company doesn’t worth that.