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Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

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Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#461

Post by refenestrator »

monocasa wrote: post #443
refenestrator wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She probably should have discussed this plan with her lawyer before exfiltrating the documents.

Who's to say she didn't. Some of the wrongful termination suits I've seen personally lived and died based on if an employee had their own copy of emails. Discovery doesn't always work against an entity that's already behaving illegally.

To paint the poles, this reasoning is radically different if you're talking about a 10-employee shop or a global corporation.

She should have talked to her lawyer first.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#462

Post by [deleted] »

moistly wrote: post #440
D13Fd wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interrogating corporate behavior and publicly embarrassing the corporation are two totally different things. You can employ someone and have them develop and even publicly espouse ethics principles, while also instructing them to keep their criticism of corporate behavior confidential to the corporation. This is super common in other professions sometimes charged with enforcing ethical and legal corporate behavior, i…

> This is super common in other professions sometimes charged with enforcing ethical and legal corporate behavior, including law and accounting. It's not a new idea. It has not worked out well. Making employees keep unethical behaviour on the down-low has resulted in immense, catastrophic harm. If we are to maintain a healthy society we need a lot more whistleblowing. We need to put work into being better.

[deleted]

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#463

Post by monocasa »

refenestrator wrote: post #461
monocasa wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who's to say she didn't. Some of the wrongful termination suits I've seen personally lived and died based on if an employee had their own copy of emails. Discovery doesn't always work against an entity that's already behaving illegally.

To paint the poles, this reasoning is radically different if you're talking about a 10-employee shop or a global corporation. She should have talked to her lawyer first.

> Who's to say she didn't

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#464

Post by refenestrator »

monocasa wrote: post #463
refenestrator wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To paint the poles, this reasoning is radically different if you're talking about a 10-employee shop or a global corporation. She should have talked to her lawyer first.

> Who's to say she didn't

> Who's to say she didn't

I'm saying that either she didn't or her lawyer fucking sucks.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#465

Post by geodel »

ALittleLight wrote: post #424
aerosmile wrote: post #261

You will learn a lot about Margaret Mitchell's firing by simply reading this piece she shared publicly on Twitter: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ERi2crDToYhYjEjxRoOzO-uO... A few punchlines: "Every moment where Jeff Dean and Megan Kacholia do not take responsibility for their actions is another moment where the company as a whole stands by silently as if to intentionally send the horrifying message that Dr. Geb…

Is she really calling Dr. Gebru one of the world's leading scientists or am I misreading something?

One thing to understand is that these folks form a mutual admiration society and keep propping each other by making bombastic claims like this.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#466

Post by ajhurliman »

tired_goog wrote: post #437
sn41 wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mandate of the department is ethics. Ethics is not agnostic to one's personal convictions, unlike code. People assume that because someone got fired, they "lost". Another viewpoint is that they retained their ethical integrity at great personal cost - doing so is precisely their actual job.

I’ve seen this bait and switch a couple of times now, but there’s not really any reason to expect a researcher working in an Ethics Research team to only do ethical things, in the same way that you wouldn’t expect someone working on a Truth Team to only do true things. The nominal mandate over her team does not extend as if a veneer to all of her personal actions. It’s just a name. Her team was very specifically enga…

This sounds like the most honest account of the situation from all the sources I've read about it, thanks for summarizing in such a succinct way.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#467

Post by monocasa »

refenestrator wrote: post #464
monocasa wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who's to say she didn't

> Who's to say she didn't I'm saying that either she didn't or her lawyer fucking sucks.

'Wrongful termination doesn't tend to hit the court system like you think it should unless you have hard evidence, particularly in at will states' is absolutely something I've heard from lawyers.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#468

Post by JamesBarney »

monocasa wrote: post #436
prepend wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlikely I think as if they weren’t iron clad, they would muffle up and prepare for the wrongful termination lawsuit that will only be greater if they lie about the departure. Since a lie would be slander, damage reputation and lead to lots more money. I think them issuing this statement means they feel confident in their defense. It also being so specific seems more credible since that’s something to easy to verify…

How much is a wrongful termination going to cost them? Max a couple million? How much do they lose from the PR of gutting their AI ethics division of people who didn't toe the company line? More than a couple million easily, IMO. I can see them being just willing to take the loss on the wrongful termination if they get to smear her on the way out and think they can get her to accept a deal in the end that comes with…

> How much do they lose from the PR of gutting their AI ethics division of people who didn't toe the company line? More than a couple million easily, IMO.

Very few people really care about this issue enough to permanently change their behavior. My family was pretty upset about Gebru firing but when I visited all of their computers were still defaulting to search Google instead of Bing or duckduckgo.

A lawsuit where they lied about firing someone is much worse PR and then the truth about why they fired her would get out and it would be much worse. Also she hasn't denied the accusation.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#469

Post by JamesBarney »

marricks wrote: post #401
Crash0v3rid3 wrote: post #387

“After conducting a review of this manager’s conduct, we confirmed that there were multiple violations of our code of conduct, as well as of our security policies, which included the exfiltration of confidential business-sensitive documents and private data of other employees,” a Google spokesman said in a statement. This feels pretty cut and dry to me. Meg exported business material from the company. That a fire-abl…

It’s pretty cool we can just take Google at it’s word after a 5 week investigation with literally no details coming out. Google also decided to drop this bombshell on a Friday the same day they are announcing a rebranded ethics team. It’s clear they wanted to bury this story and the leaders of the old team. I for one don’t plan to in any way give Google the benefit of the doubt here...

1. Lying about why an employee fired in an easily verified way is a huge unforced error. We can probably assume Google is not that incompetent.

2. She hasn't denied the accusations.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#470

Post by pseudalopex »

JamesBarney wrote: post #456
pseudalopex wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What private internal documents did she publish?

> “After conducting a review of this manager’s conduct, we confirmed that there were multiple violations of our code of conduct, as well as of our security policies, which included the exfiltration of confidential business-sensitive documents and private data of other employees.” I assume this was to release to the press to shame/pressure Google, and wasn't corporate espionage. But what reason do you think she was do…

But did she release documents to the press?

Exfiltration of confidential documents could mean just forwarding emails to herself or an employment lawyer.

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