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Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

166 points by boto3 6y ago

echelon 6y ago
Companies can't straddle the line. They're either going to have to go all-in on diversity, inclusion, and politics, or they're going to have to clamp down hard like Brian Armstrong. Google needs to decide what it wants to be. Given its choices, I think it's clear what they want. They just need to say it. It'll help employees and potential employees know if they want to work there.
- recursive 6y ago
  If my company decides to "go all-in on diversity, inclusion, and politics", could there ever be any legitimate reason to fire an employee who's also "all-in on diversity, inclusion, and politics"?
  - busterarm 6y ago
    When they try to illegally hire/not-hire people based on protected class, which if I read correctly is something she was pushing for. Forgive me if this is mischaracterized. I don't want to work anywhere that pushes any ideology so far that they break the law. That goes for if it's in pushing their bottom line as well, so regulatory gray-area companies like Uber & AirBnB are also a no-go for me.
    - thelock85 6y ago
      It is hard to find a reputable tech firm or startup that has not been publicly or internally accused of breaking a rule, regulation or law. It's engrained in the ideology of innovation.
      - busterarm 6y ago
        No. Innovation does not require law breaking. This is an opinion espoused by people who lack ethics. Tech firms and startups are just businesses. Breaking laws/regulations is not a requirement to operate a new business.
        thelock85 6y ago
        I think we are saying the same thing. Though I’ll add that are a lot of people in positions of power openly running with that opinion at their tech firms, and that does influence ideals around tech innovation. Also running an ethical business goes far beyond adhering to rules and regulations, as many of them don’t currently penalize unethical practices.
  - visarga 6y ago
    > could there ever be any legitimate reason to fire an employee who's also "all-in on diversity, inclusion, and politics" yes, plenty of reasons, you're part of a team, you got to work with the team or you're just using them
  - apta 6y ago
    That's the entire reason behind it, if they fire a "diversity and inclusion" individual, the latter will just claim (racism, homophobia, transphobia, latest fad of the day)
- sitkack 6y ago
  Most companies want to appear to have a diversity of people who look different but have the same opinions and viewpoints as the rest of the group. What they should strive for is a diversity of backgrounds, viewpoints, experiences and have that process account for the differences in how those people arrived at where they currently are.
  - lbotos 6y ago
    Do you have an example of a company that does the second well? As far as I understand, all companies need to have a pretty solid overlap of "common opinions" or else you are going to have political deadlock. If you have examples to the contrary I'm really curious to learn about how they worked.
  - westwing 6y ago
    Most companies don't care about diversity of any kind for any reason besides PR. Every hiring manager knows that the most productive engineering teams are made up of 100% Asian cis-male Libertarians. Diversity in terms of measurable metrics, such as women/minorities/LGBT++ being adequately represented, is simply a benchmark that can be paraded around for appeasement purposes.
    - echelon 6y ago
      > Every hiring manager knows that the most productive engineering teams are made up of 100% Asian cis-male Libertarians. What the hell. How can you say that with a straight face? Of the two best engineers I know, one is is black and the other is trans. They're both 10x engineers.
      - westwing 6y ago
        > How can you say that with a straight face? I didn't. > They're both 10x engineers. https://medium.com/@yuval.idan5/the-10x-engineer-myth-is-wrong-but-its-also-sexist-8f003b738e41 https://medium.com/@yuval.idan5/the-10x-engineer-myth-is-wro... https://sparktoro.com/blog/belief-in-the-mythical-10x-hire-hurts-your-team/ https://sparktoro.com/blog/belief-in-the-mythical-10x-hire-h...
- blackearl 6y ago
  Companies will continue to straddle the line. It's why they'll have a rainbow twitter avatar then crush a union and lobby against higher wages.
pinewurst 6y ago
I'm tired of FAANG "rallies" where the numerator is such a small percentage of the denominator. I bet one could get "hundreds" of Google employees to rally behind a flat earth and many more for the abolition of mayonnaise.
- p49k 6y ago
  The numerator is such a small percentage because so many fear losing their jobs for speaking out. In that context, this number is quite significant. Even if you disagree with their stance, you have to admit that it takes courage to speak up in these kinds of situations.
  - mam2 6y ago
    Or simply most people don't care... No one ever gets fired for just "rallying"
  - bigphishy 6y ago
    That could be, although it is more than likely a small percentage because so many people do not agree with the cause.
    - deeviant 6y ago
      Oh maybe that don't give a fuck and just want their big check?
      - scarmig 6y ago
        Realistically, the majority just want this bad PR to go away and for Google to be better at preventing it from getting to this point.
  - busterarm 6y ago
    Given the number of people I know who privately think that she resigned rather than got fired and similarly won't speak out (there's tons of internal threads talking about her being fired from what I can tell here), I think it actually is a small percentage.
king_magic 6y ago
After reading everything that has come out (e.g. her email) and her history of highly toxic Twitter behavior, I honestly can't blame Google for accepting her resignation (she was not fired).
- jasonv 6y ago
  There was something about the writing in her email that felt.. loaded and questionable without enough factual assertions to carry her point. In Jeff Dean's email, he made one point that could be pretty salient: she submitted the paper for approval right at deadline. If that's true, that is poorly handled. The ultimatum is easily a step too far. And all of this right before a vacation/holiday.
  - kitsune_ 6y ago
    I mean the machiavellian interpretation looks like this to me: Google's AI in Ethics initiative is a PR exercise, similar to greenwashing and other models employed by big business. It fundamentally has to be, because large parts of the underlying business model at Google are based on unethical practices. By hiring researchers from underrepresented groups they additionally hoped to a) profit from the power imbalance of the relationship and b) co-opt parts of the social justice movement by having ethics research focus on issues that do not directly touch the bottom line. Now you have a researcher not towing the company line and being fired for it.
    - JamesBarney 6y ago
      I think Google genuinely wants their AI to be better in most of the same ways the ethic researchers want it to be better. I think Google is more willing to compromise on having an ethical AI to meet other goals and priorities than the researchers. Google probably also expects researchers who are publishing papers critical of Google to highlights Google's efforts to mitigate those issues.
  - SAI_Peregrinus 6y ago
    > she submitted the paper for approval right at deadline. If that's true, that is poorly handled. That's not poorly handled on her part. If she'd submitted it late, that would be her problem. If getting a submission right at the last valid time to make a submission (the deadline) is an issue then it's a problem caused by whoever set the deadline, not the submitter.
oh_sigh 6y ago
There should be a bare minimum percentage of a company that "rallies behind X" before news articles are written on the subject. Google has just about 100,000 employees + 120,000 temps/contractors. If hundreds - lets say 500 employees - sign something (aka click a button), currently we're sitting at .2% of the company that feels a certain way. What other petitions could you get .2% of the company to sign onto? "Google staff rally behind overthrowing the US government to create a Marxist utopia" "Google staff rally behind mandatory veganism in the US" "Google staff rally behind anti-vaxxers" etc
dheera 6y ago
Ultimatums never work, and threatening to resign is never a good strategy (compared to either trying to amicably work things out OR just resigning). However Google's passive-aggressive response wasn't terribly great either ("We respect your decision to leave Google ... and we are accepting your resignation.") It's a firing packaged up as fake "respect". I wish both sides learned more about how to de-escalate situations.
- baq 6y ago
  or she just wanted to leave. perhaps causing some fuss was part of the plan, too. i'm not involved with google in any way except being their product and user of their services... but neither side inspires my confidence here.
- jpttsn 6y ago
  They could have written “we won’t meet your ultimatum but we don’t think you’ll resign like you threatened, so see you after vacation”. Would that be better?
  - epinephrinios 6y ago
    Leadership needed to look firm and serious here. They needed to send a message that ultimatums will not be tolerated in this business.
  - dheera 6y ago
    I mean, they could have just been upfront and said "We feel that at ultimatum is not an effective way to discuss this issue and so we are hereby terminating your employment effective today." No need for this passive-aggressive "respect your decision" [but didn't actually respectfully let you confirm your decision] bullshit.
samizdis 6y ago
Statement posted by staff, signed by many Googlers and also academics, industry experts etc: https://googlewalkout.medium.com/standing-with-dr-timnit-gebru-isupporttimnit-believeblackwomen-6dadc300d382 https://googlewalkout.medium.com/standing-with-dr-timnit-geb...
- xibalba 6y ago
  It looks like the majority of signees are not Googlers. Even if they were, their number would comprise a rounding error of Google's total head count.
- epinephrinios 6y ago
  Wish you could read the internal forums or Blind. Most of us are happy that we have one less bully in Google.
steve_g 6y ago
Does anyone have a link to the paper she was fired over? I've spent some time searching with no luck. I'd like to know what was technically controversial.
- oh_sigh 6y ago
  Saying she was fired over the paper is a leap without any evidence. It's possible her paper was perfectly benign, with minor issues, and she handled the response to the minor issues in a "we accept your resignation" kind of way. For an extreme example: I could say "I got tazed and arrested for doing 5 mph over the speed limit". That sounds insane. That cop should be fired and in jail! What I haven't told you is: I was doing 5 mph over the speed limit, and I was just going to get a warning from the cop, but I became combative and tried to physically fight the cop, at which point I got tazed and arrested. It's also possible she was fired for the paper. But she has published many papers while at Google without issue, so it would have to be something stunningly different than her previous papers.
- visarga 6y ago
  Just the abstract: https://old.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/k69eq0/n_the_abstract_of_the_paper_that_led_to_timnit/ https://old.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/k69eq0/n_t...
  - jeffbee 6y ago
    This abstract doesn't really grab me by the frontal lobe. Is it possible the internal reviewers just thought the paper sucked?
- uponcoffee 6y ago
  As i understand it, she was supposed to submit to google for an internal review a fews prior to externally publishing it. She simultaneously submitted and published it, and Google sought a retraction after internal review. She met that with an ultimatum with do X or I'll quit. They took that as a resignation (as Google wasn't going to do X), and accepted it. I'm not fully informed about what she wanted, but I don't think it was particularly unreasonable, the controversy more has to do with headlines and spotlights about this person and her conduct/history in the past.
tmotwu 6y ago
It is unfortunate that way too many commenters on a prior threads dismissed her as a some twitter personality and trivialized her body of work in spite of the fact that she is well regarded and reputable in the ML community. It's becoming clear a rising number of her colleagues are in support of what she was seeking to publish. A reviewer on reddit mentioned the authors have plenty of time to make revisions if there were issues with the content. Not to mention, supposedly the internal reviewing processes are usually limited to the extent of sensitive disclosure and rarely the contents of the literature. Yet, emails from Google leadership seems to imply retraction was needed, providing very little reason. The opaqueness of the internal feedback and expectations are highly suspicious and I was suprised to see no one bothered to question it. People have been bringing up the 2 weeks, yet internal Brain researchers have refuted that have never seen a policy like this excercised. It does appear as an attempt to suppress an important paper that was critical of another colleagues work (BERT) and the employer's intended research goals. It's similar to the kind of pushback Greenwald most recently received - yet the reactions here have been distinctly flipsidded - in support towards Google executives no less and unsympathetic to the researcher.
- epinephrinios 6y ago
  She is just another toxic personality that is using her race (minority) as a free pass to bully colleagues.
- elefanten 6y ago
  Body of work aside, she absolutely is an aggressive-ranging-into-toxic Twitter personality and a very strident proponent of a divisive and dogmatic strain of diversity advocacy.
  - minikites 6y ago
    When was the last time a marginalized group gained rights by asking politely?
    - dvtrn 6y ago
      Even when we do the response is quite often some form of "not like that" or the goalposts get moved back another 40 yards from the back of the endzone.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
unix_fan 6y ago
From what I’ve seen, it’s a pretty clear case of toxic workplace behavior. I’m not sure why the headlines are trying to be sympathetic.
- brink 6y ago
  Because the media isn't your friend. Inciting anger gets clicks.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  Because the article was written based primarily on Gebru's Twitter feed, which casts her in a sympathetic light. This is a common problem news organizations face these days; Twitter drama is an unreliable source, but it's so much faster than independent research that you almost have to use it sometimes.
baccheion 6y ago
They've been cycling BS at least 10 years now since I left. Some should face the inescapable truth: no one cares. Another year and it's the same BS without change. As is the plan. At the advent of anything, it won't matter. They'll just be some place. People want to work there still? Separate from just wanting to work (who wants to be unemployed)? Why? It was stupid to be that way as far back as 2003, as they had already IPO'd by then. Stupid like an idiot trying to buy once/since a stock started to surge upward. Stupid. Anything after is in a class by itself. I wonder how they are viewed among young people now. Both college students and those with 2 or so years of experience. Hmmm.. Maybe it's still the same.
contemporary343 6y ago
Google (and Google Brain in particular) benefited immensely from Gebru's work, and her being affiliated with them. This can be seen in how often they (including Jeff Dean) pointed to her work to show they were taking questions of fairness and bias in AI algorithms seriously. The flip side is that you have to respect the researcher, who frankly has more credibility than you do as an organization in this space. Even to corporate researchers, demanding (through an HR procedure? bizarre) the researchers retract a paper without a discussion or an opportunity to revise it (which is still possible since the paper is only in review!) is highly unusual. To do that to a researcher whose work you loudly (and seemingly proudly) advertise, is insulting to them and the broader team they hired. And to do it over not citing literature? Unheard of and clearly indicative of something else going on. This seems like some kind of turf war. You can read the abstract of the paper in question here - it is incredibly anodyne, though obviously does take a critical view of Google Brain's work (BERT in particular); https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/k69eq0/n_the_abstract_of_the_paper_that_led_to_timnit/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/k69eq0/n_t...
- laretluval 6y ago
  Presumably there would have been time for discussion if the paper had not been submitted a day before the deadline.
  - contemporary343 6y ago
    There's still time for discussion! The paper's only in review and they would have had to make revisions anyway. I'd say it's the management that made an ultimatum to the research team.
    - seppel 6y ago
      > The paper's only in review You submit a final version for review. You cannot change a paper significantly after it was accepted.
    - ad404b8a372f2b9 6y ago
apta 6y ago
Why is this such an issue? She was fired for making a tantrum, move on.
martamorena9182 6y ago
I mean she resigned. She put conditions on her staying at the company. By accepting her resignation, Google simply stated: "We are not gonna comply with these conditions, therefore we accept your resignation". Let's focus the discussion around if that was a good or bad decision, to not comply with her conditions. She fired herself, there is no discussion around that.
throwawaygoog7 6y ago
Contrarian view. Some of these points can individually be refuted. As an outsider, here’s what it looks like: - you have an employee who (in her letter) hired attorneys to sue you. - you have an employee who was given an award for impact who openly mocks it and thinks it’s a joke, which detracts from culture - you have an employee who went on a Twitter tirade and send several pages of information teaching a leading person in your space how to apologize. Humiliating. - you have a paper of questionable quality that maybe needs more review and maybe doesn’t but at a minimum appears to be BERT related which could impact your business. It’s not unreasonable to want to look at it. - you have an employee whose tone is very aggressive. It seems reasonable you’d be apprehensive of working with her. It doesn’t seem googles point is to make a model that is biased towards any group, etc, so you should be on the same team? - you get a volley email which requires information (give me all the conversations you had) which could be used to publicly shame the head of a business unit (Jeff Dean) - the employee emails, says she’s going on vacation, and then expects you to be waiting for her when you get back I don’t know. It’s probably mixed. But it seems she’s well respected and given significant leeway. If we strip race and sex from this (if you can do that, perhaps it ruins it, but this is why this is a throwaway): this seems like a very high drama employee. Let’s say there was no hidden bogey man and we take Jeff at his word: more time was needed to give comments on the paper. From there, a) either paper is fine and she submits. Obviously the initial publication space for which she missed the internal review deadline is out, or B) if the paper is not fine and Google makes reasonable points to improve the quality, you incorporate them, then it’s published, or C) if the paper is not fine, but Google is making bogus claims to surpress you because of (in this thought experiment) some racial bias or business model conflict, then you can escalate internally or leave or fight in the media. The problem is you didn’t let a)/b)/c) play out. By jamming the list serve as a way to influence and over ride the internal system the employee is trying to circumvent the operation practice of the group and it undermines leadership. Note, I’m not claiming she is incorrect in her work being suppressed potentially. I’m just claiming if I was her manager my inner voice mental response would be: “shut the fuck up and stop being such a shit disturber. I was willing to work this out with you, even though you could have followed the normal process everyone else does, but now you created a company internal hurfuffle so I need to loop in MY manager (Jeff) and the last time you interacted with public exposure with someone of that high stature (the Twitter incident) you caused a highly abraisive outcome. Ugh. What do I do? Oh you resigned unless you publicly humiliate my boss? Yeah okay, let’s just accept that, I’m not being paid enough to baby sit you. I’m at Google brain to do ai research, not manage temper tantrums. Ok, so will talk to Jeff, tell the team you resigned to help you save face (which she spun btw, lol) and oh yeah we should probably shut off your devices to avoid more damage. This sucks. Ugh I wish that list serve and email to Jeff didn’t go out. “ That’s a jaded view. You can be potentially (or not) repressed and simultaneously an asshole. Would any of you want to work with someone like her? Who low key threatens your job or attempts to publicly humiliate you if she doesn’t get what she wants? Note, using a throw away because it’s too scary to post this publicly. Because I can’t judge what the “public consensus” is (and it seems to be changing), I can’t tell if the above is a 1/10 and like lunatic level, or 4/10 and highly offensive, or maybe a 6/10 and just highly insidious (by design). The bigger point is this incident shows how Twitter flames and self censor ship can perhaps make certain topics hard to discuss. Sorry if this was offensive. But the “HR policy drone” view seems otherwise underrepresented.
defertoreptar 6y ago
I was wondering if anyone knew enough to clarify a couple of things from this part of Dean's letter: > Unfortunately, this particular paper was only shared with a day’s notice before its deadline — we require two weeks for this sort of review — and then instead of awaiting reviewer feedback, it was approved for submission and submitted. There seems to be something between the lines here. How was it approved for submission? Did Gebru or one of the other authors approve it? And if so, would that be unusual? > 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 and were given feedback about why. It ignored too much relevant research — for example, it talked about the environmental impact of large models, but disregarded subsequent research showing much greater efficiencies. Similarly, it raised concerns about bias in language models, but didn’t take into account recent research to mitigate these issues. We acknowledge that the authors were extremely disappointed with the decision that Megan and I ultimately made, especially as they’d already submitted the paper. Does this contradict what Gebru has said so far? Didn't she say she wasn't given any feedback?
- JamesBarney 6y ago
  Part of her demand/resignation/not resignation letter was asking to know who specifically gave what feedback. So she said she was given the feedback, but she didn't know who the feedback was from.
jannes 6y ago
Can we just finally say that Google is evil now? Run as fast as you can. And take your data with you.
vfclists 6y ago
Jeff's response Hi everyone, I’m sure many of you have seen that Timnit Gebru is no longer working at Google. This is a difficult moment, especially given the important research topics she was involved in, and how deeply we care about responsible AI research as an org and as a company. Because there’s been a lot of speculation and misunderstanding on social media, I wanted to share more context about how this came to pass, and assure you we’re here to support you as you continue the research you’re all engaged in. Timnit co-authored a paper with four fellow Googlers as well as some external collaborators that needed to go through our review process (as is the case with all externally submitted papers). We’ve approved dozens of papers that Timnit and/or the other Googlers have authored and then published, but as you know, papers often require changes during the internal review process (or are even deemed unsuitable for submission). Unfortunately, this particular paper was only shared with a day’s notice before its deadline — we require two weeks for this sort of review — and then instead of awaiting reviewer feedback, it was approved for submission and submitted. 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 and were given feedback about why. It ignored too much relevant research — for example, it talked about the environmental impact of large models, but disregarded subsequent research showing much greater efficiencies. Similarly, it raised concerns about bias in language models, but didn’t take into account recent research to mitigate these issues. We acknowledge that the authors were extremely disappointed with the decision that Megan and I ultimately made, especially as they’d already submitted the paper. 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. Given Timnit's role as a respected researcher and a manager in our Ethical AI team, I feel badly that Timnit has gotten to a place where she feels this way about the work we’re doing. I also feel badly that hundreds of you received an email just this week from Timnit telling you to stop work on critical DEI programs. Please don’t. I understand the frustration about the pace of progress, but we have important work ahead and we need to keep at it. I know we all genuinely share Timnit’s passion to make AI more equitable and inclusive. No doubt, wherever she goes after Google, she’ll do great work and I look forward to reading her papers and seeing what she accomplishes. Thank you for reading and for all the important work you continue to do. -Jeff PS. I love Jeff so much I blogged him in the past - https://bit.ly/36FMHy9 https://bit.ly/36FMHy9
quattrofan 6y ago
That email she wrote is a jumbled almost unreadable mess and the moment "micro aggressions" was mentioned I turned off. There was a process, she went around it and lost her job. Not everything in life is bias, sometimes you are just an ass.
drewcoo 6y ago
Someone calling for a big corp to be ethical is branded toxic. Is this "toxic" the same thing that happened with "literally" a decade or so ago? Just checking to make sure my lexicon's up to date.
fasteddie 6y ago
It's just wild to me that HN commenters are predominantly starting the timeline at her resignation ultimatum, and not what prompted it. She was working on a known-to-all controversial research project, which was asked to be retracted via an anonymous feedback doc delivered via HR! That is a very screwed up thing to do. All reactions from her from that to me are totally justified.
cheese_van 6y ago
I don't fully understand the controversy and so take neither side. However, as I started in IT in in 84, it is curious to me that workforce culture has changed so. I recall the dourly suited IBM guys, all in lockstep, sharing identities, so to speak. One's role was well understood, and conforming to that role -conduct, performance, behavior- was very circumscribed and universally understood. Criticizing one's employer was possible within very defined circumstances, and always privately, but doing so in a public square was a sure route to termination. This seemed reasonable at the time. Has the relationship of employee/employer changed so?
- temp667 6y ago
  I think part of this is the FAANG companies have so much money they can afford to hire these huge quantities of folks to fight the company while getting paid by the company. No one else could afford to do this because it just wouldn't work business / productivity wise. The only other example is perhaps the govt which generally does fund people who then sue the govt around policies the govt adopts.
- swalsh 6y ago
  I think post WW2, there was this unwritten social agreement. The company took care of you, and you took care of the company. At some point that agreement was severed. Companies stopped being loyal to employees, and slowly employees have learned to stop being loyal to companies.
- pseudalopex 6y ago
  Do you consider an internal mailing list a public square? Researchers are used to having more freedom. IBM didn't pretend to be egalitarian and fun. And part of the controversy is Google firing her but characterizing it as accepting her resignation.
  - lsaferite 6y ago
    Out of curiosity, if someone says "I quit unless you do X", and you reply with "Ok, I accept your resignation", has that person been fired?
ogre_codes 6y ago
She quit. The reason she quit is legitimate, but it's pretty clear that she quit here. If you say "I quit unless...", and they don't agree to the conditions—you've quit. If I'm running a business, I certainly have no use for an employee who has quit under fairly unfriendly conditions. I definitely wouldn't want someone who has quit spending another month or so using corporate resources for what is now their own personal agenda. I don't think Google is in the clear here either, but don't I think calling her a fired AI researcher is realistic. The story here is an AI researcher quit because Google wouldn't let her publish.
- virgilp 6y ago
  No, that's still "fired". Don't get me wrong, it's an entirely legitimate reason to fire someone - but one doesn't quit unless they actually submit the unconditional resignation. What she did was threaten to quit, and Google (rightfully, IMO) fired her as a consequence of that threat (plus previous email where she was advising colleagues to stop working on some company initiatives - that was very likely a preview of things to come, had she stayed any longer at the company).
  - JamesBarney 6y ago
    Probably "AI researcher was let go after threatening resignation" is probably the most accurate description. Also "AI researcher was let go after submitting resignation letter" is pretty close to accurate. But if we had to choose between "AI researcher resigned" and "AI research was fired" I think the first would give you a more accurate idea of questions like "did she submit a resignation letter" (yes), or "who initiated the break up" I feel resignation tells you she initiated it, which I think that is closer to the truth Google initiating it.
    - JamesBarney 6y ago
      Doing more research it looks like in many legal cases an ultimatum does count as a resignation letter if it's believed to be sincere.
    - 6y ago
temp667 6y ago
Do google employees actually do work or just rallies, protests and walkouts. Seriously, google staff are walking out / protesting / rallying behind stuff every week. How can you afford to pay 120,000 folks who seem to be focused on being outraged, striking and walking out all the time. I participated in a walkout ONCE when I was much younger, over an issue that was pretty clean cut (this was before me too, things had to go WAY WAY over the line - we'd call it a crime now - to get a walkout going). It was still a bit cheesy, but ... Do I have this right - a google employee doing public attacks against other google staff / how to apologize etc? And googlers want this kind of culture, where having a discussion get's you social media blasted? It just seems these cultures are getting very unhealthy. Why do this all working for google? Google must just have boatloads of cash to be able to afford this all. Do customers for GCP ever worry that some staff will protest what they are doing and take some kind of direct action?
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  The largest employee protests are driven by legitimate engagement, but there's a small core of Google employees who don't do work. One guy Tim Chevalier actually sued Google (https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/21/17038430/google-james-damore-memo-tim-chevalier-lawsuit-liberal-conservative-backlash https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/21/17038430/google-james-dam...), claiming that Google broke the law by telling him to do more work and less social activism.
- throwawaysea 6y ago
  It’s pretty much the same at all tech companies now - Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, etc. This is both because the companies are primarily located in far left cities but also because they are powerful institutions that committed extremist activists seek to take over and weaponize for their own causes. For many, the way these employee activists operate is in fact very unhealthy and distracting. But with leaders often letting these disruptive activities and ignoring the fact that these activists aren’t actually doing work on paid company time, it feels to the majority that they have no psychological safety to speak up. And so they remain silent while a vocal aggressive minority takes over.
ccmcarey 6y ago
She put out ultimatums and said she'd resign if they were not met, and G accepted her resignation. That's not a firing.
- throwaway2245 6y ago
  The way you have phrased it makes it a firing not a resignation, in my mind. "I will/would resign if" reserves her the right to resign; it does not have the same meaning as "I am resigning if" Compare to e.g.: https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/511062-trump-vaccine-official-i-would-resign-instantly-if-pressured-politically https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/511062-trump-vaccine-o... We can't take this ultimatum as a resignation.
  - justicezyx 6y ago
    That's not how company works... Any legal documents regarding business and money is very particular and wordy to let things clarified outside of courts.
cavisne 6y ago
It's truly wild these extremists are trying to cancel Jeff Dean at this point. If they succeed you should assume Google is dead, sell your stocks and backup your data.
- frongpik 6y ago
  They are more like fundamentalists, though, i.e. fanatics who equate non believers with enemies. Jeff not only has a monumental reputation and wealth, he's also under Brin's and Page's protection who own more than 50% of Google.
courtf 6y ago
Turns out, even Timnit Gebru, making ~500k a year researching AI ethics at Google, can still be fired. Turns out, Google would feed each and every one of their employees, feet first, into a giant wood-chipper if that was the most cost-effective, legal way of disposing of them. Turns out, the tech industry isn't really all that structurally different than any other industry. Ignore that pipe full of blood and guts y'all, none of those people were marginalized. Back to work!
- schoolornot 6y ago
  It’s not illegal for a company to marginalize someone for rocking the boat. I’ve worked with tons of people who have been relegated to basement offices or positions where they just “advise” but do nothing all day. Someone thought they had something left of value to add. Then they get a new boss or their current boss has enough and kicks them out.
  - courtf 6y ago
    Indeed! And even that outcome would be considered merciful from most other perspectives. On one hand, I'm glad that people are sensitive enough to at least pretend to care about this, but on the other hand, they're completely deluded about the nature of work, and the nature of their relationship to their employer. It must come as a shock when, after spending a decade in school and moving directly from a university dorm/cafeteria to a corporate one, all of a sudden they can just ask you to leave. Maybe Google should start charging tuition.
hintymad 6y ago
I'm curious why this is flagged. Isn't this topic about tech culture and dynamics in both tech companies and tech communities, which is legit per HN's guideline?
- dvtrn 6y ago
  Comments got spicy. Several of them. Understandably so. It's nuanced; nuance seems to be not much of a favorable flavor around these types of discussions. Instead of hitting the "hide" button and moving on since it doesn't interest them, it would seem flaggers would rather see the conversation nuked entirely.
rasengan0 6y ago
Any lawyers care to comment? Looks like it works both ways https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment
menomatter 6y ago
Can you share the leaked email?

166 points by boto3 6y ago

Companies can't straddle the line. They're either going to have to go all-in on diversity, inclusion, and politics, or they're going to have to clamp down hard like Brian Armstrong. Google needs to decide what it wants to be. Given its choices, I think it's clear what they want. They just need to say it. It'll help employees and potential employees know if they want to work there.

recursive 6y ago
If my company decides to "go all-in on diversity, inclusion, and politics", could there ever be any legitimate reason to fire an employee who's also "all-in on diversity, inclusion, and politics"?
- busterarm 6y ago
  When they try to illegally hire/not-hire people based on protected class, which if I read correctly is something she was pushing for. Forgive me if this is mischaracterized. I don't want to work anywhere that pushes any ideology so far that they break the law. That goes for if it's in pushing their bottom line as well, so regulatory gray-area companies like Uber & AirBnB are also a no-go for me.
  - thelock85 6y ago
    It is hard to find a reputable tech firm or startup that has not been publicly or internally accused of breaking a rule, regulation or law. It's engrained in the ideology of innovation.
    - busterarm 6y ago
      No. Innovation does not require law breaking. This is an opinion espoused by people who lack ethics. Tech firms and startups are just businesses. Breaking laws/regulations is not a requirement to operate a new business.
      - thelock85 6y ago
        I think we are saying the same thing. Though I’ll add that are a lot of people in positions of power openly running with that opinion at their tech firms, and that does influence ideals around tech innovation. Also running an ethical business goes far beyond adhering to rules and regulations, as many of them don’t currently penalize unethical practices.
- visarga 6y ago
  > could there ever be any legitimate reason to fire an employee who's also "all-in on diversity, inclusion, and politics" yes, plenty of reasons, you're part of a team, you got to work with the team or you're just using them
- apta 6y ago
  That's the entire reason behind it, if they fire a "diversity and inclusion" individual, the latter will just claim (racism, homophobia, transphobia, latest fad of the day)
sitkack 6y ago
Most companies want to appear to have a diversity of people who look different but have the same opinions and viewpoints as the rest of the group. What they should strive for is a diversity of backgrounds, viewpoints, experiences and have that process account for the differences in how those people arrived at where they currently are.
- lbotos 6y ago
  Do you have an example of a company that does the second well? As far as I understand, all companies need to have a pretty solid overlap of "common opinions" or else you are going to have political deadlock. If you have examples to the contrary I'm really curious to learn about how they worked.
- westwing 6y ago
  Most companies don't care about diversity of any kind for any reason besides PR. Every hiring manager knows that the most productive engineering teams are made up of 100% Asian cis-male Libertarians. Diversity in terms of measurable metrics, such as women/minorities/LGBT++ being adequately represented, is simply a benchmark that can be paraded around for appeasement purposes.
  - echelon 6y ago
    > Every hiring manager knows that the most productive engineering teams are made up of 100% Asian cis-male Libertarians. What the hell. How can you say that with a straight face? Of the two best engineers I know, one is is black and the other is trans. They're both 10x engineers.
    - westwing 6y ago
      > How can you say that with a straight face? I didn't. > They're both 10x engineers. https://medium.com/@yuval.idan5/the-10x-engineer-myth-is-wrong-but-its-also-sexist-8f003b738e41 https://medium.com/@yuval.idan5/the-10x-engineer-myth-is-wro... https://sparktoro.com/blog/belief-in-the-mythical-10x-hire-hurts-your-team/ https://sparktoro.com/blog/belief-in-the-mythical-10x-hire-h...
blackearl 6y ago
Companies will continue to straddle the line. It's why they'll have a rainbow twitter avatar then crush a union and lobby against higher wages.

pinewurst 6y ago

I'm tired of FAANG "rallies" where the numerator is such a small percentage of the denominator. I bet one could get "hundreds" of Google employees to rally behind a flat earth and many more for the abolition of mayonnaise.

p49k 6y ago
The numerator is such a small percentage because so many fear losing their jobs for speaking out. In that context, this number is quite significant. Even if you disagree with their stance, you have to admit that it takes courage to speak up in these kinds of situations.
- mam2 6y ago
  Or simply most people don't care... No one ever gets fired for just "rallying"
- bigphishy 6y ago
  That could be, although it is more than likely a small percentage because so many people do not agree with the cause.
  - deeviant 6y ago
    Oh maybe that don't give a fuck and just want their big check?
    - scarmig 6y ago
      Realistically, the majority just want this bad PR to go away and for Google to be better at preventing it from getting to this point.
- busterarm 6y ago
  Given the number of people I know who privately think that she resigned rather than got fired and similarly won't speak out (there's tons of internal threads talking about her being fired from what I can tell here), I think it actually is a small percentage.

king_magic 6y ago

After reading everything that has come out (e.g. her email) and her history of highly toxic Twitter behavior, I honestly can't blame Google for accepting her resignation (she was not fired).

jasonv 6y ago
There was something about the writing in her email that felt.. loaded and questionable without enough factual assertions to carry her point. In Jeff Dean's email, he made one point that could be pretty salient: she submitted the paper for approval right at deadline. If that's true, that is poorly handled. The ultimatum is easily a step too far. And all of this right before a vacation/holiday.
- kitsune_ 6y ago
  I mean the machiavellian interpretation looks like this to me: Google's AI in Ethics initiative is a PR exercise, similar to greenwashing and other models employed by big business. It fundamentally has to be, because large parts of the underlying business model at Google are based on unethical practices. By hiring researchers from underrepresented groups they additionally hoped to a) profit from the power imbalance of the relationship and b) co-opt parts of the social justice movement by having ethics research focus on issues that do not directly touch the bottom line. Now you have a researcher not towing the company line and being fired for it.
  - JamesBarney 6y ago
    I think Google genuinely wants their AI to be better in most of the same ways the ethic researchers want it to be better. I think Google is more willing to compromise on having an ethical AI to meet other goals and priorities than the researchers. Google probably also expects researchers who are publishing papers critical of Google to highlights Google's efforts to mitigate those issues.
- SAI_Peregrinus 6y ago
  > she submitted the paper for approval right at deadline. If that's true, that is poorly handled. That's not poorly handled on her part. If she'd submitted it late, that would be her problem. If getting a submission right at the last valid time to make a submission (the deadline) is an issue then it's a problem caused by whoever set the deadline, not the submitter.

oh_sigh 6y ago

There should be a bare minimum percentage of a company that "rallies behind X" before news articles are written on the subject. Google has just about 100,000 employees + 120,000 temps/contractors. If hundreds - lets say 500 employees - sign something (aka click a button), currently we're sitting at .2% of the company that feels a certain way. What other petitions could you get .2% of the company to sign onto? "Google staff rally behind overthrowing the US government to create a Marxist utopia" "Google staff rally behind mandatory veganism in the US" "Google staff rally behind anti-vaxxers" etc

dheera 6y ago

Ultimatums never work, and threatening to resign is never a good strategy (compared to either trying to amicably work things out OR just resigning). However Google's passive-aggressive response wasn't terribly great either ("We respect your decision to leave Google ... and we are accepting your resignation.") It's a firing packaged up as fake "respect". I wish both sides learned more about how to de-escalate situations.

baq 6y ago
or she just wanted to leave. perhaps causing some fuss was part of the plan, too. i'm not involved with google in any way except being their product and user of their services... but neither side inspires my confidence here.
jpttsn 6y ago
They could have written “we won’t meet your ultimatum but we don’t think you’ll resign like you threatened, so see you after vacation”. Would that be better?
- epinephrinios 6y ago
  Leadership needed to look firm and serious here. They needed to send a message that ultimatums will not be tolerated in this business.
- dheera 6y ago
  I mean, they could have just been upfront and said "We feel that at ultimatum is not an effective way to discuss this issue and so we are hereby terminating your employment effective today." No need for this passive-aggressive "respect your decision" [but didn't actually respectfully let you confirm your decision] bullshit.

samizdis 6y ago

Statement posted by staff, signed by many Googlers and also academics, industry experts etc: https://googlewalkout.medium.com/standing-with-dr-timnit-gebru-isupporttimnit-believeblackwomen-6dadc300d382 https://googlewalkout.medium.com/standing-with-dr-timnit-geb...

xibalba 6y ago
It looks like the majority of signees are not Googlers. Even if they were, their number would comprise a rounding error of Google's total head count.
epinephrinios 6y ago
Wish you could read the internal forums or Blind. Most of us are happy that we have one less bully in Google.

steve_g 6y ago

Does anyone have a link to the paper she was fired over? I've spent some time searching with no luck. I'd like to know what was technically controversial.

oh_sigh 6y ago
Saying she was fired over the paper is a leap without any evidence. It's possible her paper was perfectly benign, with minor issues, and she handled the response to the minor issues in a "we accept your resignation" kind of way. For an extreme example: I could say "I got tazed and arrested for doing 5 mph over the speed limit". That sounds insane. That cop should be fired and in jail! What I haven't told you is: I was doing 5 mph over the speed limit, and I was just going to get a warning from the cop, but I became combative and tried to physically fight the cop, at which point I got tazed and arrested. It's also possible she was fired for the paper. But she has published many papers while at Google without issue, so it would have to be something stunningly different than her previous papers.
visarga 6y ago
Just the abstract: https://old.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/k69eq0/n_the_abstract_of_the_paper_that_led_to_timnit/ https://old.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/k69eq0/n_t...
- jeffbee 6y ago
  This abstract doesn't really grab me by the frontal lobe. Is it possible the internal reviewers just thought the paper sucked?
uponcoffee 6y ago
As i understand it, she was supposed to submit to google for an internal review a fews prior to externally publishing it. She simultaneously submitted and published it, and Google sought a retraction after internal review. She met that with an ultimatum with do X or I'll quit. They took that as a resignation (as Google wasn't going to do X), and accepted it. I'm not fully informed about what she wanted, but I don't think it was particularly unreasonable, the controversy more has to do with headlines and spotlights about this person and her conduct/history in the past.

tmotwu 6y ago

It is unfortunate that way too many commenters on a prior threads dismissed her as a some twitter personality and trivialized her body of work in spite of the fact that she is well regarded and reputable in the ML community. It's becoming clear a rising number of her colleagues are in support of what she was seeking to publish. A reviewer on reddit mentioned the authors have plenty of time to make revisions if there were issues with the content. Not to mention, supposedly the internal reviewing processes are usually limited to the extent of sensitive disclosure and rarely the contents of the literature. Yet, emails from Google leadership seems to imply retraction was needed, providing very little reason. The opaqueness of the internal feedback and expectations are highly suspicious and I was suprised to see no one bothered to question it. People have been bringing up the 2 weeks, yet internal Brain researchers have refuted that have never seen a policy like this excercised. It does appear as an attempt to suppress an important paper that was critical of another colleagues work (BERT) and the employer's intended research goals. It's similar to the kind of pushback Greenwald most recently received - yet the reactions here have been distinctly flipsidded - in support towards Google executives no less and unsympathetic to the researcher.

epinephrinios 6y ago
She is just another toxic personality that is using her race (minority) as a free pass to bully colleagues.
elefanten 6y ago
Body of work aside, she absolutely is an aggressive-ranging-into-toxic Twitter personality and a very strident proponent of a divisive and dogmatic strain of diversity advocacy.
- minikites 6y ago
  When was the last time a marginalized group gained rights by asking politely?
  - dvtrn 6y ago
    Even when we do the response is quite often some form of "not like that" or the goalposts get moved back another 40 yards from the back of the endzone.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

unix_fan 6y ago

From what I’ve seen, it’s a pretty clear case of toxic workplace behavior. I’m not sure why the headlines are trying to be sympathetic.

brink 6y ago
Because the media isn't your friend. Inciting anger gets clicks.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
Because the article was written based primarily on Gebru's Twitter feed, which casts her in a sympathetic light. This is a common problem news organizations face these days; Twitter drama is an unreliable source, but it's so much faster than independent research that you almost have to use it sometimes.

baccheion 6y ago

They've been cycling BS at least 10 years now since I left. Some should face the inescapable truth: no one cares. Another year and it's the same BS without change. As is the plan. At the advent of anything, it won't matter. They'll just be some place. People want to work there still? Separate from just wanting to work (who wants to be unemployed)? Why? It was stupid to be that way as far back as 2003, as they had already IPO'd by then. Stupid like an idiot trying to buy once/since a stock started to surge upward. Stupid. Anything after is in a class by itself. I wonder how they are viewed among young people now. Both college students and those with 2 or so years of experience. Hmmm.. Maybe it's still the same.

contemporary343 6y ago

Google (and Google Brain in particular) benefited immensely from Gebru's work, and her being affiliated with them. This can be seen in how often they (including Jeff Dean) pointed to her work to show they were taking questions of fairness and bias in AI algorithms seriously. The flip side is that you have to respect the researcher, who frankly has more credibility than you do as an organization in this space. Even to corporate researchers, demanding (through an HR procedure? bizarre) the researchers retract a paper without a discussion or an opportunity to revise it (which is still possible since the paper is only in review!) is highly unusual. To do that to a researcher whose work you loudly (and seemingly proudly) advertise, is insulting to them and the broader team they hired. And to do it over not citing literature? Unheard of and clearly indicative of something else going on. This seems like some kind of turf war. You can read the abstract of the paper in question here - it is incredibly anodyne, though obviously does take a critical view of Google Brain's work (BERT in particular); https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/k69eq0/n_the_abstract_of_the_paper_that_led_to_timnit/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/k69eq0/n_t...

laretluval 6y ago
Presumably there would have been time for discussion if the paper had not been submitted a day before the deadline.
- contemporary343 6y ago
  There's still time for discussion! The paper's only in review and they would have had to make revisions anyway. I'd say it's the management that made an ultimatum to the research team.
  - seppel 6y ago
    > The paper's only in review You submit a final version for review. You cannot change a paper significantly after it was accepted.
  - ad404b8a372f2b9 6y ago

apta 6y ago

Why is this such an issue? She was fired for making a tantrum, move on.

martamorena9182 6y ago

I mean she resigned. She put conditions on her staying at the company. By accepting her resignation, Google simply stated: "We are not gonna comply with these conditions, therefore we accept your resignation". Let's focus the discussion around if that was a good or bad decision, to not comply with her conditions. She fired herself, there is no discussion around that.

throwawaygoog7 6y ago

Contrarian view. Some of these points can individually be refuted. As an outsider, here’s what it looks like: - you have an employee who (in her letter) hired attorneys to sue you. - you have an employee who was given an award for impact who openly mocks it and thinks it’s a joke, which detracts from culture - you have an employee who went on a Twitter tirade and send several pages of information teaching a leading person in your space how to apologize. Humiliating. - you have a paper of questionable quality that maybe needs more review and maybe doesn’t but at a minimum appears to be BERT related which could impact your business. It’s not unreasonable to want to look at it. - you have an employee whose tone is very aggressive. It seems reasonable you’d be apprehensive of working with her. It doesn’t seem googles point is to make a model that is biased towards any group, etc, so you should be on the same team? - you get a volley email which requires information (give me all the conversations you had) which could be used to publicly shame the head of a business unit (Jeff Dean) - the employee emails, says she’s going on vacation, and then expects you to be waiting for her when you get back I don’t know. It’s probably mixed. But it seems she’s well respected and given significant leeway. If we strip race and sex from this (if you can do that, perhaps it ruins it, but this is why this is a throwaway): this seems like a very high drama employee. Let’s say there was no hidden bogey man and we take Jeff at his word: more time was needed to give comments on the paper. From there, a) either paper is fine and she submits. Obviously the initial publication space for which she missed the internal review deadline is out, or B) if the paper is not fine and Google makes reasonable points to improve the quality, you incorporate them, then it’s published, or C) if the paper is not fine, but Google is making bogus claims to surpress you because of (in this thought experiment) some racial bias or business model conflict, then you can escalate internally or leave or fight in the media. The problem is you didn’t let a)/b)/c) play out. By jamming the list serve as a way to influence and over ride the internal system the employee is trying to circumvent the operation practice of the group and it undermines leadership. Note, I’m not claiming she is incorrect in her work being suppressed potentially. I’m just claiming if I was her manager my inner voice mental response would be: “shut the fuck up and stop being such a shit disturber. I was willing to work this out with you, even though you could have followed the normal process everyone else does, but now you created a company internal hurfuffle so I need to loop in MY manager (Jeff) and the last time you interacted with public exposure with someone of that high stature (the Twitter incident) you caused a highly abraisive outcome. Ugh. What do I do? Oh you resigned unless you publicly humiliate my boss? Yeah okay, let’s just accept that, I’m not being paid enough to baby sit you. I’m at Google brain to do ai research, not manage temper tantrums. Ok, so will talk to Jeff, tell the team you resigned to help you save face (which she spun btw, lol) and oh yeah we should probably shut off your devices to avoid more damage. This sucks. Ugh I wish that list serve and email to Jeff didn’t go out. “ That’s a jaded view. You can be potentially (or not) repressed and simultaneously an asshole. Would any of you want to work with someone like her? Who low key threatens your job or attempts to publicly humiliate you if she doesn’t get what she wants? Note, using a throw away because it’s too scary to post this publicly. Because I can’t judge what the “public consensus” is (and it seems to be changing), I can’t tell if the above is a 1/10 and like lunatic level, or 4/10 and highly offensive, or maybe a 6/10 and just highly insidious (by design). The bigger point is this incident shows how Twitter flames and self censor ship can perhaps make certain topics hard to discuss. Sorry if this was offensive. But the “HR policy drone” view seems otherwise underrepresented.

defertoreptar 6y ago

I was wondering if anyone knew enough to clarify a couple of things from this part of Dean's letter: > Unfortunately, this particular paper was only shared with a day’s notice before its deadline — we require two weeks for this sort of review — and then instead of awaiting reviewer feedback, it was approved for submission and submitted. There seems to be something between the lines here. How was it approved for submission? Did Gebru or one of the other authors approve it? And if so, would that be unusual? > 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 and were given feedback about why. It ignored too much relevant research — for example, it talked about the environmental impact of large models, but disregarded subsequent research showing much greater efficiencies. Similarly, it raised concerns about bias in language models, but didn’t take into account recent research to mitigate these issues. We acknowledge that the authors were extremely disappointed with the decision that Megan and I ultimately made, especially as they’d already submitted the paper. Does this contradict what Gebru has said so far? Didn't she say she wasn't given any feedback?

JamesBarney 6y ago
Part of her demand/resignation/not resignation letter was asking to know who specifically gave what feedback. So she said she was given the feedback, but she didn't know who the feedback was from.

jannes 6y ago

Can we just finally say that Google is evil now? Run as fast as you can. And take your data with you.

vfclists 6y ago

Jeff's response Hi everyone, I’m sure many of you have seen that Timnit Gebru is no longer working at Google. This is a difficult moment, especially given the important research topics she was involved in, and how deeply we care about responsible AI research as an org and as a company. Because there’s been a lot of speculation and misunderstanding on social media, I wanted to share more context about how this came to pass, and assure you we’re here to support you as you continue the research you’re all engaged in. Timnit co-authored a paper with four fellow Googlers as well as some external collaborators that needed to go through our review process (as is the case with all externally submitted papers). We’ve approved dozens of papers that Timnit and/or the other Googlers have authored and then published, but as you know, papers often require changes during the internal review process (or are even deemed unsuitable for submission). Unfortunately, this particular paper was only shared with a day’s notice before its deadline — we require two weeks for this sort of review — and then instead of awaiting reviewer feedback, it was approved for submission and submitted. 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 and were given feedback about why. It ignored too much relevant research — for example, it talked about the environmental impact of large models, but disregarded subsequent research showing much greater efficiencies. Similarly, it raised concerns about bias in language models, but didn’t take into account recent research to mitigate these issues. We acknowledge that the authors were extremely disappointed with the decision that Megan and I ultimately made, especially as they’d already submitted the paper. 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. Given Timnit's role as a respected researcher and a manager in our Ethical AI team, I feel badly that Timnit has gotten to a place where she feels this way about the work we’re doing. I also feel badly that hundreds of you received an email just this week from Timnit telling you to stop work on critical DEI programs. Please don’t. I understand the frustration about the pace of progress, but we have important work ahead and we need to keep at it. I know we all genuinely share Timnit’s passion to make AI more equitable and inclusive. No doubt, wherever she goes after Google, she’ll do great work and I look forward to reading her papers and seeing what she accomplishes. Thank you for reading and for all the important work you continue to do. -Jeff PS. I love Jeff so much I blogged him in the past - https://bit.ly/36FMHy9 https://bit.ly/36FMHy9

quattrofan 6y ago

That email she wrote is a jumbled almost unreadable mess and the moment "micro aggressions" was mentioned I turned off. There was a process, she went around it and lost her job. Not everything in life is bias, sometimes you are just an ass.

drewcoo 6y ago

Someone calling for a big corp to be ethical is branded toxic. Is this "toxic" the same thing that happened with "literally" a decade or so ago? Just checking to make sure my lexicon's up to date.

fasteddie 6y ago

It's just wild to me that HN commenters are predominantly starting the timeline at her resignation ultimatum, and not what prompted it. She was working on a known-to-all controversial research project, which was asked to be retracted via an anonymous feedback doc delivered via HR! That is a very screwed up thing to do. All reactions from her from that to me are totally justified.

cheese_van 6y ago

I don't fully understand the controversy and so take neither side. However, as I started in IT in in 84, it is curious to me that workforce culture has changed so. I recall the dourly suited IBM guys, all in lockstep, sharing identities, so to speak. One's role was well understood, and conforming to that role -conduct, performance, behavior- was very circumscribed and universally understood. Criticizing one's employer was possible within very defined circumstances, and always privately, but doing so in a public square was a sure route to termination. This seemed reasonable at the time. Has the relationship of employee/employer changed so?

temp667 6y ago
I think part of this is the FAANG companies have so much money they can afford to hire these huge quantities of folks to fight the company while getting paid by the company. No one else could afford to do this because it just wouldn't work business / productivity wise. The only other example is perhaps the govt which generally does fund people who then sue the govt around policies the govt adopts.
swalsh 6y ago
I think post WW2, there was this unwritten social agreement. The company took care of you, and you took care of the company. At some point that agreement was severed. Companies stopped being loyal to employees, and slowly employees have learned to stop being loyal to companies.
pseudalopex 6y ago
Do you consider an internal mailing list a public square? Researchers are used to having more freedom. IBM didn't pretend to be egalitarian and fun. And part of the controversy is Google firing her but characterizing it as accepting her resignation.
- lsaferite 6y ago
  Out of curiosity, if someone says "I quit unless you do X", and you reply with "Ok, I accept your resignation", has that person been fired?

ogre_codes 6y ago

She quit. The reason she quit is legitimate, but it's pretty clear that she quit here. If you say "I quit unless...", and they don't agree to the conditions—you've quit. If I'm running a business, I certainly have no use for an employee who has quit under fairly unfriendly conditions. I definitely wouldn't want someone who has quit spending another month or so using corporate resources for what is now their own personal agenda. I don't think Google is in the clear here either, but don't I think calling her a fired AI researcher is realistic. The story here is an AI researcher quit because Google wouldn't let her publish.

virgilp 6y ago
No, that's still "fired". Don't get me wrong, it's an entirely legitimate reason to fire someone - but one doesn't quit unless they actually submit the unconditional resignation. What she did was threaten to quit, and Google (rightfully, IMO) fired her as a consequence of that threat (plus previous email where she was advising colleagues to stop working on some company initiatives - that was very likely a preview of things to come, had she stayed any longer at the company).
- JamesBarney 6y ago
  Probably "AI researcher was let go after threatening resignation" is probably the most accurate description. Also "AI researcher was let go after submitting resignation letter" is pretty close to accurate. But if we had to choose between "AI researcher resigned" and "AI research was fired" I think the first would give you a more accurate idea of questions like "did she submit a resignation letter" (yes), or "who initiated the break up" I feel resignation tells you she initiated it, which I think that is closer to the truth Google initiating it.
  - JamesBarney 6y ago
    Doing more research it looks like in many legal cases an ultimatum does count as a resignation letter if it's believed to be sincere.
  - 6y ago

temp667 6y ago

Do google employees actually do work or just rallies, protests and walkouts. Seriously, google staff are walking out / protesting / rallying behind stuff every week. How can you afford to pay 120,000 folks who seem to be focused on being outraged, striking and walking out all the time. I participated in a walkout ONCE when I was much younger, over an issue that was pretty clean cut (this was before me too, things had to go WAY WAY over the line - we'd call it a crime now - to get a walkout going). It was still a bit cheesy, but ... Do I have this right - a google employee doing public attacks against other google staff / how to apologize etc? And googlers want this kind of culture, where having a discussion get's you social media blasted? It just seems these cultures are getting very unhealthy. Why do this all working for google? Google must just have boatloads of cash to be able to afford this all. Do customers for GCP ever worry that some staff will protest what they are doing and take some kind of direct action?

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
The largest employee protests are driven by legitimate engagement, but there's a small core of Google employees who don't do work. One guy Tim Chevalier actually sued Google (https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/21/17038430/google-james-damore-memo-tim-chevalier-lawsuit-liberal-conservative-backlash https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/21/17038430/google-james-dam...), claiming that Google broke the law by telling him to do more work and less social activism.
throwawaysea 6y ago
It’s pretty much the same at all tech companies now - Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, etc. This is both because the companies are primarily located in far left cities but also because they are powerful institutions that committed extremist activists seek to take over and weaponize for their own causes. For many, the way these employee activists operate is in fact very unhealthy and distracting. But with leaders often letting these disruptive activities and ignoring the fact that these activists aren’t actually doing work on paid company time, it feels to the majority that they have no psychological safety to speak up. And so they remain silent while a vocal aggressive minority takes over.

ccmcarey 6y ago

She put out ultimatums and said she'd resign if they were not met, and G accepted her resignation. That's not a firing.

throwaway2245 6y ago
The way you have phrased it makes it a firing not a resignation, in my mind. "I will/would resign if" reserves her the right to resign; it does not have the same meaning as "I am resigning if" Compare to e.g.: https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/511062-trump-vaccine-official-i-would-resign-instantly-if-pressured-politically https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/511062-trump-vaccine-o... We can't take this ultimatum as a resignation.
- justicezyx 6y ago
  That's not how company works... Any legal documents regarding business and money is very particular and wordy to let things clarified outside of courts.

cavisne 6y ago

It's truly wild these extremists are trying to cancel Jeff Dean at this point. If they succeed you should assume Google is dead, sell your stocks and backup your data.

frongpik 6y ago
They are more like fundamentalists, though, i.e. fanatics who equate non believers with enemies. Jeff not only has a monumental reputation and wealth, he's also under Brin's and Page's protection who own more than 50% of Google.

courtf 6y ago

Turns out, even Timnit Gebru, making ~500k a year researching AI ethics at Google, can still be fired. Turns out, Google would feed each and every one of their employees, feet first, into a giant wood-chipper if that was the most cost-effective, legal way of disposing of them. Turns out, the tech industry isn't really all that structurally different than any other industry. Ignore that pipe full of blood and guts y'all, none of those people were marginalized. Back to work!

schoolornot 6y ago
It’s not illegal for a company to marginalize someone for rocking the boat. I’ve worked with tons of people who have been relegated to basement offices or positions where they just “advise” but do nothing all day. Someone thought they had something left of value to add. Then they get a new boss or their current boss has enough and kicks them out.
- courtf 6y ago
  Indeed! And even that outcome would be considered merciful from most other perspectives. On one hand, I'm glad that people are sensitive enough to at least pretend to care about this, but on the other hand, they're completely deluded about the nature of work, and the nature of their relationship to their employer. It must come as a shock when, after spending a decade in school and moving directly from a university dorm/cafeteria to a corporate one, all of a sudden they can just ask you to leave. Maybe Google should start charging tuition.

hintymad 6y ago

I'm curious why this is flagged. Isn't this topic about tech culture and dynamics in both tech companies and tech communities, which is legit per HN's guideline?

dvtrn 6y ago
Comments got spicy. Several of them. Understandably so. It's nuanced; nuance seems to be not much of a favorable flavor around these types of discussions. Instead of hitting the "hide" button and moving on since it doesn't interest them, it would seem flaggers would rather see the conversation nuked entirely.

rasengan0 6y ago

Any lawyers care to comment? Looks like it works both ways https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment

menomatter 6y ago

Can you share the leaked email?