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Comment by asfadfdsa | Hacker News Reader

There are a lot of people commenting that she didn't actually resign. I agree, but it sounds like the conversation went like this:

employee: I'm not happy about x, y and z. If you don't do those, I'm going to quit.

manager: well we are not going to do those, so thank you for your time. We accept your resignation and would like it to start immediately (i.e. you're fired).

If you are gonna tell your manager that you plan to resign if a condition isn't met, then what do you expect them to say if they don't plan to fulfill that condition? It sounds like she was expecting them to say "Hey, well we don't want to meet your demands, but sure, we're happy to have a disgruntled employee around here, so feel free to stick around, or you could just quit on your own timeline, no sweat".

I suspect that many people would be fired on the spot for threatening to resign, so don't threaten it if you aren't okay with that consequence.

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There are three different discussions happening all at the same time, which is muddying things.

1. Was the treatment of her research in internal review reasonable?

2. Was terminating her employment reasonable after she sent the (now public) email to the women-and-allies brain listserv?

3. Was the end of her employment at Google a resignation or a firing?

To me, (3) is by a wide margin the least interesting part of the story and all of the discussion here is missing the point entirely. Whether she was fired or resigned has zero bearing on whether (1) and (2) show reasonable or unreasonable actions.

For what it's worth, I have read the abstract of the paper and discussions around it and I have seen more than one person rate it as not very interesting. Why is all this fuss about a paper restating common knowledge? For example, they say datasets need to be filtered for bias, and that large models consume ... duh ... a lot. We already know that, where's the new shiny architecture for fair modelling?

link to abstract and discussion - https://old.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/k69eq0/n_t...

As a manager I would only do this if I really wanted to fire the person already. For employees I care about I would give them an out.

Part of being a good manager is understanding your employees and helping them succeed. If someone makes a statement like this in the heat of frustration it doesn't necessarily mean they will actually quit. If they're a valuable member of the team you should present them with an opportunity to save face and remain.

To me this seems like taking an opportunity to fire someone they already wanted to get rid of. Either that or a bad manager who wanted to flex their power as a threat to the rest of the team.

> As a manager I would only do this if I really wanted to fire the person already. For employees I care about I would give them an out.

One of the more difficult lessons I learned as a manager: Once a team member starts giving ultimatums in order to get their way or override decisions, it's not in your best interests to give in for the sake of keeping that employee. The obvious exception is if you realize you were actually wrong from the start, but reversing decisions for the sake of caving to someone's demands is a problem.

If someone is so ready to quit that they'll flaunt it to the company, it's doubtful that reversing a single decision is going to suddenly make them happy again with their employer. Worse yet, it sends a message that threatening to quit is the way to get what you want from the company. Once you validate the strategy, you will get a lot more of it.

Unfortunately, if someone already has one foot out the door and has been complaining openly (even on Twitter, in this case) about their employer, it's best for everyone to go their separate ways. From there, focus on identifying and fixing any underlying problems to minimize the chance of this happening again in the future.

Given the employee's general attitude, I find it easy to believe her manager was already not happy with her.

See her previous (potential) legal troubles with Google that she even acknowledges herself.

> I was in the middle of a potential lawsuit for which Kat Herller and I hired feminist lawyers who threatened to sue Google (which is when they backed off--before that Google lawyers were prepared to throw us under the bus and our leaders were following as instructed) and the next day I get some random “impact award.”

https://www.platformer.news/p/the-withering-email-that-got-a...

Yes. I probably didn't use the word "resign" as such but there was a time in my career when I went to my manager's manager or maybe another level up the chain and basically said I could not work for my direct manager. I got my way even though it involved working in a bit of a backwater for a time. But I was prepared to leave if I didn't get my way. (Didn't hurt that I knew said manager was a bit on the outs with the exec who I knew quite well.)

What if the language weren’t so direct? For example,

> If I can’t know who is providing reviews to my work, it’s difficult for me to imagine continuing to work as a part of this group.

Many people would still describe this (erroneously) as an ultimatum even though it could be bleakly summarized in the same vein as a true ultimatum.

It's more nicely worded to be sure, and definitely less aggressive, but it still says the same thing, which is "I'm gonna be an unhappy employee if I can't find out who reviewed my work". If they aren't willing to tell her who reviewed her work (which they may or may not have valid reasons for doing, but clearly they don't want to do), then they are dealing with someone who is going to be an unhappy employee since their conditions won't be met. Sure, not a resignation, but if your employer doesn't think you'll be a happy employee, why keep you around?

In any case, she has been very vocal on twitter and has not seemed to deny that she gave some sort of ultimatum. If she didn't give an ultimatum, it would only make Google look worse, so why not mention that on Twitter (given that she has tweeted probably 100 things about this incident in the last two days)? Given the absence of a denial, I'm going to assume that it was worded as an ultimatum.

I vehemently disagree with just your first paragraph. (Your second and arguably more important paragraph I’m sympathetic to.) People state their feelings toward things all the time and none of it should ever be considered permanent. I’ve told my boss many times something of similar ilk, “if you’re going to have me and my team do this last minute demo when it was fully in your capacity to plan better, I’m going to be pretty unhappy.” Even to that I demand things change. Yet, for some reason, I’m not fired afterward as a “disgruntled employee” or “somebody who can’t be happy working”. I take time to understand my boss’s disposition and I strongly seek my boss to understand mine, and hopefully we end up in a better place afterward.

What’s wrong with Google saying, “we refuse to comply with your demands, and we understand you may feel blablabla. We are trying to streamline our submission process and we would like you to help us do that.”? Maybe it’s because Google doesn’t actually have a desire to work with her, in which case, the ultimatum (or whatever it truly was) is just a convenient out.

(grandparent here, different throwaway)

> Maybe it’s because Google doesn’t actually have a desire to work with her, in which case, the ultimatum (or whatever it truly was) is just a convenient out.

There's almost no question about that in my mind. Maybe google didn't see her work as useful. Maybe she was just an asshole and they didn't like working with her. I have no idea. But if you are already on thin ice (or your company even feels just neutral about you) and you give an ultimatum, prepare for them to use it against you.

We don't know the exact language, but by Timnit's account she made a numbered list of demands, which is pretty inherently direct.

And she said her email contained language like “and if my demands aren’t met, then I will find an exit date.”

It sounded from her account a straightforward threat to leave.

"We can't meet your demands for sure. But please hang around the company and choose your exit date at your liking" -- no reasonable person would respond like this.

In any case, making this an issue sounds way overkill.

Both want to part way. Either side can choose an earlier date of the termination.

She doesn't need Google's permission to leave earlier. Google also doesn't need her permission to make her leave earlier.

> manager: well we are not going to do those, so thank you for your time. We accept your resignation and would like it to start immediately (i.e. you're fired).

The thing is, there's a big difference between resigning and being fired for cause, even if both end with you not working at the company anymore.

IANAL, but my best guess is that she was just let go without cause. Your employer can fire you at any time and technically doesn't need a reason. Typically, "terminated with cause" is a specific thing where they fire you and give a specific reason (e.g. stealing) that might have bearing on whether you receive unemployment benefits, accrued vacation, etc. It's hard to imagine that they fired her in that way and that she was just plain-old-fired (there's a reason for it, but not legal cause).

There were causes. The email to the women group and the demands. The paper wasn't so great either, based on the analysis of the abstract.

Firing for cause would be something of a “nuclear option” here and IMO would significantly increase the risk of a court battle. The peanuts Google would save in severance costs would not be worth the PR damage.

This debate over whether she was fired or resigned is distracting from the real issue. Why isn’t Google willing to listen and work with Timnit? What are the issues she’s raising? These are more important questions, fired/resigned is just an easy thing to be outraged or give leeway over.

> Why isn’t Google willing to listen and work with Timnit?

Maybe she isn't that important for the company? Why bother working with someone making demands if they aren't worth your time. Google might have actually thought she was detrimental to the company and wanted an excuse to fire her and she gave it.

I suspect that they were looking for a way to separate themselves from her. I was very upset when I read her attack on Yann LeCun. At least in my eyes, she was hurting Google brand. I read her tweets and she seems to see racism in every turn. In my opinion, that was a behavior of a political activist, not an AI researcher.

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