Ex-Pinterest Employee Sues for Misrepresentation, Says Job Didn't Match Description

Pinterest recruited a research scientist and convinced him through “false representations” to quit his “stable employment” to bring his specialized knowledge of real-time bidding to the social media and image-sharing company, alleged a fraud complaint Wednesday (docket 24CV435463) in Santa Clara County Superior Court. Local resident Seyed Ziaemohseni interviewed at Pinterest in April 2022 to discuss a senior-level technical position in the company’s “struggling real-time bidding advertising system,” said the complaint. In subsequent meetings, Ziaemohseni emphasized that his background was in research and data, and that he isn’t a traditional software engineer, the complaint said. He explained he wasn’t looking to switch careers to become a software engineer working in Java programming language and that he didn’t have any “meaningful experience” with the programming language in the 16 years since he worked with it as a student. Ziaemohseni was told the senior-level position would involve mentoring junior team members working on the company’s real-time bidding platform, that he would not be required to write “production-level Java code himself” and that he would have a support team to do that for him, the complaint said. Over several months, the plaintiff went through seven rounds of interviews at Pinterest, with two concentrating on software engineering skills. Though he “resoundingly failed” one of the software engineering interviews due to his lack of experience in the field -- and that was making it difficult to get him approved for hire -- Ziaemohseni's interviewers told him they were talking to senior leadership to convince them to hire him on his expertise in real-time bidding, it said. They asked him not to start conversations with any other companies in the meantime, it said. Pinterest extended an offer to Ziaemohseni as a senior software engineer, he resigned from his previous job, and he took the Pinterest position in October, it said. The scope of the job turned out to be “vastly different” from the one he was expected to fill, it said. Despite having successfully launched a new control algorithm in March 2023, “with everything implemented in Java by himself,” Ziaemohseni received a negative assessment the next month due to “performance deficiencies” with development of Java code, the complaint said. The assessment “severely increased Mr. Ziaemohseni’s work-related stress and anxiety and took a toll on his emotional wellbeing, causing him to seek mental health treatment for the first time,” the complaint said. The plaintiff’s “alleged Java-related performance deficiencies” were addressed again in September, when he was given the choice to accept a monthlong “Corrective Action Plan” or separate from the company, the complaint said. Ziaemohseni chose to leave, and his final day of employment was Nov. 3, it said. The plaintiff is suing Pinterest for promissory fraud and intentional and negligent misrepresentation. He seeks compensatory, punitive, incidental and consequential damages, plus legal expenses and costs, the complaint said. Pinterest didn't comment Thursday.