Former Amazon manager claims ‘DEI hire’ label led to his firing

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Jones reported Emtman to Amazon’s internal ethics team in July 2023. The filing states his concerns were dismissed, with investigators citing only “areas for improvement” in Emtman’s conduct. The unresolved situation, Jones alleges, took a physical and psychological toll, leading him to take approved medical leave beginning in November 2023. 

What happened next raises pointed questions about how Amazon handled overlapping concerns. While Jones was on leave, a colleague named Fritz Gutenberg filed a separate report against Emtman in July 2024, raising similar allegations, including claims that she pressured team members to provide false statements during internal investigations. Amazon substantiated Gutenberg’s report, found Emtman had violated company policy, and terminated her. But when Jones refiled his own case citing overlapping evidence, the ethics team dismissed it again in October 2024, maintaining no violation had occurred. 

Jones returned to work in December 2024 and, according to the filing, was met with near-total isolation. His new manager, Chris Ruest, allegedly held just one scheduled meeting with him over a 98-day stretch, denied the existence of weekly team calls that other direct reports were attending, and declined colleagues’ requests to add Jones to meetings and communication channels. Jones was then reclassified from Manager III to Construction Manager III, a move the filing alleges had no legitimate business purpose and was designed to stall his career. 

After Jones raised another internal concern about retaliation in March 2025, Amazon placed him on a Performance Improvement Plan, known internally as a “Pivot.” The filing describes it less as a development tool and more as an exit strategy: it included a severance offer, and HR reportedly described it as “all-or-nothing.” Jones was terminated on September 4, 2025.