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Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

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Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#251

Post by xenihn »

xiaolingxiao wrote: post #19

She gave a talk at my school once, she was invited by my then advisor. This was in 2017 right after she left MSR. We had a brief change, and even back then you can tell she’s not into kowtowing to the patriarchy. It’s quite hard for ambitious women in compsci, they have to walk a tight edge between firm and “motherly”. Men have no such constraints. —————————————— Clarification: I’m speaking about women researchers in…

>It’s quite hard for ambitious women in compsci, they have to walk a tight edge between firm and “motherly”.

Sounds like you're just projecting your own expectations onto them tbh

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#252

Post by katbyte »

ggm wrote: post #67
katbyte wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is disagreeing with your employer and then flagrantly breaking rules and confidentiality and comparing the two like you are doing here is disingenuous.

No, its not disingenuous. It has to be thought about, sure. I think by the time you're archiving company secrets outside the firewall you mentally left some time ago. What led you there? Is that maybe the interest for me? I don't think she wound up there for entirely base reasons, maybe that's what I'm thinking. Most strict legal compliance answers aren't "wrong" but boy, they feel limited. Hard to change things when…

As a manager someone can disagree with me all they want, whatever i honestly don't care speak your mind. But the moment they start breaking company rules it starts to get into a problematic space, depending on the rule it can mean their judgement can't be trusted anymore and they will have to be let go. Some company rules are to meet legal requirements, and breaking legally required rules is an entirely different ballgame as your opening the company up to lawsuits and legal repercussions. Just because your smart and paid to critique doesn't mean you get to break the law, even if you, I, and the company disagree with it.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#253

Post by ineedasername »

ahepp wrote: post #192
ineedasername wrote: post #119

So they fired an ethics leader because she thought something unethical might be going on and was taking steps to investigate it by automating a review of her email, or something like that. It seems she may have been passing on some of that information to persons outside of Google, which isn't great, but I also don't see much in the way of details on what that actually entailed, so it's hard to judge how inappropriate…

What kind of internal documents could she have sent to external parties that wouldn't fully justify her firing?

I don't know. I agree it's probably a job-ending move in most cases, but until the details are available I'll withhold full judgement. Also has she confirmed this, or is it just what Google is claiming? If they simply want her gone, they're probably not above making a mountain out of a molehill.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#254

Post by joshuamorton »

NikolaeVarius wrote: post #249
joshuamorton wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this context, it's very likely that you can translate "exfiltrating thousands of sensitive files" to "downloaded some of her emails", perhaps related to fear of retaliation

That is the same thing? In large companies I have never been allowed to export my emails, since it could be used to do this very exact thing.

The point is that "exfiltrating thousands of sensitive files" can mean many things. It can mean, for example, downloading one's emails to have an independent record of them for fear of retaliation.

It can also mean stealing company IP to try and start a competitor.

Both may be equally forbidden by policy, but they're vastly different acts.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#255

Post by tyingq »

leetcrew wrote: post #161
duckfang wrote: post #99

At the same time, Google unveiled a "Black owned businesses near me" on Google Maps. How has that been received? We need look no further than Twitter: (the Tl;Dr. racists are using this to lower all ratings of these Black owned businesses) https://twitter.com/dmetaxak/status/1362856231212212224 Google recently added a feature allowing users to search for "Black-owned businesses near you". They're advertising it all o…

is "black-owned business" not an opt-in flag?

Yes, it's opt-in: https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/black-owned.pdf

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#256

Post by true_religion »

2-tpg wrote: post #207
contemporary343 wrote: post #111

They also seem to have sidelined Samy Bengio (Yoshua's brother) who was the skip-level manager of the team and, as far as I can tell, backed both of them and continued to: https://twitter.com/L_badikho/status/1362892301979312128 As can be seen above, current team members state that Google is running a smear campaign against both of them. We should emphatically not take Google's words at face value here either. All of…

The political activist collective is slowly falling apart. If you get blamed for racism when firing an employee for telling colleagues not to pursue KPIs, there is not much you can do to continue placating these professional victims. They are now resorting to calling Google gaslighting for replacing Gebru with a Black person. It is low-brow ugly neo-racism, but then again, I don't really want Google AI in charge of A…

Who was Gebru replaced with? I couldn't find anything when I looked it up (ironically on Google).

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#257

Post by Aunche »

contemporary343 wrote: post #111

They also seem to have sidelined Samy Bengio (Yoshua's brother) who was the skip-level manager of the team and, as far as I can tell, backed both of them and continued to: https://twitter.com/L_badikho/status/1362892301979312128 As can be seen above, current team members state that Google is running a smear campaign against both of them. We should emphatically not take Google's words at face value here either. All of…

If Google releases a statement defending themselves, it's a "smear campaign". If Google remains silent, it would be evidence that they were wrong.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#258

Post by fmajid »

Google only built the Ethical AI team to placate internal criticism of its attempts to sell AI tech to the Department of Defense and building a search engine for China with censorship built-in. They were supposed to be window-dressing, not actually rock the boat, so when they did they were culled.

Since they are not contributing to the bottom line, directly or indirectly, the disaffection in the team couldn't matter less to management. They cleverly appointed a black woman VP to neuter the group without the bad optics of the initial firing of Ms. Gebru, and I expect the remainder of the team will in the not-so-distant future be reassigned or let go, and replaced by a new cast of ethnically diverse yes-people who will produce lots of impressive-sounding papers but not any criticism of substance.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#259

Post by rayiner »

duckfang wrote: post #99

At the same time, Google unveiled a "Black owned businesses near me" on Google Maps. How has that been received? We need look no further than Twitter: (the Tl;Dr. racists are using this to lower all ratings of these Black owned businesses) https://twitter.com/dmetaxak/status/1362856231212212224 Google recently added a feature allowing users to search for "Black-owned businesses near you". They're advertising it all o…

> We need to ask: is it always a good idea to make marginalized groups more visible? Whom does it benefit?

No it doesn’t. And I wish people would stop experimenting with this sort of thing and treating it as some sort of fad.

I grew up, as an immigrant from a Muslim country, in a white Republican suburb in the 1990s. And it was great. I can’t imagine what life would have been like today - constant reminders of the fact that you’re different, white teachers admitting they’re “gatekeepers of white supremacy,” using “whiteness” as a pejorative, etc. I’m fully developed and fluent in the language so I can tolerate it. But I’ve got kids and this is not the culture I want my kids to grow up in.

Leaving aside whether this stuff is right on the merits. There is a limited number of white people who will put up with a constant drone of being called “racist” and being blamed for things that happened before they were born. As these confrontational tactics continue, people’s patience will wear thin. And if it becomes more prevalent to treat kids different based in their skin color, such as Evanston’s proposal to keep white and Asian kids behind in remote learning while letting other kids go back in person, people’s patience will evaporate in an instant. And overstepping that tolerance will have real consequences for people of color.

When white people amplify this hyper-activist, in-you-face approach, they aren’t just drawing attention to a problem, they’re picking a particular solution. And because they comprise a majority and control the culture, they can impose an approach that people of color (who have to live with the consequences) don’t necessarily want. When you jump on board this bandwagon, you’re not just changing the culture for yourself. You’re not just changing the culture for activist POC you went to grad school with. You’re changing it for the blue collar worker who happens to be a POC. And you can bet that what kind of culture he wants to live in is not well represented in the academic and activist circles that dream up these approaches.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#260

Post by pseudalopex »

deanCommie wrote: post #206
jseliger wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be surprised to find more companies shifting to a "leave politics and religion at the door" stance again: https://jakeseliger.com/2020/12/03/dissent-insiders-and-outs...

Your "politics" is someone else's "fundamental human survival rights". The exact details matter from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. There are parts of the world where you can be fired for being gay. In most of the US where you can be fired for being trans. There are parts of the US where having TAMPONS in a women's bathroom is considered "political".

Firing someone for being trans is prohibited federally now FYI. The Supreme Court said it discriminates on the basis of sex.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.G._%26_G.R._Harris_Funeral_H...

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