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It’s a really common refrain here that if you are employee critical of your employer you should expect to get fired… Well perhaps, but you’d think that specific

It’s a really common refrain here that if you are employee critical of your employer you should expect to get fired… Well perhaps, but you’d think that specifically someone in AI ethics needs to be empowered to speak up against both internal external issues. Or did google just want an research ethics hit team against other companies technologies? Makes me wonder if project zero is really trying as hard as possible with googles own products. Clearly it’s impossible to be an independent team at google.

ineedasername 6y ago
I agree that employees should be allowed to criticize their employers, but there's nothing inherent to an Ethics specialist that would weight things even more in that direction. Ostensibly, she was hired to report internally on ethics considerations. Unless part of her job description was to liaise with the public on those ethical issues, public exposure would come as a bit of a surprise to her employer.
leetcrew 6y ago
why would a company pay someone to publicly criticize them? in the case of google, there's already plenty of people willing to do that for free.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Booktrope 6y ago
  Yeah, why wouldn't a company want a workforce full of yes-men and engineers who care about nothing but making shareholders money and making executives look good?
  - MattGaiser 6y ago
    The key word is "publicly." You can oppose without doing it by proxy on Twitter.
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    that's clearly a strawman interpretation of my comment. > why would a company pay someone to publicly criticize them? by all means, a healthy company should encourage internal critiques. but if you're going to take that criticism public, you can't expect to also collect a paycheck at the same time. do you make a habit of paying people to work against your interests?
    - crawfordcomeaux 6y ago
      I'm seeking to normalize community accountability practices that are pretty core to many indigenous cultures, including my Irish ancestors. So, yeah...I'll pay for that in every organization I get involved with from here on out. Just cause it's not normalized doesn't mean it isn't useful. The reason to do it is for the sake of actual accountability, as strictly internal accountability is nonsense. This is the business version of "keep it in the family": it gives all kinds of toxic behaviors a shade to hide and grow in, while keeping the public from actually choosing who gets their business based on their values.
      - hn8788 6y ago
        "community accountability practices" just sounds like mob justice. It seems like an especially bad idea in the current environment where people who are more than happy to join in an outrage mob after only hearing one side of the story, and sometimes aren't even affected by whatever they're targeting. A "community" shouldn't be anyone who happens to agree with you on twitter.
        TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
        At this point a fair proportion of the planetary population is affected by FAANG's ethical stance on ad tech. It's looking likely AI is only going to make that worse. A "community" should also not be an enforced happy smiley corporate PR face. And mob justice can also look a lot like running people out of town because they're not properly respectful.
        crawfordcomeaux 6y ago
  - Wolfenstein98k 6y ago
    There's a gulf between "hire only yes-men" and "hire activists who openly state a desire to undermine the company, who break its policies and share its internal documents to forward that agenda, and generally spend their global-0.1%-level salary accusing the company of actively harming the least among us". False dichotomies are bad.
  - whatever1 6y ago
    KODAK
- pwinnski 6y ago
  It is literally the job of an AI ethicist to highlight ethical issues, so if they're publicly criticizing you, then you're likely doing something unethical. If your team of ethicists has repeatedly highlighted issues and you continue to not address them, what should they do then? In the case of a company whose self-image is of openness and directness and benevolence, it seems reasonable that publicly highlight the lack of change is within reason. If they cared less, they'd just shut up, but employees seem to have a higher opinion of Google than Google does of them. Firing them in the middle of that suggests an unwillingness to deal with the previous issues, doubling down on unethical behavior.
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    I might be speaking from ignorance here, but I highly doubt their job description said anything about making accusations via tweet. > If your team of ethicists has repeatedly highlighted issues and you continue to not address them, what should they do then? In the case of a company whose self-image is of openness and directness and benevolence, it seems reasonable that publicly highlight the lack of change is within reason. if they strongly disagree with the direction the company is taking, they ought to refuse to be part of it and resign. public criticism can wait until they stop collecting the (quite fat, I imagine) checks. edit: I guess I'm not really objecting to the public criticism before leaving the company. I'm objecting to the incredible feeling of entitlement it must take to expect to keep getting paid while actively damaging your employer.
    - Aeolos 6y ago
      And how exactly is your suggestion going to play out in the long term? All the critical employees resign, until they are all eventually replaced yes-men who just care about the money or are too afraid to speak out. And if a company is doing something unethical, then why is it inherently _bad_ to damage that company until it changes direction? Acting in unethical ways has to hurt the bottomline, otherwise what incentive is there for a company to change?
      - room500 6y ago
cwhiz 6y ago
It’s not like she’s an ombudsman for Google. If she has concerns she should voice those concerns internally. If she doesn’t feel that her concerns are being taken seriously, she should quit. On the way out the door, she should tell her story. It’s honestly just basic professionalism. Don’t publicly trash your employer.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  I'm curious how you think someone who is a professional ethicist is supposed to do their job without being allowed to comment on ethics. It's not a cog-in-a-machine profession. Having critical opinions is what the job is about. It's literally stupid for a corporation to employ an ethicist and then somehow be outraged and appalled when they have their ethics questioned and challenged.
  - cwhiz 6y ago
    She’s not a broad professional ethicist at Google. She’s part of an ethical AI team. It’s one thing to write a critical research paper on Google AI. It’s quite another to spend months publicly trashing your employer on social media. You would think someone who is working in ethics would understand the difference. Share your critical opinions internally, or at minimum share them in a professional manner. Act like a professional adult.
    - anm89 6y ago
      Wanted to write this exact same reply before I saw yours. She was not a general ethicist at google. Her job was not to comment on the ethical issues of employment. Her ethics role was AI specific and none of this has anything to do with AI
  - Cacti 6y ago
    I'm curious why you think she was fired for having critical opinions as opposed to grossly unprofessional conduct. She could have done her job just fine without throwing her colleagues under a bus, badmouthing her employer in the press, and having a paranoid meltdown because her paper didn't pass peer review. Being an ethicist doesn't give you the right to act like an asshole.
MattGaiser 6y ago
Speak up internally, sure. Externally?
- zhengyi13 6y ago
  Speaking up internally is pretty clearly ineffective, and has been since at least the days of the Real Names debacle.
  - Wolfenstein98k 6y ago
    Most activism isn't successful. You would find your way to violence very quickly if a few examples of unsuccessful non-violent activism caused you to justify breaking more and more serious laws each time.
  - MattGaiser 6y ago
    > Speaking up internally is pretty clearly ineffective I suppose it depends on the specific role, but oftentimes your job is to advise, not to win.
  - pvorb 6y ago
    You can either accept that your words are not heard, or quit.
    - crawfordcomeaux 6y ago
      Or speak out publicly. Always an option.
      - johncena33 6y ago
        > Or speak out publicly. Always an option. Or speak out publicly. Always an option without making any drama and being professional. [FTFY] It scares me that so many people in this thread can't (or unwilling to) differentiate between creating drama and being proferssional.
throwawayhaxx99 6y ago
It seems like Google really likes firing people instead of free speech. Sure they can do that because of at will employment but at some point it has to start leaving a bad taste in everyone's mouths especially when these firings get publicized. At some point CS grads will start taking this into consideration when it comes to working at places and having their own political views. Who wants to work at a place where there's a witch hunt? This isn't just leftists getting fired either
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
  > It seems like Google really likes firing people instead of free speech. What were your thoughts when Google fired James Damore?
  - throwawayhaxx99 6y ago
    I am not a hypocrite. Writing that memo didn't have anything to do with how he did his job
- b3kart 6y ago
  Maybe when Google stops paying these CS grads obscene amounts of money. Only people with very strong political views will convince themselves to not go there, and I doubt it's a large group of people.
  - throwawayboise 6y ago
    The vast majority of people I've ever worked with do not bring their politics to the office. Maybe it's different in SV.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  > It seems like Google really likes firing people instead of free speech. Because it has consequences in the outside world that need to be smoothed over. Some people think that Google should just let people do whatever and allow themselves to be the whipping boy for what their employees have said.
xiphias2 6y ago
It's not just the employer. James' Damore's memo silenced a lot of the more conservative thinkers, especially as he didn't even want that memo to be public, just a research on a mailing list. Harassment from the political left was very strong at Google, that it was just a matter of time until it bit back. As for me as a white man although I was just doing my job silently, I didn't feel appreciated and tried to isolate myself from meetings / politics and just focus on work (and was happy to leave 1 year after that memo). The fun old times when we could just focus on making the user happy and talk about doing cool stuff was over.
- jeffbee 6y ago
  Damore posted his stupid screed all over the place for months. He posted it to mailing lists, he printed it out and waved it around at conferences.
  - xiphias2 6y ago
    Maybe you are right, I was working in Switzerland, not in US. What I remember clearly though is that Google's training contained material about how I am allowed to socialize with coworkers outside work, which may be allowed in the US, but it was clearly against the Swiss constitution (my job security was more important to me than speaking up about this though)
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
      What exactly did this training say? I'm just a little suspicious that Google was saying you couldn't socialize with friends outside the office, since that's unenforceable, not in their interests, and also deeply stupid.
      - xiphias2 6y ago
        I didn't write that that we couldn't, it was about how we could. For example we shouldn't tell a coworker that he/she's pretty, shouldn't get drunk together, and a lot of behaviour that is considered flirting and getting to know eachother in Switzerland. In US behaviour outside Google is handled by the company as well, but in Switzerland there are very strict privacy laws and culture that forbid companies to control any part of the life of people outside work. The right to privacy is part of the Swiss constitution, and it's taken there very seriously (to the point where generally the tax authorities don't have the right to look at your bank accounts, unlike in US for example). Edit: I can't reply, so I extend this comment ,,shouldn't'' is not banning. And also what you write that Google may have a problem if harassment happens is true, but I still think you think in US law terms: privacy in Switzerland is like voting right in US: it's like telling that ,,you are not advised to vote for Trump as a president''. Or telling you that ,,you are hired, but you should probably go back to Mexico''. warkdarrior: Again, yes, in US that training is legal and socially acceptable. But the training was in violation of the Swiss constitution...I'm not sure why people in US don't understand that the laws are different in different countries (people from other countries understand it generally). Harassment is a trendy topic right now, but it doesn't trump privacy and the right for not controlling any part of a person's life outside work, even if that's with coworkers, and even if it may lead to a legal problem for Google. In Switzerland people are grownups, they don't need babysitting. I have to add one more thing: Andy Ruby belongs to prison, everybody knows it, and giving us more trainings won't help the main issue, that the top management was/is raping women or coercing them to have sex to keep their jobs.
geodel 6y ago
> but you’d think that specifically someone in AI ethics needs to be empowered to speak up against both internal external issues. I'd think ethical (AI or not) researcher would work far away from Google's influence as possible if they really want to analyze Google AI work. > Makes me wonder if project zero is really trying as hard as possible I wouldn't be surprised if project zero find as many vulnerabilities as possible in Google's software and give them a chance to fix quietly. If there are huge security problems to be found in their software then independent researchers can make big name/fame and money by publishing them out.
asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
> It’s a really common refrain here that if you are employee critical of your employer you should expect to get fired I don't know how common that refrain is but I have one a little less controversial: if you use corporate email to exfiltrate confidential documents or coworkers' personal information, you really should expect to get fired.
- kamranjon 6y ago
  I don't think that's exactly what happened. From my understanding she was backing up emails that served as evidence to support the claim that Google had treated Timnit Gebru unfairly during their termination. Not sure where that legally falls but I wouldn't exactly paint it in the light you did here.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
    The legal way to handle that is for Dr. Gebru to sue Google and get the emails through discovery. (If Google didn't do anything that Gebru can/is willing to sue over, well, she doesn't have any legal right to the emails.) Exfiltrating confidential documents will get you fired, and saying you did it to assist a friend in badmouthing your employer on Twitter is not going to help matters.
    - hitekker 6y ago
      The assumption that corporations, not courts, decide legality seems inane to me. The company you worship could commit a crime and then engage in a cover up to destroy all evidence before discovery could occur. The easiest, recent example is Ebay: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/26/technology/ebay-cockroaches-stalking-scandal.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/26/technology/ebay-cockroach...
      - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
        Sorry, by legal, I meant, "within the terms of your employment agreement."
naebother 6y ago
It's not that I want them to get fired, I'm just aware that the whole point of an in-house ethics committee is to excuse the objectionable stuff, not to publicly criticize it. Sort of like when people complain that HR wasn't on their side, but actually just ratted them out to management. Yeah that sucks, but that's their role. Be smart about how you dissent. Be anonymous and leak stuff. You'll still get to keep on cashing that paycheck and probably have a more meaningful impact on the broader world compared to some de-fanged "ethics" committee press releases.
karmasimida 6y ago
Well paying someone to bite yourself is never a good sale in private organizations. Otherwise, why regulation, like at all? Google is a giant corporate with deeply vested interests all around. It is laughable that it still tries to put up an ethnical makeup to just feel good about itself. Which inlines with my observations that Googlers often have this narcissism rooted deeply in themselves, the eagerness to appear to be better. So happy it backfires.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
rufus_foreman 6y ago
>> It’s a really common refrain here that if you are employee critical of your employer you should expect to get fired I was just critical of my employer, I called them out on how evil they were, I cost them money, I embarrassed them publicly, and then, all of the sudden out of nowhere I was fired! That's sort of your assertion, right? Am I misrepresenting anything?

ineedasername 6y ago

I agree that employees should be allowed to criticize their employers, but there's nothing inherent to an Ethics specialist that would weight things even more in that direction. Ostensibly, she was hired to report internally on ethics considerations. Unless part of her job description was to liaise with the public on those ethical issues, public exposure would come as a bit of a surprise to her employer.

leetcrew 6y ago

why would a company pay someone to publicly criticize them? in the case of google, there's already plenty of people willing to do that for free.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Booktrope 6y ago
Yeah, why wouldn't a company want a workforce full of yes-men and engineers who care about nothing but making shareholders money and making executives look good?
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  The key word is "publicly." You can oppose without doing it by proxy on Twitter.
- leetcrew 6y ago
  that's clearly a strawman interpretation of my comment. > why would a company pay someone to publicly criticize them? by all means, a healthy company should encourage internal critiques. but if you're going to take that criticism public, you can't expect to also collect a paycheck at the same time. do you make a habit of paying people to work against your interests?
  - crawfordcomeaux 6y ago
    I'm seeking to normalize community accountability practices that are pretty core to many indigenous cultures, including my Irish ancestors. So, yeah...I'll pay for that in every organization I get involved with from here on out. Just cause it's not normalized doesn't mean it isn't useful. The reason to do it is for the sake of actual accountability, as strictly internal accountability is nonsense. This is the business version of "keep it in the family": it gives all kinds of toxic behaviors a shade to hide and grow in, while keeping the public from actually choosing who gets their business based on their values.
    - hn8788 6y ago
      "community accountability practices" just sounds like mob justice. It seems like an especially bad idea in the current environment where people who are more than happy to join in an outrage mob after only hearing one side of the story, and sometimes aren't even affected by whatever they're targeting. A "community" shouldn't be anyone who happens to agree with you on twitter.
      - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
        At this point a fair proportion of the planetary population is affected by FAANG's ethical stance on ad tech. It's looking likely AI is only going to make that worse. A "community" should also not be an enforced happy smiley corporate PR face. And mob justice can also look a lot like running people out of town because they're not properly respectful.
      - crawfordcomeaux 6y ago
- Wolfenstein98k 6y ago
  There's a gulf between "hire only yes-men" and "hire activists who openly state a desire to undermine the company, who break its policies and share its internal documents to forward that agenda, and generally spend their global-0.1%-level salary accusing the company of actively harming the least among us". False dichotomies are bad.
- whatever1 6y ago
  KODAK
pwinnski 6y ago
It is literally the job of an AI ethicist to highlight ethical issues, so if they're publicly criticizing you, then you're likely doing something unethical. If your team of ethicists has repeatedly highlighted issues and you continue to not address them, what should they do then? In the case of a company whose self-image is of openness and directness and benevolence, it seems reasonable that publicly highlight the lack of change is within reason. If they cared less, they'd just shut up, but employees seem to have a higher opinion of Google than Google does of them. Firing them in the middle of that suggests an unwillingness to deal with the previous issues, doubling down on unethical behavior.
- leetcrew 6y ago
  I might be speaking from ignorance here, but I highly doubt their job description said anything about making accusations via tweet. > If your team of ethicists has repeatedly highlighted issues and you continue to not address them, what should they do then? In the case of a company whose self-image is of openness and directness and benevolence, it seems reasonable that publicly highlight the lack of change is within reason. if they strongly disagree with the direction the company is taking, they ought to refuse to be part of it and resign. public criticism can wait until they stop collecting the (quite fat, I imagine) checks. edit: I guess I'm not really objecting to the public criticism before leaving the company. I'm objecting to the incredible feeling of entitlement it must take to expect to keep getting paid while actively damaging your employer.
  - Aeolos 6y ago
    And how exactly is your suggestion going to play out in the long term? All the critical employees resign, until they are all eventually replaced yes-men who just care about the money or are too afraid to speak out. And if a company is doing something unethical, then why is it inherently _bad_ to damage that company until it changes direction? Acting in unethical ways has to hurt the bottomline, otherwise what incentive is there for a company to change?
    - room500 6y ago

cwhiz 6y ago

It’s not like she’s an ombudsman for Google. If she has concerns she should voice those concerns internally. If she doesn’t feel that her concerns are being taken seriously, she should quit. On the way out the door, she should tell her story. It’s honestly just basic professionalism. Don’t publicly trash your employer.

TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
I'm curious how you think someone who is a professional ethicist is supposed to do their job without being allowed to comment on ethics. It's not a cog-in-a-machine profession. Having critical opinions is what the job is about. It's literally stupid for a corporation to employ an ethicist and then somehow be outraged and appalled when they have their ethics questioned and challenged.
- cwhiz 6y ago
  She’s not a broad professional ethicist at Google. She’s part of an ethical AI team. It’s one thing to write a critical research paper on Google AI. It’s quite another to spend months publicly trashing your employer on social media. You would think someone who is working in ethics would understand the difference. Share your critical opinions internally, or at minimum share them in a professional manner. Act like a professional adult.
  - anm89 6y ago
    Wanted to write this exact same reply before I saw yours. She was not a general ethicist at google. Her job was not to comment on the ethical issues of employment. Her ethics role was AI specific and none of this has anything to do with AI
- Cacti 6y ago
  I'm curious why you think she was fired for having critical opinions as opposed to grossly unprofessional conduct. She could have done her job just fine without throwing her colleagues under a bus, badmouthing her employer in the press, and having a paranoid meltdown because her paper didn't pass peer review. Being an ethicist doesn't give you the right to act like an asshole.

MattGaiser 6y ago

Speak up internally, sure. Externally?

zhengyi13 6y ago
Speaking up internally is pretty clearly ineffective, and has been since at least the days of the Real Names debacle.
- Wolfenstein98k 6y ago
  Most activism isn't successful. You would find your way to violence very quickly if a few examples of unsuccessful non-violent activism caused you to justify breaking more and more serious laws each time.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  > Speaking up internally is pretty clearly ineffective I suppose it depends on the specific role, but oftentimes your job is to advise, not to win.
- pvorb 6y ago
  You can either accept that your words are not heard, or quit.
  - crawfordcomeaux 6y ago
    Or speak out publicly. Always an option.
    - johncena33 6y ago
      > Or speak out publicly. Always an option. Or speak out publicly. Always an option without making any drama and being professional. [FTFY] It scares me that so many people in this thread can't (or unwilling to) differentiate between creating drama and being proferssional.

throwawayhaxx99 6y ago

It seems like Google really likes firing people instead of free speech. Sure they can do that because of at will employment but at some point it has to start leaving a bad taste in everyone's mouths especially when these firings get publicized. At some point CS grads will start taking this into consideration when it comes to working at places and having their own political views. Who wants to work at a place where there's a witch hunt? This isn't just leftists getting fired either

RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
> It seems like Google really likes firing people instead of free speech. What were your thoughts when Google fired James Damore?
- throwawayhaxx99 6y ago
  I am not a hypocrite. Writing that memo didn't have anything to do with how he did his job
b3kart 6y ago
Maybe when Google stops paying these CS grads obscene amounts of money. Only people with very strong political views will convince themselves to not go there, and I doubt it's a large group of people.
- throwawayboise 6y ago
  The vast majority of people I've ever worked with do not bring their politics to the office. Maybe it's different in SV.
MattGaiser 6y ago
> It seems like Google really likes firing people instead of free speech. Because it has consequences in the outside world that need to be smoothed over. Some people think that Google should just let people do whatever and allow themselves to be the whipping boy for what their employees have said.

xiphias2 6y ago

It's not just the employer. James' Damore's memo silenced a lot of the more conservative thinkers, especially as he didn't even want that memo to be public, just a research on a mailing list. Harassment from the political left was very strong at Google, that it was just a matter of time until it bit back. As for me as a white man although I was just doing my job silently, I didn't feel appreciated and tried to isolate myself from meetings / politics and just focus on work (and was happy to leave 1 year after that memo). The fun old times when we could just focus on making the user happy and talk about doing cool stuff was over.

jeffbee 6y ago
Damore posted his stupid screed all over the place for months. He posted it to mailing lists, he printed it out and waved it around at conferences.
- xiphias2 6y ago
  Maybe you are right, I was working in Switzerland, not in US. What I remember clearly though is that Google's training contained material about how I am allowed to socialize with coworkers outside work, which may be allowed in the US, but it was clearly against the Swiss constitution (my job security was more important to me than speaking up about this though)
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
    What exactly did this training say? I'm just a little suspicious that Google was saying you couldn't socialize with friends outside the office, since that's unenforceable, not in their interests, and also deeply stupid.
    - xiphias2 6y ago
      I didn't write that that we couldn't, it was about how we could. For example we shouldn't tell a coworker that he/she's pretty, shouldn't get drunk together, and a lot of behaviour that is considered flirting and getting to know eachother in Switzerland. In US behaviour outside Google is handled by the company as well, but in Switzerland there are very strict privacy laws and culture that forbid companies to control any part of the life of people outside work. The right to privacy is part of the Swiss constitution, and it's taken there very seriously (to the point where generally the tax authorities don't have the right to look at your bank accounts, unlike in US for example). Edit: I can't reply, so I extend this comment ,,shouldn't'' is not banning. And also what you write that Google may have a problem if harassment happens is true, but I still think you think in US law terms: privacy in Switzerland is like voting right in US: it's like telling that ,,you are not advised to vote for Trump as a president''. Or telling you that ,,you are hired, but you should probably go back to Mexico''. warkdarrior: Again, yes, in US that training is legal and socially acceptable. But the training was in violation of the Swiss constitution...I'm not sure why people in US don't understand that the laws are different in different countries (people from other countries understand it generally). Harassment is a trendy topic right now, but it doesn't trump privacy and the right for not controlling any part of a person's life outside work, even if that's with coworkers, and even if it may lead to a legal problem for Google. In Switzerland people are grownups, they don't need babysitting. I have to add one more thing: Andy Ruby belongs to prison, everybody knows it, and giving us more trainings won't help the main issue, that the top management was/is raping women or coercing them to have sex to keep their jobs.

geodel 6y ago

> but you’d think that specifically someone in AI ethics needs to be empowered to speak up against both internal external issues. I'd think ethical (AI or not) researcher would work far away from Google's influence as possible if they really want to analyze Google AI work. > Makes me wonder if project zero is really trying as hard as possible I wouldn't be surprised if project zero find as many vulnerabilities as possible in Google's software and give them a chance to fix quietly. If there are huge security problems to be found in their software then independent researchers can make big name/fame and money by publishing them out.

asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago

> It’s a really common refrain here that if you are employee critical of your employer you should expect to get fired I don't know how common that refrain is but I have one a little less controversial: if you use corporate email to exfiltrate confidential documents or coworkers' personal information, you really should expect to get fired.

kamranjon 6y ago
I don't think that's exactly what happened. From my understanding she was backing up emails that served as evidence to support the claim that Google had treated Timnit Gebru unfairly during their termination. Not sure where that legally falls but I wouldn't exactly paint it in the light you did here.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
  The legal way to handle that is for Dr. Gebru to sue Google and get the emails through discovery. (If Google didn't do anything that Gebru can/is willing to sue over, well, she doesn't have any legal right to the emails.) Exfiltrating confidential documents will get you fired, and saying you did it to assist a friend in badmouthing your employer on Twitter is not going to help matters.
  - hitekker 6y ago
    The assumption that corporations, not courts, decide legality seems inane to me. The company you worship could commit a crime and then engage in a cover up to destroy all evidence before discovery could occur. The easiest, recent example is Ebay: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/26/technology/ebay-cockroaches-stalking-scandal.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/26/technology/ebay-cockroach...
    - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
      Sorry, by legal, I meant, "within the terms of your employment agreement."

naebother 6y ago

It's not that I want them to get fired, I'm just aware that the whole point of an in-house ethics committee is to excuse the objectionable stuff, not to publicly criticize it. Sort of like when people complain that HR wasn't on their side, but actually just ratted them out to management. Yeah that sucks, but that's their role. Be smart about how you dissent. Be anonymous and leak stuff. You'll still get to keep on cashing that paycheck and probably have a more meaningful impact on the broader world compared to some de-fanged "ethics" committee press releases.

karmasimida 6y ago

Well paying someone to bite yourself is never a good sale in private organizations. Otherwise, why regulation, like at all? Google is a giant corporate with deeply vested interests all around. It is laughable that it still tries to put up an ethnical makeup to just feel good about itself. Which inlines with my observations that Googlers often have this narcissism rooted deeply in themselves, the eagerness to appear to be better. So happy it backfires.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

rufus_foreman 6y ago

>> It’s a really common refrain here that if you are employee critical of your employer you should expect to get fired I was just critical of my employer, I called them out on how evil they were, I cost them money, I embarrassed them publicly, and then, all of the sudden out of nowhere I was fired! That's sort of your assertion, right? Am I misrepresenting anything?