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Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

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Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#671

Post by masalah »

sangnoir wrote: post #385
cwhiz wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> It’s honestly just basic professionalism. Don’t publicly trash your employer. I'm sure the fine folk at Project Zero didn't get this memo.

How does project zero trash talk their employer, do you have any such instance?

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#672

Post by username90 »

ajb wrote: post #633
simonh wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither of which is acceptable. If she or her lawyers want their own copies of emails outside the company, they can apply to a court.

So,if you are being abused by your boss via email, you can't give the evidence to a lawyer, but first have to apply for a court order without showing any evidence in order to get the evidence? I think this is unlikely to be the law, and if it is, it shouldn't be.

Your word is evidence, then they can use that to look for more evidence including checking emails.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#673

Post by username90 »

Zuider wrote: post #658
WalterBright wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL, but that's what "discovery" is for.

But without solid evidence of some sort, one cannot establish that there is a case fit to be heard in court, and so there will be no discovery. It is a bootstrapping problem.

Witness testimony is evidence.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#674

Post by sgt101 »

creato wrote: post #624
sgt101 wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit of a tragedy to be honest. We/I lived through both developing social networking and big data, and it's pretty clear that the community made huge mistakes that both hurt loads of people and we can't really take back or clear up at this point. Bad things happened to innocent people. Bad people got power over good people and did bad things with it. AI has at least as much potential to be dangerous, ethical co…

I think most of the "AI ethics" thing is two things: first, for people that are actual AI practitioners, it makes "AI" seem a lot more powerful and interesting than it is. I think AI is a small part of the example problems you mentioned. Second, it's a way for humanities types to wedge themselves into a hot, high paying field.

I think it's unwise to minimize the impact and significance of AI at this time - this is the same sort of thinking that prevented proactive and effective management of Social Networking and Big Data technologies. We have to take it seriously this time round, and if it proves to be a y2k thing - well no problem.

You are right about the humanities types - the otherside of the coin is that there is a definite class of insight that should come out of social sciences and history that is relevant here. Unfortunately those fields are dominated by bullshit artists which means that the signal to noise ratio is very very low.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#675

Post by pydry »

randycupertino wrote: post #651
totalZero wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of these "AI ethics researchers" seem like wingnuts, and their profession appears to serve more of a PR purpose than a business purpose. What am I missing? Why are they so essential? Are these people the canaries in the coal mine, or do they simply exist because of paranoia and political correctness?

So, I work in medical research and was headhunted by (but turned down) Juul to work on sponsored trials and research related to smoking cessation and health improvement in patients who are switching to pods. Per the article, "Google has recruited top scientists with promises of research freedom, but the limits are tested as researchers increasingly write about the negative effects of technology and offer unflattering…

It's funny how google started off with such a good reputation and managed to end up with "you can't expect them to be any better than drug hawkers".

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#676

Post by Dayshine »

knorker wrote: post #587
monocasa wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The State of California is very clear that the sequence you've outlined is a firing. An employee needs to be the sole one setting the last date for it not to be a firing.

This is just arguing semantics. It can both be true that she was the initiator of her departure, and legally it's a firing.

Say you hire Troy Hunt to do an audit (security, IG, finance, anything), then repeatedly block them from accessing the information they need.

They then email you saying "I need access to this data to be able to do my job, otherwise there's no point me being here and I should move on to something else"

Another example. You hire a sales person on commission, but then deliberately stall the payment of commissions for cashflow reasons. They say "Look, I'm buying a house in 6 months, so you need to start approving these commissions or I'll need to find another job"

Is your stance that any statement from an employee that a problem with their role is severe enough that they can't do the job they were hired to do, or that the compensation they were promised (whether that is money, career development, publication of papers, etc) is cause for immediate dismissal?

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#677

Post by Zanni »

fmajid wrote: post #244
newsclues wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google didn’t have time to establish and solidify corporate culture before the current trends began. Microsoft was more entrenched and stable.

IIRC MSR was started by Rick Rashid (the inventor of the Mach microkernel that NeXTstep and Mac OS X are based on), and it was always very independent of the rest of Microsoft and its business priorities.

MSR was started by Nathan Myhrvold who recruited Rashid. Well, "started" may be ambiguous here. Nathan proposed it.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/people/nathan-myhrv...

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#678

Post by cecja »

throwawaygooge wrote: post #659
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…

The language that Google use is consistent with simply bcc-ing outgoing e-mails to a personal account and a lawyer's account. That is exactly what I have done and would do whenever my job has been threatened - so that I have access to relevant written evidence after my e-mail is switched off.

You are doing something illegal every time you are doing it which can be used if you sue them for wrongful termination. Make a hard copy and if you need it electronically let the court do it's thing.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#679

Post by cecja »

_y5hn wrote: post #661
ergocoder wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Timnit and her supporters are toxic. Can you imagine calling out your manager of manager on Twitter like this? https://twitter.com/timnitGebru/status/1278569638532530177 Like wtf. This happened 6 months before Timnit was fired. I would absolutely not work with this person if they behaved like Timnit. She and her supporters are absolutely fired for being toxic. They are playing martyr.

This tweet, what's wrong about it? Timnit Gebru Jul 2, 2020 Yep generally you did, thanks. But not about me, Deb and others being attacked by White supremacists, anonymous accounts etc. Clear support means taking a clear stand. And this doesn’t seem to be ending.

You know you can talk about things like that in private and don't have to use a twitter horde to make your argument because you are providing none.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#680

Post by AdrianB1 »

333c wrote: post #562
anonygler wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything is a "literal act of violence" to these people. Google is run by naive idealists who hire activists in droves and are then surprised to realize that those people are a bunch of unemployables.

Putting "random words in quotes that people didn't actually say" is not conducive to productive and healthy discussion.

The quote is from the article and it appears in almost every article on Internet about this topic, so they at least they are not random words. Everybody say this is a Twitter message, at least some may have read it.
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