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Comment by freyir | Hacker News Reader

From what I read at the time, she wasn’t fired for the content of the paper (though she initially made it sound like this before more details became public). She gave the company an ultimatum to reveal the name of an anonymous reviewer or she would quit, and they took her threat seriously.

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She was subjected to a process that wasn't the norm at Google. I'd be pretty upset too.

The details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25313994

Discussion about whether the review process was normal: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25308847

Other people circumventing policy doesn't mean that it is fine for her to do it. It is really hard to judge as you do without more data on the circumstances of the other people circumventing the policy and not getting punished, right now we have to take their word that what she did wasn't worse than what most others did. We can't know that. Similarly one engineer force pushing code to fix an issue might be fine, but another engineer doing the same thing might not be fine and the second gets investigated, is that unfair? We can't tell, there isn't enough information here.

Why do we have to take Google's word and not hers? (Especially in light of corroborating witnesses who say that what she did was completely normal)

Because plenty of other researchers working at Google regularly publish papers critical of Google and are just fine? Even Timnit had already done that many times, she just got into trouble this time but all the other papers she published was fine. If Google really cared about these researchers publishing critical pieces then Google would have shut down that entire group rather than just firing her.

Right but the claim is that Google instituted a new policy, and applied it inconsistently without telling people, until it blew up in their faces when she was fired. Only after that did they formalize the policy, and saying that she was fired for circumventing and then questioning a policy that ostensibly didn't exist when she was fired doesn't have the same ring to it.

But you claim she was fired for being critical of Google. Maybe what you are saying here is right and she was just the first person fired since nobody followed the new guidelines and at some point they will face consequences, it could just as well have been anyone else. But I don't see how that would make Google look bad, it is normal to fire one of the offenders as an example when a group refuses to follow new guidelines, either you do that or you fire everyone.

And hers case was especially easy, since she said she will leave the company if the policy isn't changed. Google didn't want to change the policy. What Google might have been wrong about here is if they reported this as her voluntarily leaving, even if you could argue it is Google firing her. But nobody really cares about that that detail, it isn't important and the story wouldn't blow up if that was the only thing they claimed Google did wrong.

> And hers case was especially easy, since she said she will leave the company if the policy isn't changed. Google didn't want to change the policy.

The policy seemed to be made up specifically for her paper. Her paper already passed the standard internal review, and she alerted them months before the conference that her paper was going to be submitted.

This discussion over whether she was treated differently with respect to review is irrelevant.

If Google, for whatever reason, wanted to have the paper undergo a bit of extra scrutiny, it's entirely within their purview.

She submitted her paper late for internal review when it was too late for revisions. It might be the case that most papers are submitted late for internal review, but most papers don’t expressly criticize the employer’s work. That’s an important distinction, and it was naive to not anticipate that the paper might get extra scrutiny.

Regardless, being upset because you didn’t get your way doesn’t give you carte blanche to do unprofessional things that will get you fired. You can’t say “Give me X or I quit” and not assume there’s a chance your bluff will be called (especially when “X” is a demand for the company to violate its own policies).

But her paper passed the internal review. It failed some additional internal review that wasn't policy at the time.

No, there was only one internal review. It didn’t pass, and it was too late for her to make revisions because it was past the conference deadline.

You're factually wrong. I was literally able to view her paper, and it's approved status, in the internal tool where papers are approved for publication.

This directly contradicts what Jeff Dean wrote: “A cross functional team then reviewed the paper as part of our regular process and the authors were informed that it didn’t meet our bar for publication” (emphasis mine).

That sentence was written after Dean had a lawyer represent him.

Which makes it more likely to be the truth, not less likely. It would be very foolish to write that if it were demonstrably false, as was claimed above. And I have to assume their lawyers aren’t very foolish.

But this is all another deflection. Whether the paper was rejected by a regular process or an irregular process, it doesn’t condone her actions that followed.

> Whether the paper was rejected by a regular process or an irregular process, it doesn’t condone her actions that followed

This is where we'll have to agree to disagree.

As you can see in this thread, she was treated unfairly. Someone confirmed to you that this is the case, and you're still arguing that her subsequent behavior was unjustifiable.

I think her subsequent behavior was a result of the unfair treatment. I'm not sure how I would've reacted in her place, and I have a lot of empathy for a scientist who is being scrutinized outside of normal policies.

Her paper was anodyne. No one would've blinked if it was published. And I think you keep saying that it's okay for a research department to stop publication of scientific work regardless of whether the paper was mistaken or not.

You've said that it needs revisions. I work in ML. It seemed not to need any revisions, as far as I could tell. Google's reaction seemed far out of proportion for what the paper claimed.

You can say "Well, that's life. Google didn't do anything wrong." The former is true, but I'm skeptical of the latter.

"As you can see in this thread, she was treated unfairly. S"

This is not true.

The fact that she may or may not have had extra scrutiny than others, within regular policy or not is completely besides the point.

If a company, for whatever reason, wants to have 'another review' of the paper, it's completely within their purview.

"Her paper was anodyne. No one would've blinked if it was published."

Our view of whether it was notable or not is irrelevant. If the company wanted to put the brakes on it, especially because it related to Google, then that's their choice.

It's hugely arrogant for her to make the claims she did - let alone publicly (!) - by all right she should have been fired for that, she was luckily the conditions enabled her to even try to establish the premise of her own resignation.

A company being legally allowed to do something doesn't implicitly make that thing fair or ethical.

You can simultaneously believe that Google has the right to quash any paper, and believe that doing so arbitrarily is unfair. So yes, she was treated unfairly. And that's absolutely relevant to people's decision making. Like, what do you think it's irrelevant in relation to?

Its not clear what you mean by publicly, nothing was done outside of Google until after she was fired.

Because he wrote it it’s the truth? How are we supposed to take that any more seriously than her own claims?

Other papers were late and didn’t receive the same prejudice.

Which ones? Specifically.

After the, (my words), harrasment of Lacun on Twitter, the sort of belittling of the internal award she was given (you'd have to really think they were evil to give her an award just to gaslight her), plus the short notice ultimatum to a very senior person (one level down from Jeff Dean right?)....no offense but from the outside she seems exhausting to manage.

The abstract came out, and honestly the paper was so so. Obviously it went against googles business model, but it'd be a wayyyy bigger scandal if they burried it.

Maybe Jeff Dean is a liar, but his comment was the paper missed incorporating significant recent research. As head of the group, and just out of respect towards the institution and to science, pondering it for more than 48 hours before bouncing on vacation or heaven forbid presenting at the next conference would have been reasonable.

Biased external view though. YRMV.

I have a feeling her continuous rants on Twitter is because her overall demands and feeling of entitlement were stood down. She demanded things which would have been just another kind of shit show and targeted harassment.

A social-justice themed charade is being made out of just being salty at getting fired.

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