Tech boss fired after sleeping in sauna on work trip in line for £76m payout

A senior technology executive who suffered disability discrimination after sleeping in a sauna has won the right to pursue £76m in compensation, in what could prove to be the largest payout ever awarded by a British employment tribunal.

Shannon Burns could be in line for the landmark payout after winning a disability discrimination case against Gitpod, a company now owned by ChatGPT developer OpenAI.

Ms Burns was dismissed from her £220,000-a-year role as vice-president of engineering ver three years ago, after she resorted to sleeping in a sauna during a boozy work trip.

She is still fighting to receive compensation, alleging that Gitpod has been using “aggressive litigation tactics to drag out the process and wear her down”.

Ms Burns developed PTSD during her sacking and has now left the tech industry for good. She is seeking £76 million in compensation, based on “forensic” calculations of her lost potential earnings.

Gitpod attempted to restrict the compensation that she could seek to £1m, using a legal application described as “oppressive” by her lawyers.

The Birmingham Employment Tribunal has now dismissed the company’s application, meaning she can formally pursue £76,071,992 in compensation.

Gitpod has also been ordered to disclose to Ms Burns what the recent sale of the business to OpenAI was worth.

Currently, the biggest known award in UK employment tribunal history is £4.58m.

Ms Burns also has shares in Gitpod, which are thought to be worth about £2.6m and could rise to £21m after four years.

Before working for the company, Ms Burns had roles at Silicon Valley firms including Slack and Lyft.

She was headhunted by Gitpod in late 2022 and appointed to the key leadership role of vice-president of engineering, commanding a £220,000 salary with a £78,000 bonus per year.

Ms Burns – who has ADHD – went on an off-site team building event in Lofer, Austria, in April 2023.

CEO Johannes Landgraf and other staff drank alcohol during the trip, and one evening Ms Burns, who had also been drinking, could not access her room as she forgot her key.

Her ADHD caused her to have a “great deal of forgetfulness” and she would “persistently” lose items, the employment tribunal heard.

She had to sleep in a sauna that night, and after the trip, Mr Landgraf said that he was concerned about her “lack of professional accountability”.

She was sacked in June 2023.

“My male colleagues were drinking alcohol/drunk at the offsite but I was the only one who was dismissed,” Ms Burns said.

In 2025, the Birmingham Employment Tribunal found that Ms Burns was dismissed as a result of her disabilities and she won a disability discrimination case.

She is seeking £76 million, relying on calculations made in her “schedule of loss”, which examines what she could have gone on to earn.

As she earned such a huge salary and the tech industry is so lucrative, it is estimated that her total future losses are over £59 million.

The remainder of the £76 million is made up of sums to cover injury to feelings and what is known as an ACAS Uplift, a percentage adjustment of up to 25 per cent that an employment tribunal can add to an award.

At the latest Birmingham hearing, Gitpod applied to have her £76 million schedule of loss capped at £1 million.

The company applied for the judge to enforce a “deposit order” of £1,000, and as part of the order find that any claim worth more than £1 million has “little reasonable prospect of success”.

In its application, Gitpod argued that Ms Burns' claim for over £76 million was “extraordinary”, adding: “The arguments set out in the [schedule of loss] are palpable nonsense.”

The company added: “[Gitpod] seeks an order that [Ms Burns] be ordered to pay a deposit of £1,000 to continue her claim for losses in excess of £1 million.”

Employment Judge Rachel Wedderspoon dismissed the application.

Judge Wedderspoon said: “[Ms Burns] has an exceptionally high pay history... Her case is that but for the treatment she suffered at the hands of [Gitpod] she would have continued to have a highly lucrative career.

“[Her] schedule of loss is based on past and future predicted loss and she has included the amount for loss of salary but also loss of equity because if she had continued her career in this sector part of remuneration would have consisted of equity.”

Judge Wedderspoon said that OpenAI has acquired Gitpod for a sum believed to be $400 million (£302 million).

The judge said that since Ms Burns had 0.85 per cent shares in Gitpod, her shares could be worth $3.4 million (£2.6 million) now and $27.85 million (£21 million) in four years if the $400 million acquisition fee is true.

Judge Wedderspoon concluded: “The Tribunal finds that an award in the sum claimed by [Ms Burns] is highly unusual and the sort of award that may be more commonplace awarded in the US jurisdiction.

“However, the Tribunal cannot say at a summary assessment in the absence of an employment renumeration expert report or an expert medical information that [her] valuation has little reasonable prospect of success.”

Tara Grossman, an employment lawyer assisting Ms Burns, said after the hearing: “The outcome of this hearing was a resounding success for Shannon and I am over the moon for her.

“Shannon’s £76 million schedule of loss is a forensic calculation of what she could very well have earned if she had not been dismissed by Gitpod due to her disabilities.

“She was working in tech which is probably the most lucrative career of our time.

“She had already earned well over £1 million in junior roles and when she joined Gitpod she was given a £220,000 annual salary and told her shares could be worth anywhere from $1.06 million to $27.85 million.

“This was from one job in tech over a four-year period.

“She is now in a position where she can never work in tech again and is retraining to be a therapist with nowhere near the same earning potential.

“Gitpod made an application at this hearing to try and prevent Shannon from claiming more than £1 million.

“Gitpod were trying to get Shannon’s schedule of loss reduced from £76 million to £1 mmillion by using a draconian application called a 'deposit order'.

“In my opinion this application was oppressive.

“Shannon was working in a career where the top generative AI companies are fighting for tech talent and in some cases offering stock packages worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

“It is particularly oppressive given that Gitpod now know what Shannon’s shares in Gitpod would have been worth (as it is being acquired by OpenAI) but won’t disclose this information to Shannon.

“My view is that Gitpod are attempting to use aggressive litigation tactics to drag out the process and wear her down."

A full compensation hearing will be held at a later date, pending Gitpod's appeal of the previous tribunal ruling.