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Here's why I have absolutely no sympathy for Google in this situation. They hired Gebru as a professional thorn in their side. "Come up in here and be a pain i

by jpm_sd 6y ago

Here's why I have absolutely no sympathy for Google in this situation. They hired Gebru as a professional thorn in their side. "Come up in here and be a pain in the ass! Tell us what we're doing wrong!", they said. "We're Enlightened Corporate America, after all!" She is a chess piece in the game of Wokeness Street Cred. She then proceeded to do the job she was hired for, and now they're all "Hey lady, Here At Google that's not how we do things". That said, as a manager, I would have "accepted her resignation" and/or fired her without hesitation.

ghaff 6y ago
I don't really have a perspective on this particular case. But yeah. "Companies" (really senior people within those companies) hire people who are known in their field, bring an outside perspective, have an independent voice, etc. And then those people (or perhaps different senior people) get unhappy when the individual who was hired doesn't go through channels or otherwise toe the party line. Either both sides find a middle ground by some combination of putting certain opinions in a box and choosing to ignore the use of channels or messages outside of official guidelines--or you part ways. I have some experience with this. Not to nearly the same degree. But I had something of a tiff with an exec my second day on the job in a prior role.
Wowfunhappy 6y ago
I'm less cynical about this as a concept. Would you feel differently if, say, Apple hired a "Privacy Watchdog", with a long history of activism on the topic? Someone you could trust to speak out if something was amiss. If the person is later fired, that's a sign that something is wrong at the company. But if they stay, and have generally good things to say, that's a sign the company can be trusted. I do think this is a good system!
- ghaff 6y ago
  It's a difficult type of role. See the NYT getting rid of its public editor/ombudsman.[1] I'd actually have trouble seeing Apple hiring someone like that given how tightly they control external messaging/speaking/etc. It's really hard for execs, including but not limited to PR, to have worked really hard on getting some message/narrative accepted by the media/analysts/etc. and then have a high profile employee on social media or in a major publication saying it's sort of B.S. even as an occasional thing. ADDED: It doesn't make it "right" for them to storm into their boss' office and demand said person be fired but it is at least an understandable human reaction. I think anyone who takes that kind of role has to understand they'll be a lightning rod, feel passionate about it anyway, and understand they may well eventually set off a tripwire and be fired in a very public and humiliating way. [1] https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-the-new-york-times-fired-its-public-editor-in-favor-of-a-reader-center https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-the-new-york-times-fired-i...
  - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
    > I think anyone who takes that kind of role has to understand they'll be a lightning rod, feel passionate about it anyway, and understand they may well eventually set off a tripwire and be fired in a very public and humiliating way. Oh, absolutely—that’s practically a part of their job description!
  - derbOac 6y ago
    And yet here everyone is, discussing whether or not Google is secretly racist, with protest petitions involving 1000s of signatures. I had never heard of the name of Gebru before but now I have. I'm not meaning to take sides here, and I think what you're saying needs to be kept in mind in understanding this, but it's hard for me personally at least to not see this in terms of some diversity-speech Streisand effect.
- albntomat0 6y ago
  I think that works if there's a clear way to distinguish the hypothetical privacy watchdog leaving/getting fired due to issues with the privacy program, versus leaving/getting fired for other reasons. Making that distinction, imo, seems to be the core disagreement with the current Google issue, at least among all of us commenting on the outside.
  - zepto 6y ago
    It seems like that is always going to be a problem, since if the person is getting fired critiquing the thing they are there to critique, the company will always have a huge incentive to present another explanation.
    - albntomat0 6y ago
      I think we agree on the difficulty here. I believe the reverse is also true: if the person is fired for a legitimate, non-watchdog reason, they have an incentive to say the firing was due to them bring up privacy/ethics concerns.
      - chishaku 6y ago
        believe Google vs believe a solitary worker (female, black, known political agenda)
        alisonkisk 6y ago
        What's your point? Jeff Dean is a solitary worker (male, white, known political agenda).
        pinewurst 6y ago
        What is his political agenda then, if you know it? (Possession/absence of Y chromosome/melanin does not constitute such.)
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  This is probably like hiring the EFF (by Apple) to help with privacy ethics, it is 100% guaranteed that they'd be fired in time :) . EFF are idealists, Apple is a pragmatist, so eventually they would part ways, it's inevitable. Hopefully google and she both learned something from it.
nathanlied 6y ago
Agreed; but this isn't just a Google problem. Seems to me like a lot of SF (and SF-inspired) "big tech" wants to be known for their "wokeness"[1], which leads to hires like Timnit and other "politically-outspoken" people, which in turn leads to situations like this, James Damore, and other individuals/situations that amount to workplace political activism. I am wholly uncomfortable with any discussion of politics in a workplace environment like a mailing list. I am more than fine with employees choosing to associate politically outside the workplace and workplace spaces, no matter how radical I find their views. This is in itself political - it supports the status quo - but anything else is inviting dissent and combativeness, and situations like these will keep happening. That said, I've not seen the email outlining her conditions "or else", but I feel I'd have very much taken the same stance as you, given the surrounding coverage of what was in that email. Ultimatums to your employer don't often go well. And perhaps this is a good thing for her, because she may leave for a place that better suits her. - [1] my derisive use of this term does not stem from actual efforts at inclusiveness, those are good, but from surface-level attempts at it that end up feeling performative, at best.
- kenjackson 6y ago
  The problem here is that AI and race now intersect in non trivial ways. It’s like having privacy as political discourse when you are scanning emails for marketing purposes. There’s a line at which not having the discussion is equivalent to taking a political stance.
  - chishaku 6y ago
    This. And since certain companies/industries pose a certain "systemic risk," failing to self-regulate might lead to external regulation later. For example, legislation on AI, predictive models, and facial recognition in policing. Who knows, we could see limits on the use of imperfect models in other areas. After all, there is no "market solution" for ethics. https://mathbabe.org/2013/11/12/there-is-no-market-solution-for-ethics/ https://mathbabe.org/2013/11/12/there-is-no-market-solution-...
  - tilolebo 6y ago
DangerousPie 6y ago
I agree with this in part, but I think there is a difference between "tell us what we're doing wrong" and "send emails to mailing lists telling our employees to lobby congress against us". Plus the whole setting an ultimatum thing.
derangedHorse 6y ago
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.
- UncleMeat 6y ago
  > 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.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - lukeramsden 6y ago
    > 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.
  - JamesBarney 6y ago
    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.
vmception 6y ago
Anybody that publicly says their corporation is gaslighting them won’t be staying at that corporation It doesn’t matter the topic that’s the outcome Not to mention healthier for everyone involved Google employees are way too comfortable with that message board they have over there
itronitron 6y ago
If you would fire someone for doing what they were hired to do then maybe you should reflect on whether you are in fact a manager.
bradleyjg 6y ago
> Here's why I have absolutely no sympathy for Google in this situation. Abstract away from the particular goal here, the problem itself is difficult and interesting. How can the leader of a large organization change the organization’s culture?
- nonfamous 6y ago
  Nadella famously did it at Microsoft, but I don’t know exactly how. It would be fascinating to read a book on just that topic.
  - sangeeth96 6y ago
    ICYDK, Nadella wrote a book on this and more: "Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft's Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone". Really good read.
  - gundmc 6y ago
    Question for Microsoft employees: does it feel as if Satya changed the internal work culture at MS or has it been more about public perception and less about on the ground culture change?
    - int_19h 6y ago
      IMO, he really did, but it was ripe for a change in any case - what we needed was leadership that realized the need for it, and would clearly and unambiguously greenlight the critical mass of proponents on lower managerial levels (where those things actually get done); Satya provided exactly that. But I don't know whether this is translatable to, or even applicable to, Google.
guantanamo_bob 6y ago
It’s classic tokenism: invite a minority to the table but don’t let them speak.
JPKab 6y ago
Such an excellent point. Hiring activists is fine, unless your ACTUAL mission is profit vs whatever utopian vision (sometimes worthy, usually delusional) the activist is going for.
stjohnswarts 6y ago
The problem is she made some higher up angry and they said to fire her post haste. I think this is all being blown out of proportion. If she had been professional she wouldn't have put in an ultimatum, if google would have been professional google would have said "hol' up, no firing, let's communicate on this". So as usual both sides were wrong and unwilling to be adults.
mam2 6y ago
I mean she did not HAVE to make an ultimatum. Real change takes hard work and time, and patience, and also playing politics with powerful people you dont like. Sounds like she basically made a one sided hit piece which was against the work some teams of brain, and took the "my way or the highway" approach. That wasn't so smart from her either...
- int_19h 6y ago
  Playing politics can take many different ways, and creating a scandal to draw attention can also be very efficient.
  - mam2 6y ago
    We'll see.. but minority activists have a tendency to use drama and twitter outrage a lot. But if you take the minority part, google has a point: as a manager, she had a setback. Now instead of sucking it up and maybe wait for the next submission deadline and modify her article, she went and complain its discrimination on a internal mailing list of employees and then making ultimatums. :roll-eye: Any manager would have been fired. Its only a special situation because she's black and work on ethics. Its privilege actually, more than discrimination here.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> That said, as a manager, I would have "accepted her resignation" and/or fired her without hesitation. Her manager, however, apparently would not have: https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=3469738016467233&id=100002932057665&comment_id=3470470943060607&notif_t=mentions_comment&notif_id=1607192244022022&ref=m_notif https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=3469738016467233... Something is seriously wrong, BTW, when a manager has to find out from their own ex-employee that that employee has been fired by the manager’s manager, who, while not informing the manager, has sent a message about it to the fired employee’s direct reports. Irrespective of the merits of the firing itself.
- amscanne 6y ago
  It’s not clear that’s how they found out. The post just says that they were stunned by “what happened”. If someone offers their resignation to their skip manager or some other manager in their chain, it’s not surprising that they might accept it without consulting that employee’s manager.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > It’s not clear that’s how they found out. Yeah, that bit wasn't from the managers FB post but elsewhere.
danielheath 6y ago
She had been doing that job for awhile. IMO the reason this particular paper got the treatment it did is subtle but simple, based on the following observations: * Many jurisdictions impose strict controls on the use of racially biased methods (eg: redline laws like the fair housing act in the US). * Different advertising companies have access to different targeting methods (eg facebook has your social graph, apple have your app use, google have your search history). * Language models are a key technology for google to maintain advertising relevance & thus keep adwords competitive "Models trained on modern language reflect societal biases" may seem like an obvious fact, but once google says it publicly they no longer have a basis to deny it in court.
- johnzabroski 6y ago
  What do you do for a living?

by jpm_sd 6y ago

ghaff 6y ago

I don't really have a perspective on this particular case. But yeah. "Companies" (really senior people within those companies) hire people who are known in their field, bring an outside perspective, have an independent voice, etc. And then those people (or perhaps different senior people) get unhappy when the individual who was hired doesn't go through channels or otherwise toe the party line. Either both sides find a middle ground by some combination of putting certain opinions in a box and choosing to ignore the use of channels or messages outside of official guidelines--or you part ways. I have some experience with this. Not to nearly the same degree. But I had something of a tiff with an exec my second day on the job in a prior role.

Wowfunhappy 6y ago

I'm less cynical about this as a concept. Would you feel differently if, say, Apple hired a "Privacy Watchdog", with a long history of activism on the topic? Someone you could trust to speak out if something was amiss. If the person is later fired, that's a sign that something is wrong at the company. But if they stay, and have generally good things to say, that's a sign the company can be trusted. I do think this is a good system!

ghaff 6y ago
It's a difficult type of role. See the NYT getting rid of its public editor/ombudsman.[1] I'd actually have trouble seeing Apple hiring someone like that given how tightly they control external messaging/speaking/etc. It's really hard for execs, including but not limited to PR, to have worked really hard on getting some message/narrative accepted by the media/analysts/etc. and then have a high profile employee on social media or in a major publication saying it's sort of B.S. even as an occasional thing. ADDED: It doesn't make it "right" for them to storm into their boss' office and demand said person be fired but it is at least an understandable human reaction. I think anyone who takes that kind of role has to understand they'll be a lightning rod, feel passionate about it anyway, and understand they may well eventually set off a tripwire and be fired in a very public and humiliating way. [1] https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-the-new-york-times-fired-its-public-editor-in-favor-of-a-reader-center https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-the-new-york-times-fired-i...
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  > I think anyone who takes that kind of role has to understand they'll be a lightning rod, feel passionate about it anyway, and understand they may well eventually set off a tripwire and be fired in a very public and humiliating way. Oh, absolutely—that’s practically a part of their job description!
- derbOac 6y ago
  And yet here everyone is, discussing whether or not Google is secretly racist, with protest petitions involving 1000s of signatures. I had never heard of the name of Gebru before but now I have. I'm not meaning to take sides here, and I think what you're saying needs to be kept in mind in understanding this, but it's hard for me personally at least to not see this in terms of some diversity-speech Streisand effect.
albntomat0 6y ago
I think that works if there's a clear way to distinguish the hypothetical privacy watchdog leaving/getting fired due to issues with the privacy program, versus leaving/getting fired for other reasons. Making that distinction, imo, seems to be the core disagreement with the current Google issue, at least among all of us commenting on the outside.
- zepto 6y ago
  It seems like that is always going to be a problem, since if the person is getting fired critiquing the thing they are there to critique, the company will always have a huge incentive to present another explanation.
  - albntomat0 6y ago
    I think we agree on the difficulty here. I believe the reverse is also true: if the person is fired for a legitimate, non-watchdog reason, they have an incentive to say the firing was due to them bring up privacy/ethics concerns.
    - chishaku 6y ago
      believe Google vs believe a solitary worker (female, black, known political agenda)
      - alisonkisk 6y ago
        What's your point? Jeff Dean is a solitary worker (male, white, known political agenda).
        pinewurst 6y ago
        What is his political agenda then, if you know it? (Possession/absence of Y chromosome/melanin does not constitute such.)
stjohnswarts 6y ago
This is probably like hiring the EFF (by Apple) to help with privacy ethics, it is 100% guaranteed that they'd be fired in time :) . EFF are idealists, Apple is a pragmatist, so eventually they would part ways, it's inevitable. Hopefully google and she both learned something from it.

nathanlied 6y ago

Agreed; but this isn't just a Google problem. Seems to me like a lot of SF (and SF-inspired) "big tech" wants to be known for their "wokeness"[1], which leads to hires like Timnit and other "politically-outspoken" people, which in turn leads to situations like this, James Damore, and other individuals/situations that amount to workplace political activism. I am wholly uncomfortable with any discussion of politics in a workplace environment like a mailing list. I am more than fine with employees choosing to associate politically outside the workplace and workplace spaces, no matter how radical I find their views. This is in itself political - it supports the status quo - but anything else is inviting dissent and combativeness, and situations like these will keep happening. That said, I've not seen the email outlining her conditions "or else", but I feel I'd have very much taken the same stance as you, given the surrounding coverage of what was in that email. Ultimatums to your employer don't often go well. And perhaps this is a good thing for her, because she may leave for a place that better suits her. - [1] my derisive use of this term does not stem from actual efforts at inclusiveness, those are good, but from surface-level attempts at it that end up feeling performative, at best.

kenjackson 6y ago
The problem here is that AI and race now intersect in non trivial ways. It’s like having privacy as political discourse when you are scanning emails for marketing purposes. There’s a line at which not having the discussion is equivalent to taking a political stance.
- chishaku 6y ago
  This. And since certain companies/industries pose a certain "systemic risk," failing to self-regulate might lead to external regulation later. For example, legislation on AI, predictive models, and facial recognition in policing. Who knows, we could see limits on the use of imperfect models in other areas. After all, there is no "market solution" for ethics. https://mathbabe.org/2013/11/12/there-is-no-market-solution-for-ethics/ https://mathbabe.org/2013/11/12/there-is-no-market-solution-...
- tilolebo 6y ago

DangerousPie 6y ago

I agree with this in part, but I think there is a difference between "tell us what we're doing wrong" and "send emails to mailing lists telling our employees to lobby congress against us". Plus the whole setting an ultimatum thing.

derangedHorse 6y ago

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.

UncleMeat 6y ago
> 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.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- lukeramsden 6y ago
  > 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.
- JamesBarney 6y ago
  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.

vmception 6y ago

Anybody that publicly says their corporation is gaslighting them won’t be staying at that corporation It doesn’t matter the topic that’s the outcome Not to mention healthier for everyone involved Google employees are way too comfortable with that message board they have over there

itronitron 6y ago

If you would fire someone for doing what they were hired to do then maybe you should reflect on whether you are in fact a manager.

bradleyjg 6y ago

> Here's why I have absolutely no sympathy for Google in this situation. Abstract away from the particular goal here, the problem itself is difficult and interesting. How can the leader of a large organization change the organization’s culture?

nonfamous 6y ago
Nadella famously did it at Microsoft, but I don’t know exactly how. It would be fascinating to read a book on just that topic.
- sangeeth96 6y ago
  ICYDK, Nadella wrote a book on this and more: "Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft's Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone". Really good read.
- gundmc 6y ago
  Question for Microsoft employees: does it feel as if Satya changed the internal work culture at MS or has it been more about public perception and less about on the ground culture change?
  - int_19h 6y ago
    IMO, he really did, but it was ripe for a change in any case - what we needed was leadership that realized the need for it, and would clearly and unambiguously greenlight the critical mass of proponents on lower managerial levels (where those things actually get done); Satya provided exactly that. But I don't know whether this is translatable to, or even applicable to, Google.

guantanamo_bob 6y ago

It’s classic tokenism: invite a minority to the table but don’t let them speak.

JPKab 6y ago

Such an excellent point. Hiring activists is fine, unless your ACTUAL mission is profit vs whatever utopian vision (sometimes worthy, usually delusional) the activist is going for.

stjohnswarts 6y ago

The problem is she made some higher up angry and they said to fire her post haste. I think this is all being blown out of proportion. If she had been professional she wouldn't have put in an ultimatum, if google would have been professional google would have said "hol' up, no firing, let's communicate on this". So as usual both sides were wrong and unwilling to be adults.

mam2 6y ago

I mean she did not HAVE to make an ultimatum. Real change takes hard work and time, and patience, and also playing politics with powerful people you dont like. Sounds like she basically made a one sided hit piece which was against the work some teams of brain, and took the "my way or the highway" approach. That wasn't so smart from her either...

int_19h 6y ago
Playing politics can take many different ways, and creating a scandal to draw attention can also be very efficient.
- mam2 6y ago
  We'll see.. but minority activists have a tendency to use drama and twitter outrage a lot. But if you take the minority part, google has a point: as a manager, she had a setback. Now instead of sucking it up and maybe wait for the next submission deadline and modify her article, she went and complain its discrimination on a internal mailing list of employees and then making ultimatums. :roll-eye: Any manager would have been fired. Its only a special situation because she's black and work on ethics. Its privilege actually, more than discrimination here.

dragonwriter 6y ago

> That said, as a manager, I would have "accepted her resignation" and/or fired her without hesitation. Her manager, however, apparently would not have: https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=3469738016467233&id=100002932057665&comment_id=3470470943060607&notif_t=mentions_comment&notif_id=1607192244022022&ref=m_notif https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=3469738016467233... Something is seriously wrong, BTW, when a manager has to find out from their own ex-employee that that employee has been fired by the manager’s manager, who, while not informing the manager, has sent a message about it to the fired employee’s direct reports. Irrespective of the merits of the firing itself.

amscanne 6y ago
It’s not clear that’s how they found out. The post just says that they were stunned by “what happened”. If someone offers their resignation to their skip manager or some other manager in their chain, it’s not surprising that they might accept it without consulting that employee’s manager.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > It’s not clear that’s how they found out. Yeah, that bit wasn't from the managers FB post but elsewhere.

danielheath 6y ago

She had been doing that job for awhile. IMO the reason this particular paper got the treatment it did is subtle but simple, based on the following observations: * Many jurisdictions impose strict controls on the use of racially biased methods (eg: redline laws like the fair housing act in the US). * Different advertising companies have access to different targeting methods (eg facebook has your social graph, apple have your app use, google have your search history). * Language models are a key technology for google to maintain advertising relevance & thus keep adwords competitive "Models trained on modern language reflect societal biases" may seem like an obvious fact, but once google says it publicly they no longer have a basis to deny it in court.

johnzabroski 6y ago
What do you do for a living?