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I have no idea why this matters. Timnit gave an ultimatum (i.e. do this or I'll leave). Google agreed to her condition of parting way. This is like I go to my

I have no idea why this matters. Timnit gave an ultimatum (i.e. do this or I'll leave). Google agreed to her condition of parting way. This is like I go to my boss and ask for a $1 billion dollars. Otherwise, I'll leave. Then, my boss decides that I should leave since the boss can't give me $1b. Then, I keep telling my friends that "well, I'm actually fired.". huh?

thinkingemote 6y ago
I understand it as the issue is whether this was constructive dismissal, a form of firing where the employee is forced to resign. Not sure if constructive dismissal is a thing in the US but it is in the UK.
- themaninthedark 6y ago
  She did not have to say she was going to resign if her conditions were not met, she choose to do that. The company chose not to meet her conditions.
GVIrish 6y ago
She gave a set of conditions and stated that if they couldn't be met, that she would work with Google to schedule a resignation date. Google then cut off her corporate access and terminated her employment immediately, ergo, firing. If someone says, do this or I'll jump, and the other person pushes them, that's not the same thing as the person taking the leap on their own. The result might be the same, but the way the result was reached was different.
- crusso 6y ago
  As someone who just learned about this kerfuffle a few minutes ago, that doesn't make sense to claim that she was fired. If you offer to resign if new conditions of employment aren't met and the company accepts your resignation without honoring your exact terms of schedule, it sounds like you largely were responsible for terminating your own employment. Claiming that you were "immediately fired" as she tweeted just sounds dishonest to me.
  - andrewprock 6y ago
    The GP illustration of jumping it being pushed is quite apt. Your comment suggests that if someone threatened to jump under certain circumstances but was instead pushed you would be ok with that. This isn't just a framing. She was fired. Now you may say "she was asking for it" but that doesn't change the fact that she was fired.
    - crusso 6y ago
      No, the jump/push analogy is too contorted to be meaningful. Employers and employees have a relationship that has processes that have common meanings and names like "resigned" or "fired". There's no accepted relationship if you push someone threatening to jump. You're just an a-hole committing assault and possibly murder. Is there a link to the letter that she sent? That could help to clarify.
      - ergocoder 6y ago
        There is. You probably can Google for it. The demand is something around exposing the identities of the peers who reviewed and rejected her paper. If Google doesn't give her the identities of those peers, she say she will leave the company. Comparing to suicide is a bit much though. When considering death, everything else becomes secondary, so we can't use that analogy for comparison.
        andrewprock 6y ago
        The push/jump illustration holds just as well if you are at the edge of a pool. You don't need death on the line to understand the difference between who is making the decision.
        ergocoder 6y ago
        "If you eat dinner today, I'll commit suicide." - I'll probably skip dinner to save life. "If you eat dinner today, I'll quit my job" - then, I'll probably tell person that they can quit their job. I'm not gonna skip my dinner for that. I hope this illustrates that, when death is involved, everything else becomes secondary, and we prioritize not death over everything. So, it's a bad analogy to use in Timnit's situation where she will quit if she doesn't get to see the identities of peer reviewers. This situation is not life and death.
- themaninthedark 6y ago
  Someone says they will quit noon tomorrow if you don't meet their demands. You will not meet their demands. You tell them not to bother coming in tomorrow and disable their security badge, did you fire them? They made the decision they did not want to work for you as had been previously agreed. You only changed the timetable. To put this another way, if I tell my company that I will be quitting in 2 weeks and they tell me not to bother coming back to the office, did they fire me? I would not say they did.
  - GVIrish 6y ago
    So this gets into nuance and I will preface this with, we don't know what her email specifically said. If you give your company a date for the cessation of your employment, that is giving notice. If you say I "will resign if", is saying that you will do something in the unspecified future. So if you give your two weeks notice you have formally turned in your resignation. In your example I would agree that they just changed the timetable. If you haven't given your notice, and they terminate your employment citing an email you sent, you have been fired. By all accounts she didn't submit her resignation, she simply said that she would. Sometimes situations like that result in the person getting cold feet, or the two parties working out a compromise. Maybe things would've always ended up the same way, but either way Google didn't wait for her to actually resign.
    - thisiszilff 6y ago
      From what I've gathered the contents of the email were largely like "Either we do XYZ or we can work towards setting a date where I leave the company." So it is open to interpretation and vague enough that both sides can get their interpretation in. The way I phrase it to myself is that she was fired for threatening to resign. IE, that relationship wasn't good to begin with and this was just the last straw that pushed them to severing it. I suspect that people who try to claim she was fired/that she resigned don't focus enough on the broader context where that relationship was bad in the first place. This doesn't seem like it was something out of the blue, this has definitely been going on for a bit, so given that, which party took it over the line to breaking up their employment relationship seems like a detail rather than an important fact.
- cbozeman 6y ago
  She wasn't immediately fired, her resignation was immediately accepted. Difference.
- ergocoder 6y ago
  > Google then cut off her corporate access and terminated her employment immediately, ergo, firing. It's also unreasonable that she will get to choose her leaving date at her own liking. When wanting to part way, either side has the full right to choose an earlier date. > If someone says, do this or I'll jump This is not a great analogy. I actually would go as far as saying people who use this analogy have malicious intent. When death is involved, everything else becomes secondary. Let's look at a small example. Say I'll commit suicide if you go and see your kids today. Now it's only one day, and you (as a decent person) will probably skip seeing your kids for one day to save one life. Now if I say I'll quit my job if you go to see your kids today. You would probably say "Then, please quit."
  - GVIrish 6y ago
    > It's also unreasonable that she will get to choose her leaving date at her own liking. When wanting to part way, either side has the full right to choose an earlier date. People choose their end date all the time. That's just standard. Sometimes the company moves a date up, sometimes the two parties negotiate a different date for some reason, sometimes people are fired. If it's an at-will employment state, both parties can choose whatever date they like. But if the employer terminates employment early, that's generally a firing. If an employment does so, we call it quitting. > Let's look at a small example. Say I'll commit suicide if you go and see your kids today. Now it's only one day, and you (as a decent person) will probably skip seeing your kids for one day to save one life. > Now if I say I'll quit my job if you go to see your kids today. You would probably say "Then, please quit." Use whatever analogy works for you, ultimately the point is the same. Someone can threaten to do something, but if you do it for them it's different than if they do it themselves. If someone says "I'll quit" and the company disables their badge and security escorts them out, they've been fired.
    - ergocoder 6y ago
      > People choose their end date all the time. That is absolutely false. Either side has the full right to choose an earlier date. You can choose an earlier date to leave. Company can also choose an earlier date for you to leave. > If someone says "I'll quit" and the company disables their badge and security escorts them out, they've been fired Do you expect to choose your exit date at your own liking at any date at your comfort? We can agree to disagree. Saying you're fired when you actually give the ultimatum seems dishonest. I thought Timnit was supposed to be a role model of high ethics.
Jabbles 6y ago
> This is like I go to my boss and ask for a $1 billion dollars. How about if you go to your boss and demand that the racial discrimination you're experiencing stops? Since we don't have the original email, we can't tell. But I bet it's closer to my example than yours.
- Nimitz14 6y ago
  Lol sure that must be why she hasn't published it. /s
- bagacrap 6y ago
  I don't think there's debate about what her depends were. They were very concrete and referred to the paper review process.
sib 6y ago
Exactly. Employee: "If you don't fire my manager and give me a $1M bonus, I'm resigning, date to be confirmed." Company: "Ummmm, no. Thanks for resigning, let's make that date today."

thinkingemote 6y ago

I understand it as the issue is whether this was constructive dismissal, a form of firing where the employee is forced to resign. Not sure if constructive dismissal is a thing in the US but it is in the UK.

themaninthedark 6y ago
She did not have to say she was going to resign if her conditions were not met, she choose to do that. The company chose not to meet her conditions.

GVIrish 6y ago

She gave a set of conditions and stated that if they couldn't be met, that she would work with Google to schedule a resignation date. Google then cut off her corporate access and terminated her employment immediately, ergo, firing. If someone says, do this or I'll jump, and the other person pushes them, that's not the same thing as the person taking the leap on their own. The result might be the same, but the way the result was reached was different.

crusso 6y ago
As someone who just learned about this kerfuffle a few minutes ago, that doesn't make sense to claim that she was fired. If you offer to resign if new conditions of employment aren't met and the company accepts your resignation without honoring your exact terms of schedule, it sounds like you largely were responsible for terminating your own employment. Claiming that you were "immediately fired" as she tweeted just sounds dishonest to me.
- andrewprock 6y ago
  The GP illustration of jumping it being pushed is quite apt. Your comment suggests that if someone threatened to jump under certain circumstances but was instead pushed you would be ok with that. This isn't just a framing. She was fired. Now you may say "she was asking for it" but that doesn't change the fact that she was fired.
  - crusso 6y ago
    No, the jump/push analogy is too contorted to be meaningful. Employers and employees have a relationship that has processes that have common meanings and names like "resigned" or "fired". There's no accepted relationship if you push someone threatening to jump. You're just an a-hole committing assault and possibly murder. Is there a link to the letter that she sent? That could help to clarify.
    - ergocoder 6y ago
      There is. You probably can Google for it. The demand is something around exposing the identities of the peers who reviewed and rejected her paper. If Google doesn't give her the identities of those peers, she say she will leave the company. Comparing to suicide is a bit much though. When considering death, everything else becomes secondary, so we can't use that analogy for comparison.
      - andrewprock 6y ago
        The push/jump illustration holds just as well if you are at the edge of a pool. You don't need death on the line to understand the difference between who is making the decision.
        ergocoder 6y ago
        "If you eat dinner today, I'll commit suicide." - I'll probably skip dinner to save life. "If you eat dinner today, I'll quit my job" - then, I'll probably tell person that they can quit their job. I'm not gonna skip my dinner for that. I hope this illustrates that, when death is involved, everything else becomes secondary, and we prioritize not death over everything. So, it's a bad analogy to use in Timnit's situation where she will quit if she doesn't get to see the identities of peer reviewers. This situation is not life and death.
themaninthedark 6y ago
Someone says they will quit noon tomorrow if you don't meet their demands. You will not meet their demands. You tell them not to bother coming in tomorrow and disable their security badge, did you fire them? They made the decision they did not want to work for you as had been previously agreed. You only changed the timetable. To put this another way, if I tell my company that I will be quitting in 2 weeks and they tell me not to bother coming back to the office, did they fire me? I would not say they did.
- GVIrish 6y ago
  So this gets into nuance and I will preface this with, we don't know what her email specifically said. If you give your company a date for the cessation of your employment, that is giving notice. If you say I "will resign if", is saying that you will do something in the unspecified future. So if you give your two weeks notice you have formally turned in your resignation. In your example I would agree that they just changed the timetable. If you haven't given your notice, and they terminate your employment citing an email you sent, you have been fired. By all accounts she didn't submit her resignation, she simply said that she would. Sometimes situations like that result in the person getting cold feet, or the two parties working out a compromise. Maybe things would've always ended up the same way, but either way Google didn't wait for her to actually resign.
  - thisiszilff 6y ago
    From what I've gathered the contents of the email were largely like "Either we do XYZ or we can work towards setting a date where I leave the company." So it is open to interpretation and vague enough that both sides can get their interpretation in. The way I phrase it to myself is that she was fired for threatening to resign. IE, that relationship wasn't good to begin with and this was just the last straw that pushed them to severing it. I suspect that people who try to claim she was fired/that she resigned don't focus enough on the broader context where that relationship was bad in the first place. This doesn't seem like it was something out of the blue, this has definitely been going on for a bit, so given that, which party took it over the line to breaking up their employment relationship seems like a detail rather than an important fact.
cbozeman 6y ago
She wasn't immediately fired, her resignation was immediately accepted. Difference.
ergocoder 6y ago
> Google then cut off her corporate access and terminated her employment immediately, ergo, firing. It's also unreasonable that she will get to choose her leaving date at her own liking. When wanting to part way, either side has the full right to choose an earlier date. > If someone says, do this or I'll jump This is not a great analogy. I actually would go as far as saying people who use this analogy have malicious intent. When death is involved, everything else becomes secondary. Let's look at a small example. Say I'll commit suicide if you go and see your kids today. Now it's only one day, and you (as a decent person) will probably skip seeing your kids for one day to save one life. Now if I say I'll quit my job if you go to see your kids today. You would probably say "Then, please quit."
- GVIrish 6y ago
  > It's also unreasonable that she will get to choose her leaving date at her own liking. When wanting to part way, either side has the full right to choose an earlier date. People choose their end date all the time. That's just standard. Sometimes the company moves a date up, sometimes the two parties negotiate a different date for some reason, sometimes people are fired. If it's an at-will employment state, both parties can choose whatever date they like. But if the employer terminates employment early, that's generally a firing. If an employment does so, we call it quitting. > Let's look at a small example. Say I'll commit suicide if you go and see your kids today. Now it's only one day, and you (as a decent person) will probably skip seeing your kids for one day to save one life. > Now if I say I'll quit my job if you go to see your kids today. You would probably say "Then, please quit." Use whatever analogy works for you, ultimately the point is the same. Someone can threaten to do something, but if you do it for them it's different than if they do it themselves. If someone says "I'll quit" and the company disables their badge and security escorts them out, they've been fired.
  - ergocoder 6y ago
    > People choose their end date all the time. That is absolutely false. Either side has the full right to choose an earlier date. You can choose an earlier date to leave. Company can also choose an earlier date for you to leave. > If someone says "I'll quit" and the company disables their badge and security escorts them out, they've been fired Do you expect to choose your exit date at your own liking at any date at your comfort? We can agree to disagree. Saying you're fired when you actually give the ultimatum seems dishonest. I thought Timnit was supposed to be a role model of high ethics.

Jabbles 6y ago

> This is like I go to my boss and ask for a $1 billion dollars. How about if you go to your boss and demand that the racial discrimination you're experiencing stops? Since we don't have the original email, we can't tell. But I bet it's closer to my example than yours.

Nimitz14 6y ago
Lol sure that must be why she hasn't published it. /s
bagacrap 6y ago
I don't think there's debate about what her depends were. They were very concrete and referred to the paper review process.

sib 6y ago

Exactly. Employee: "If you don't fire my manager and give me a $1M bonus, I'm resigning, date to be confirmed." Company: "Ummmm, no. Thanks for resigning, let's make that date today."