Comment by cdata | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cdata | Hacker News Reader

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I'm partially sympathetic to this point of view. I agree that Timnit will ultimately be fine, despite what she is going through right now. I also agree that Google should ultimately do whatever it wants in accordance with its determined corporate policies.

However, you really should read https://abc.xyz/investor/founders-letters/2004-ipo-letter/

Anyone who recalls this letter should be able to muster sympathy for those who have joined Google with an activist mindset. Google is supposed to be different. Google is supposed to be for people who want to make the world better. Sure, maybe it's all just so much branding, but this is how Google (and by extension many Googlers) styles itself. This news is more evidence that Google is really bad at living up to that image - as idealistic/lofty/unrealistic as it may be - where it counts.

And any way, Timnit isn't toxic. She is upset with the status quo of equity among genders and ethnic groups in her field, and she is fighting to improve it. This is naturally unwelcome - and perhaps comes off as combative - to anyone who is satisfied with the status quo, but I would not call it toxic.

I disagree. In one thread she responds with tweets such as: "“I’m sick of this framing. Tired of it. ", "Again. UNBELIEVABLE. , "tell your fanboys to stop trolling me". Basically she was telling Lecun he's an idiot of not agreeing with her. And pretty much everyone else who is not agreeing with her.

Did you see Jeff Dean's email they just added to the article? Not surprisingly, she is doing the same thing. The reviewers are not agreeing with her and she is shocked how someone dares to reject her paper. She starts making demands to reveal who that was and sends an email to the Women AI list like it's some racist attack against her because she is a woman and black researcher. That's a toxic behavior of a very arrogant researcher. She clearly expects to get some preferential treatment because she is a big shot researcher or she just thinks she is smarter than everyone else. The irony.

The best and the brightest are elevated to positions of leadership because we trust them to lead the way. I am grateful that she knows her worth, and risked her own happiness for the sake of others. She is paying a short-term price for it because Google is struggling with fundamental corporate identity issues (such as whether or not it can live up to its self-image). In the long run, she will be vindicated.

Where I come from, behavior like this is interpreted as - at worst - iconoclastic when exhibit by white, male leaders. I have found that it is rewarded more often than not when it happens in places I have worked at in the past.

Also, just read some of her Twitter mentions - the fanboy harassment is real.

Sorry, I don't understand how she risked her own happiness for the sake of others. She picked a wrong battle. Google didn't do anything wrong here. An internal review process is something that happens everywhere. It's not always consistent, but it's still important and valuable.

The sad part is that social media, like always, focus on her race rather than the details. Here's an example tweet from Jeremy Howard, a known researcher (114K followers) from fast.ai:

"Whatever else you think of Google, you gotta admit their crisis PR response is staggeringly incompetent.

The day they were found to have illegally spied on and terminated activists - they picked that day to fire their top AI ethics expert (a black woman)."

He completely ignores the most important thing - why she got fired. He calls Google PR incompetent because they fired a famous black woman researcher after what happened. You see, people expect that Google would check their employees' skin color and gender before they decide to fire them. The content is not important.

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