Former Gitpod VP Wins Right to Pursue £76 million Disability Discrimination Claim

Shannon Burns, an American tech executive who joined Gitpod as Vice President of Engineering in late 2022, was terminated in June 2023 after she slept in a sauna during a company off-site in Lofer, Austria. She claims the dismissal was due to her ADHD and filed a disability-discrimination case, which the Birmingham Employment Tribunal ruled in her favour. The tribunal dismissed Gitpod’s bid to limit her damages to £1 million, allowing her to seek the full £76,071,992 based on forensic loss calculations, including future salary and equity.

The judge also ordered Gitpod to reveal the price of its acquisition by OpenAI, relevant to Burns’s 0.85 % shareholding now valued at about £2.6 million and potentially £21 million in four years. Employment lawyer Tara Grossman hailed the outcome as a “resounding success,” while Gitpod plans to appeal the ruling. A further compensation hearing is scheduled pending the appeal.