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Comment by saagarjha | Hacker News Reader

> The paper DID NOT force her out of Google. Her subsequent behaviour - submitting without approval, rant, ultimatum, and resignation - did. And she wasn't "forced out": she resigned of her own volition. She could have chosen to make improvements to the paper based on the feedback she was given, resubmit it for approval, and then get on with her life, but she went the other way.

This sounds a lot like taking what Google said without including Timnit’s point of view. Is it really fair to disparage an article for having a title like that when you’ve completely ignored such a large part of the issue?

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> This sounds a lot like taking what Google said without including Timnit’s point of view.

Not at all. I've read everything she's written on the issue including the long message she wrote to the brain group, and her tweets where she shared what Google said when they accepted her resignation. These latter make specific reference to the ultimatum, which was the ultimate reason for her departure.

As I pointed out in the previous discussion she may have faced some sort of disciplinary action upon her return from vacation due to the content of her message to the brain group.

However, when she resigned what Google managers did (and this is no great leap of logic) is figure out that if they made her work her notice period she'd probably only cause more trouble in the meantime, so they brought it forward and made it effective immediately.

This might or might not be unusual behaviour for handling a resignation at Google, but it is fairly common practice amongst different organisations for a variety of different reasons that usually boil down to mitigating some kimd of risk to the organisation.

…and? Did you not consider it useful to mention at all? Do you think you’ve already included what she mentioned?

Do you really think it's valuable for me to regurgitate an entire discussion that I've provided a link to (and which anyone can easily read) in my comment when what I'm actually trying to do is make a wider, but relatively pithy, point about journalistic integrity and the impact that the lack of it is having on our societies more than comment on Timnit's specific case? I will say that your comments are an almost perfect illustration of that point though.

Timnit claims she was fired, you’ve completely erased that part from the discussion and used it to prove a point about journalistic integrity. You provided a link to a massive discussion that has clearly not yet been able to piece through the details. When I asked you why you were so confident in your position that Timnit was clearly in the wrong and rightfully terminated because she didn’t comply with what Google told her to do, you decided that I lack journalistic integrity.

Google, talking through Jeff Dean, claims that Timnit was unhappy with her situation and submitted a good faith resignation which Google accepted due to her not following their policies. Timnit claims that she was forced into a position where she had to issue her ultimatum, forcing her into a resignation. And we have claims from Google employees saying that the process she had was unusual and did not match a normal review. Isn’t the true journalistic malpractice ignoring this and claiming that any title that doesn’t match your view, which appears to be Google’s view of the situation is inaccurate?

I've only heard of unethical companies firing people immediately without honouring the notice period.

It's definitely not common place and should not be encouraged except under severe circumstances e.g. violence, criminality etc.

Are they not being paid for their notice period? Usually the way this works is "gardening leave" where you're paid and are not supposed to come into work.

Her manager said "effective today". That means no gardening leave.

If she was cut off without “gardening leave”, then she was fired. It can then be true that she both quit (two weeks notice) and she was fired (no two weeks for you). I’d be surprised if the latter was true as it would be petty on Google’s part. More likely would be gardening without access which would still be gardening.

It's really just academic and not germane to the larger overall discussion whether or not she got that one pay period's worth of money.

IMO, it’s germane. “I quit. My last day will be sometime in late Dec.” “We’ll pay you and recognize your employment through that date, but you are relieved of all duties effective immediately” is quite different from “Nope; your job ends today.”

How is that really a big difference? She's gone either way, because they wouldn't let her publish the paper. This way I guess she's more eligible for unemployment, but beyond that?

To me (and I suspect the courts): In the second case, she was fired today prior to her offered last day. In the first case, Google accepted her resignation and just didn’t require her to work through her last day.

Should she have been fired for her email to the group? It's hard to discuss if people don't agree she was fired.

Should we believe her or her managers? Her managers pretending they just accepted her resignation is dishonest.

What makes it dishonest? Do you not believe that she stipulated that she'd resign under certain conditions? Do you not believe those conditions then came to exist? Do you not believe that her managers accepted her resignation?

I don't have a strong opinion in the matter (and have no connection to Google), but if she in fact unambiguously offered her resignation conditioned on her paper not being approved to publish and Google accepted her offer, I don't see how she can turn around and claim she was fired.

She didn't offer to resign immediately. Her manager explicitly rejected her actual offer and imposed new terms as punishment for her email to the group.

If the text Jeff Dean wrote below is overwhelmingly true, I'd agree that she resigned rather than was fired. I suspect that it is overwhelmingly true as I'm fairly sure that Google legal would have reviewed it and ensured they didn't say anything falsifiable and likely that this paragraph is entirely true.

> Timnit responded with an email requiring that a number of conditions be met in order for her to continue working at Google, including revealing the identities of every person who Megan and I had spoken to and consulted as part of the review of the paper and the exact feedback. Timnit wrote that if we didn’t meet these demands, she would leave Google and work on an end date. We accept and respect her decision to resign from Google.

Notice he doesn't say she resigned immediately.

Do you believe she fabricated Megan's email?[1]

[1] https://twitter.com/timnitGebru/status/1334364735446331392

> How is that really a big difference?

Well, I mean, for one thing it about $20K difference in salary alone.

> She's gone either way

True.

> because they wouldn't let her publish the paper.

That's...less clearly true in any meaningful sense. The public statements from all the other Google AI people about how the official narrative is inconsistent with general practice on publication review suggests very strongly that the management actions related to the paper were a pretextual component of a constructive termination campaign, and that even when it succeeded in generating something management could at least seize on as a “resignation” the result was insufficiently immediate requiring finding another pretext for immediate termination.

"Effective today" has legal meaning. The NLRB just credibly accused Google of acting pettily in other cases too.[1]

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/02/google-spied-on-employees-il...

Do you dispute her ultimatum and/or offer to resign?

Do I dispute that she provided an ultimatum of which one side was a resignation offer? No. But can I say that this ultimatum wasn’t the result of Google pulling the rug out from under her and putting her in an unfortunate position from which she felt her only way to exercise her leverage was to make such a proposition, then pretend like they’re blameless by “choosing a provided option” of terminating her without looking at the reasons why she had to do such a thing? I’m not sure yet. I don’t think we have enough information at this point to judge, so I’m a bit concerned with comments like the one I just responded to that ignore like this concern doesn’t exist.

What about her toxic behavior? Do you dispute that?

Toxic is an inflammatory and unnecessary word to use when no-one is privy to the actual facts.

Have you read the exchange with Lecun? That is fact and it is Toxic. So its not unnecessary or imflammatory

Do you have any links to this discussion? I’m trying to verify the toxic claim and am having a hard time finding it on Twitter right now because of all the noise.

I think there are links to the tweets in this article: https://syncedreview.com/2020/06/30/yann-lecun-quits-twitter...

I’d like to see more elaboration than a claim that her behavior is toxic - that is not helpful or conducive for spreading knowledge. I don’t see anything here that matches up to that claim at all, speaking as an outsider.

> Toxic is an inflammatory and unnecessary word to use when no-one is privy to the actual facts.

This response reflects an unwillingness to understand a situational nuance from multiple sides, show empathy to a person in distres and offers no workarounds, support or evidence. I've grown so tired of these factual tug of wars to justify callous.

A word you seem to have no reservations about using against your opponents just from a quick search of your comment history. Why such outrage when it's turned back on your own sacred cows?

Why are you assuming anything about me? You realise I e used the word toxic in my whole comment history only related to this topic right?

I, like many others, dont like the way she deals with people. It is toxic. You call a toxic person, a toxic person. Ample evidence for it. Its not outrage, its just facts.

Can you provide said evidence? The article linked above by a throwaway account didn’t contain anything I would label as toxic.

I think you replied to the wrong person?/friendly fire?

My message wan in reponse was to.

> Toxic is an inflammatory and unnecessary word to use when no-one is privy to the actual facts.

Ah ok, apologies!

No problem :)

I disagree with this strongly. Her communication on twitter is public record. It's clearly toxic.

Do you feel we have not heard enough of her side of the story yet?

It's clear all off the facts are not available, and likely never will be, experiences are subjective.

It's also clear that before learning of this event, we had 0% knowledge of the situation.

Between 0 and where we are now with both sides expressing their point of view to some degree, people on HN began making up their mind in the absence of complete information. There is no requirement or urgency that we come to some inconsequential conclusion of our own.

My bias is that it seems difficult to obtain the position the researcher held at Google. How can I be willing to believe the engineer has the ability to navigate the subject matter and its application without being able to navigate this employment scenario. It feels as though I am required to accept the engineers brilliance while calling them dumb at the same time. That feels like a larger handwave than considering the known actions of Google and questioning the few assertions they are willing, but not required truthfully or untruthfully to provide.

There are plenty of instances of "smart" people doing "dumb" things. The idea that there is only one intelligence without considering people have a lot of individual foibles due to experience, temperament, predisposition, and any number of other factors is really dangerous. It's that type of thinking that led to presidents who were former movie stars or real estate developers.

> The idea that there is only one intelligence without considering people have a lot of individual foibles due to experience, temperament, predisposition, and any number of other factors is really dangerous. It's that type of thinking that led to presidents who were former movie stars or real estate developers.

Or it doesn't and we victimize people with smaller PR budgets to present their perspective.

> Do I dispute that she provided an ultimatum of which one side was a resignation offer?

Ok so it's established that she threatened her managers and employer to either comply with her personal wishes or she would "exercise her leverage" to cause the company harm.

And in the end, as their managers didn't caved into her threats, she decided to pull the trigger.

> But can I say that this ultimatum wasn’t the result of Google pulling the rug out from under her and putting her in an unfortunate position (...) ?

So she threatened someone, her target didn't caved in, and thus she proceeded to execute her threat.

And somehow the responsibility of her executing her threat is supposed to be on her target?

This sounds a lot like victim blaming.

"Look what you made me do! Are you happy now?"

It seems to me that people misunderstand how ultimatums work. I guarantee you that you maintain a number of unsaid ultimatums with your employer; for example, one of them may be “pay me or I will quit”. Once an ultimatum reaches the point where it is nonverbal it is difficult to classify as a straightforward resignation or firing, because at that point it is clear that communication has broken down and pressure is being applied from at least one side. Without knowing who the “victim” is here the argument could go either way: “you made me issue an ultimatum”/“you put us in a position where we had to accept your resignation”.

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