Herskovitz

I. BACKGROUND

A. Heskovitz’s Complaint Allegations In February 2021, Herskovitz filed a complaint alleging three causes of action against Snowflake1—two for age discrimination under the FEHA (one for disparate treatment because of his age and one for disparate impact because of stock options he held) and a third for age discrimination in violation of public policy. He alleged he was one of the founding employees at Snowflake, incorporated in 2012, and that he rose to the position of Snowflake’s Vice President of Global Sales Engineering because of his outstanding work, which management repeatedly recognized and rewarded. Herskovitz further alleged that a new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) took over Snowflake in April 2019. A day or two later, the CEO told everyone the previous management had been too generous with stock options. A week later, Herskovitz, then 62 years old, was demoted to “ ‘VP Global Expansion’ ” and replaced by Eve Besant, a much younger employee whom he had hired and trained. Moreover, Snowflake did not provide sufficient support for Herskovitz’s first assignment in his new position, which was to move to Japan to develop a market for Snowflake’s products there.…