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Comment by derangedHorse | Hacker News Reader

I've always found it funny how we treat companies like Google as imaginary people with no single individual bearing responsibility.

To be fair, some people are aware of the people involved like Jeff Dean, but I look forward to a shift in the future where individuals within companies are as popular and held to the same standards as individuals within politics. Some of these corporate individuals already seem to have just as much power so hopefully it doesn't stand to be too much of a stretch in an ideological vision for the future.

With respect to this particular case of Timnit Gebru, it sounds like she was already on her way to being let go. From reading her Twitter, it seems like she has a flair for the dramatic which could make her critiques of people potentially come off as needlessly harsh and unconstructive. Whether that's good grounds to fire her may only be known to those within the company who interacted with her most I guess.

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> With respect to this particular case of Timnit Gebru, it sounds like she was already on her way to being let go.

This is just wild speculation and part of a frustrating pattern where all sorts of questionable behaviors by authorities are justified by other unrelated properties of the victims.

> justified by other unrelated properties of the victims.

Is it unrelated though? Her behaviour in terms of communication, less what she says but more how she says it, is extremely related to this case.

However I do think I agree that it's speculation, at best.

She's not a victim. She was an employee who sent in her resignation/ultimatum letter and then blasted an unprofessional message to a bunch of her colleagues.

She is obviously doing good research, but I could also see why she wouldn't be a good fit for Google (or really any other large tech company).

I really don't see why this isn't a win for everyone. She said she didn't want to work there under current conditions, now she's not. I'm sure she'll get a job in academia or at a think tank where she'll be able to be much more critical of Google and big tech. The world will better off because her voice and research won't be toned down by a Google internal review. And Google gets to get rid of a problematic employee. It's a win-win-win.

> She's not a victim. She was an employee who sent in her resignation/ultimatum letter and then blasted an unprofessional message to a bunch of her colleagues.

The most interesting part of the story is the part that happened before this.

Where google requested she retract her paper to include information that was flattering to google and Google thought was relevant?

They just demanded that she retract it. No opportunity to adjust it to include the additional information (there would be ample time to do this between review and the camera-ready).

In the article it says the co-author specifically requested the paper not be published because they "didn’t want such an early draft circulating online". Sounds like Timnit might have jumped the gun a bit and it wasn't just google that thought it wasn't ready.

They requested that it not be distributed online because it has not yet completed peer review, which usually comes with recommendations to improve the paper in either small or large ways. That is very different than retracting it from the conference review.

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