<story><title>We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google</title><url>https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/12/04/1013294/google-ai-ethics-research-paper-forced-out-timnit-gebru</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jpm_sd</author><text>Here&amp;#x27;s why I have absolutely no sympathy for Google in this situation.&lt;p&gt;They hired Gebru as a professional thorn in their side. &amp;quot;Come up in here and be a pain in the ass! Tell us what we&amp;#x27;re doing wrong!&amp;quot;, they said. &amp;quot;We&amp;#x27;re Enlightened Corporate America, after all!&amp;quot; She is a chess piece in the game of Wokeness Street Cred.&lt;p&gt;She then proceeded to do the job she was hired for, and now they&amp;#x27;re all &amp;quot;Hey lady, Here At Google that&amp;#x27;s not how we do things&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;That said, as a manager, I would have &amp;quot;accepted her resignation&amp;quot; and&amp;#x2F;or fired her without hesitation.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nathanlied</author><text>Agreed; but this isn&amp;#x27;t just a Google problem. Seems to me like a lot of SF (and SF-inspired) &amp;quot;big tech&amp;quot; wants to be known for their &amp;quot;wokeness&amp;quot;[1], which leads to hires like Timnit and other &amp;quot;politically-outspoken&amp;quot; people, which in turn leads to situations like this, James Damore, and other individuals&amp;#x2F;situations that amount to workplace political activism.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;That said, I&amp;#x27;ve not seen the email outlining her conditions &amp;quot;or else&amp;quot;, but I feel I&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;t often go well. And perhaps this is a good thing for her, because she may leave for a place that better suits her.&lt;p&gt;-&lt;p&gt;[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.</text></comment>
<story><title>We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google</title><url>https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/12/04/1013294/google-ai-ethics-research-paper-forced-out-timnit-gebru</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jpm_sd</author><text>Here&amp;#x27;s why I have absolutely no sympathy for Google in this situation.&lt;p&gt;They hired Gebru as a professional thorn in their side. &amp;quot;Come up in here and be a pain in the ass! Tell us what we&amp;#x27;re doing wrong!&amp;quot;, they said. &amp;quot;We&amp;#x27;re Enlightened Corporate America, after all!&amp;quot; She is a chess piece in the game of Wokeness Street Cred.&lt;p&gt;She then proceeded to do the job she was hired for, and now they&amp;#x27;re all &amp;quot;Hey lady, Here At Google that&amp;#x27;s not how we do things&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;That said, as a manager, I would have &amp;quot;accepted her resignation&amp;quot; and&amp;#x2F;or fired her without hesitation.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>DangerousPie</author><text>I agree with this in part, but I think there is a difference between &amp;quot;tell us what we&amp;#x27;re doing wrong&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;send emails to mailing lists telling our employees to lobby congress against us&amp;quot;. Plus the whole setting an ultimatum thing.</text></comment>