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Comment by saagarjha | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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”.

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.

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.

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