Margaret Mitchell fired from Google • Hacker News Board

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#821

Post by randycupertino » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 1:36 AM UTC

_y5hn wrote: post #657

randycupertino wrote: post #651

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't know. On the surface of it, it seems a very good opportunity to work in an area with lots of potential, but which also need lots of regulations. You get to ensure decisions by machines will improve lives and not be unintentionally biased by any means. It's also good money, knowledgeable peers and pretty wide net for R&D. Good times! It's just a bitch that for-profit company lobby for no regulations, and fire…

> However, we all know company culture do not tolerate speaking up to power. So these people also went about it the wrong way, and going public too soon over something that was just theoretical. What you need to do is gather evidence, and escalate as security violations internally. Use the proper channels. This is harder work than crying wolf, obviously.

This is incredibly spot-on way to describe navigating through delicate office channels to create change and also not ruffle too many feathers. Well said! Can you sit on my shoulder please and advise me real-time throughout my career? Comments like this are why hacker news is so much better than reddit!

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#822

Post by rmk » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 2:08 AM UTC

izacus wrote: post #150

rmk wrote: post #4

For people who are familiar with this, I have a question. How does research in an industrial lab vs. a university work, insofar as independence is concerned? In a university, aside from well-defined ethics guidelines for conducting research (e.g., involving animal or human subjects), staff are generally free to publish the findings of their research at any venue they see fit. Many are tenured professors, so they also…

> In a university, aside from well-defined ethics guidelines for conducting research (e.g., involving animal or human subjects), staff are generally free to publish the findings of their research at any venue they see fit. I'm not sure what university were you at where that was true - academia is horribly political (in many ways more than corporations in some ways less) and until you get tenure your job is to put up…

All of what you said is true, but the meaning of tenure is that you are paid a salary by the university and get to keep your job. That's a very generous protection and it's offered to encourage free discussion and exchange of ideas, which is what the University is all about. There are professors who choose to ditch research and make teaching their calling, even at research universities.

Universities are not very well-run when compared to your average fortune 500 corporation, and there is a lot of skullduggery that goes on inside of academic departments, particularly those that do not receive a whole lot of research funding, such as the humanities. The path to tenure is brutal and is full of pitfalls (in fact many positions are explicitly not tenure-track; there are many, many adjunct positions where folks are paid a pittance and forced to sign very unfair contracts that must be renewed periodically). Even with all that being said, academics do enjoy a degree of freedom that those in the corporate world can only dream of.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#823

Post by refurb » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 2:54 AM UTC

pseudalopex wrote: post #740

room500 wrote: post #736

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it is acting as if it wasn't a mutual agreement. Maybe "resignation" doesn't meet your criteria. But "firing" implied that the employee wanted to keep their job but the company ended it. Would you accept "mutual termination" ?

It wasn't a mutual agreement. She wanted to keep her job until she was back from vacation at least.[1] [1] https://twitter.com/timnitgebru/status/1334341991795142667

So she was fired after making demands the employer wasn’t prepared to meet, including keeping her employed until after her vacation.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#824

Post by ergocoder » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 3:15 AM UTC

_y5hn wrote: post #814

ergocoder wrote: post #787

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because she mentioned Jeff Dean first. Then, Jeff needed to ask what this was about. Then, Jeff ended with "personal attack is not okay". Like huh? At this point, we might as well ask Jeff to tweet that the earth is round. Otherwise, we would call him a flat earther. This isn't called "engaging" when one side would assume you were racist if you didn't tweet to support their cause. The word you are looking for is stro…

Somehow the feed didn't scroll up as far as it did now. I see some other posts before those I saw first. But that just confirms it, it's better to totally ignore any drama on Twitter, which also news organisations need to learn. Who said what, in an online forum, is just not newsworthy.

I mean it would be hard to ignore when that person was your colleague...

I'm sure, if it was a random person ,Jeff would have ignored

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#825

Post by seany » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 3:20 AM UTC

Good?

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#826

Post by Wolfenstein98k » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 4:00 AM UTC

GavinMcG wrote: post #722

Wolfenstein98k wrote: post #693

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I refuse to be told I'm complicit in evil without a clear and definite example.

Here's one guess, off the top of my head: what actions have you taken to reduce the likelihood that police in your community will kill a black person unnecessarily? Cause as much as I care about that issue, I never reached out to leaders in my community to encourage hiring more police and reducing overtime, for example. I didn't join any protest. I have been completely passive, standing by, waiting for someone else t…

I could save a lot more lives per dollar/hour by working on antimalarial treatments in Africa. There's countless things we're not doing so save lives. That does not mean we're relentlessly evil.

If you aren't working to save every life, you're basically Godwin's Law.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#827

Post by yuliyp » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 4:49 AM UTC

knorker wrote: post #580

yuliyp wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"company policy" at large corporations is not designed to do anything other than provide cover for the corporation to do what it wants.

Is "no e filtration of company data" an arbitrary "gotcha" policy?

Did you ever leave a notebook that had work notes at home or in your car? Ever gotten an e-mail on your work account that should have gone to a personal one? Use any SaaS service that would get access to company data?

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#828

Post by vorpalhex » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 7:09 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #813

rayiner wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We also learned about “First Amendment values” in law school. This idea that there is no moral component associated with the First Amendment is a new and weird one.

One of the first things the founders did was to pass the Sedition Act of 1798, so whatever the moral component of the First Amendment is, it wasn't as clear as it's made out to be today.

Bill of Rights was 1791. That's like judging Obama era policies based on Trump changing them.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#829

Post by bartvk » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 7:24 AM UTC

nickserv wrote: post #695

pydry wrote: post #675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

The price of success I suppose.

I think there's more to it. First is that they made their data collection much more sophisticated, and second is that people seem to be paying more attention to data collection in general.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#830

Post by hackerfromthefu » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 7:36 AM UTC

JamesBarney wrote: post #442

geofft wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Funny way of phrasing "paper wasn't good enough yet to pass peer review." Peer review happens after it's submitted, in a blinded review process, by other researchers who don't have a conflict of interest - i.e., people who are at other institutions. It does not happen internally by people hand-picked by management. You can disagree about the merits if you want, but it's important that we're on the same page about t…

Gebru was a very bright individual who could have gotten a job in academia, but instead chose to work for Google. Part of that arrangement was Google got discretion on what she could print. They wanted her to change what was printed because they believed the paper was unfairly critical of technologies Google had a stake in. She disagreed, threatened to resign, wrote an unprofessional email and then Google accepted he…

Very bright in some aspects, maybe. But also apparently insensitive, abusive, narcissistic, myopic, and apparently clueless about corporate realities, and either delusional or dishonest with extreme bias in many communications.

Not my idea of bright ..