NEW YORK: Is Twitter work culture discriminatory towards female employees? A former Twitter engineer claims it is!

Tina Huang, who according to her LinkedIn profile worked at Twitter between October 2009 and June 2014, recently filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against her ex-employer in California state court.

Huang has alleged that promotion opportunities are denied to women because of arbitrary promotion policies within Twitter that unlawfully favour men.

"The company's promotion system creates a glass ceiling for women that cannot be explained or justified by any reasonable business purpose.

"...because Twitter has no meaningful promotion process for these jobs -- no published promotion criteria, nor any internal hiring, advancement or application processes for employees," CourtHouseNews quoted from Huang's complaint.

In the complaint, Huang said she was passed over for promotion in 2013 without adequate explanation -- despite years of service, excellent evaluations by peers and supervisors and an absence of criticism or disciplinary issues.

Frustration with the opaque promotion process led Huang to email Twitter CEO Dick Costolo in March last year detailing her concerns.

In her complaint, Huang noted that many early Twitter hires now hold senior management positions -- and all of them are men.

Responding to Huang's suit in a statement provided to TechCrunch, a Twitter spokesperson said: "Ms. Huang resigned voluntarily from Twitter, after our leadership tried to persuade her to stay."

"She was not fired. Twitter is deeply committed to a diverse and supportive workplace, and we believe the facts will show Ms. Huang was treated fairly."

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