I'm surprised news outlets still report that Timnit Gebru was fired. It's at best disputed.
This case looks much clearer; he was terminated with cause.
This case looks much clearer; he was terminated with cause.
That Chatterjee was fired is seemingly not in dispute, but there was a lot of disagreement on HN over whether Gebru was fired or quit (she offered an ultimatum, which Google accepted.)
I spoke to a wide range of managers at Google afterwards and the most commonly expressed opinion was "I'm amazed that Megan did that, it normally takes at least a year to fire individuals". What Jeff did led to a significant exodus of Google researchers (including some very preeminent ones) and Zoubin has to do all the cleanup.
"I resign if you don't do X."
"We're not doing X, we accept your resignation."
This is a resignation the way I understand it.
> "We're not doing X, we accept your resignation."
This approach from her managers can be criticized because it immediately closes the door on the possibility of her changing her mind and walking things back.
However, it sounds like she was causing a lot of internal problems so perhaps they were already working to get rid of her. Accepting the implied resignation may have just been expedient, and saved the company a bunch of severance money.
The George Costanza scenario: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW78swzn_Bs
The real question for your framing is: Should Google have to say, “ok that’s it for real this time, no take-backsies”? I think that google should never have to say this any time someone says “or else I quit” because the threat of quitting tells us that they’re not willing to continue operating within Google. I honestly don’t see the reasoning behind drawing the line anywhere else.
Let’s think of a hypothetical. A student says “I’m going to quit eventually in order to attend classes” and the manager says “I accept your resignation, you are fired”. This generally seems more like a firing because somebody was going to resign, more than it seems like a resignation no?
In the Gebru case, Gebru didn’t express WHEN she was going to resign, and that’s google’s issue. Maybe Gebru was, for all Google knew, threatening to quit in a month or a year or in 10 years. Gebru never actually made the time of her proposed resignation clear. As such, the law doesn’t consider to actually have made a legally binding resignation.
It would be bias in googles favor to act as though she were not fired which is what any court would find. Sort of a “discuss the controversy” sort of thing over a very clear cut legal issue.
What law is that?
Either way, I'm confused about what the issue is here. California is an at-will state, so she could quit at any time, and they could fire her at any time. When you make an ultimatum, you're saying you're ok with either outcome and are letting the other party decide. This is an outcome she was ok with, so what's the problem exactly?
https://edd.ca.gov/en/uibdg/Voluntary_Quit_VQ_135
>In P-B-39, the claimant gave notice on October 24 that she was quitting effective November 15. The employer permitted her to work only until October 31. The Board held that the claimant was discharged and said:
>. . . the claimant was not permitted to work to the effective date of her resignation and the employer did not pay the claimant her wages through that date. The claimant did suffer a wage loss by the action of the employer in accelerating the last day of work.
Gebru was going to arrange a meeting with Google to discuss when she would resign, and Google opted to claim she had already resigned and simply fired her. This constitutes a firing as Gebru clearly did not intend an immediate resignation.
>Either way, I'm confused about what the issue is here.
I bring this up merely because the neutrality of the journalists reporting on the case has been brought into question, and I want to defend them describing the situation as a "firing" as being the neutral thing to do. Additionally, I think Google's twisting of labour law for Google's PR/Financial benefit speaks to Google's character in the entire affair, and we must fairly consider Google's actions when judging Gebru's, whose actions were controversial.