Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 326 posts

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#241

Post by justicezyx »

throwaway2245 wrote: post #163
ccmcarey wrote: post #136

She put out ultimatums and said she'd resign if they were not met, and G accepted her resignation. That's not a firing.

The way you have phrased it makes it a firing not a resignation, in my mind. "I will/would resign if" reserves her the right to resign; it does not have the same meaning as "I am resigning if" Compare to e.g.: https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/511062-trump-vaccine-o... We can't take this ultimatum as a resignation.

That's not how company works... Any legal documents regarding business and money is very particular and wordy to let things clarified outside of courts.

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#242

Post by cmiles74 »

kenjackson wrote: post #111
actuator wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Her spat against Yann LeCun felt very wrong to me. That is not how fellow academics/researchers should treat each other. Maybe Yann LeCun was wrong, the way she conveyed the message disregarding any knowledge he might have on this was definitely not civil. She could have chosen a different way to address the complaints here, not by getting overtly confrontational. Maybe the review group got it wrong, maybe they were…

I've tried to piece together the debate with LeCun, but I can't find anything she said that seemed all that bad. It seemed like, if anything, she just simply wouldn't let him off the hook. And it's very possible I missed several tweets that were really toxic...

Agreed, there's even an article floating around that purports to summarize the most offensive tweets. In my opinion, this whole thing is being vastly blown out of proportion.

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#243

Post by foogazi »

CydeWeys wrote: post #178
ivalm wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about paying $90 million to the key person in creation of android? Honestly, he is a scumbag, but that doesn’t nullify his contribution to google (?) it’s not that he was paid for sexual harassment, it’s that he got paid for being creator of one of the most important products in the world.

He sold Android to Google in 2005 for a hefty sum, and he drew a large salary and stock package every year since. Why in the world would he need a $90M exit package on top of all that when he's being fired for severe workplace misconduct? He already got paid for those contributions.

Don’t see what need has to do with a severance package

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#244

Post by dheera »

jpttsn wrote: post #131
dheera wrote: post #6

Ultimatums never work, and threatening to resign is never a good strategy (compared to either trying to amicably work things out OR just resigning). However Google's passive-aggressive response wasn't terribly great either ("We respect your decision to leave Google ... and we are accepting your resignation.") It's a firing packaged up as fake "respect". I wish both sides learned more about how to de-escalate situatio…

They could have written “we won’t meet your ultimatum but we don’t think you’ll resign like you threatened, so see you after vacation”. Would that be better?

I mean, they could have just been upfront and said

"We feel that at ultimatum is not an effective way to discuss this issue and so we are hereby terminating your employment effective today."

No need for this passive-aggressive "respect your decision" [but didn't actually respectfully let you confirm your decision] bullshit.

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#245

Post by CydeWeys »

foogazi wrote: post #243
CydeWeys wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He sold Android to Google in 2005 for a hefty sum, and he drew a large salary and stock package every year since. Why in the world would he need a $90M exit package on top of all that when he's being fired for severe workplace misconduct? He already got paid for those contributions.

Don’t see what need has to do with a severance package

You shouldn't get severance packages if you're fired for egregious misbehavior. Google has admitted it was a mistake and will not be paying out severance packages in these situations going forward.

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#246

Post by foogazi »

whimsicalism wrote: post #205
jeffbee wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, but imagine that you are the expert in your field and you have work for this person, who controls your career and compensation, who has a tendency to say that domain experts need to shut up and defer to her.

If the domain is AI ethics, then Yann is not a domain expert, she is. Indeed, it seems like this exact expansion of Yann's "domain" is what she is frustrated by, and you are playing exactly into it. > the expert in your field and you have work for this person, who controls your career and compensation Must be harder when your CEO boss has a tendency to call domain experts pedophiles, yet I see Musk praised frequently…

> Indeed, it seems like this exact expansion of Yann's "domain" is what she is frustrated by, and you are playing exactly into it.

Your description above sounds like gatekeeping to me - not saying that is the researcher’s intent - but it doesn’t seem to make for good science

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#247

Post by commandlinefan »

whimsicalism wrote: post #57
elefanten wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Body of work aside, she absolutely is an aggressive-ranging-into-toxic Twitter personality and a very strident proponent of a divisive and dogmatic strain of diversity advocacy.

> divisive and dogmatic strain of diversity advocacy. Reading the HN comments section sometimes feels akin to doing archival research on letters to the editor during the peak of the civil rights movement. It's astonishing how consistent the tropes are.

> during the peak of the civil rights movement.

Actually, you're right, but you're making the opposite point than you think you are. I wasn't alive in 50's or the 60's (and I was too young to even remember the 70's), so my whole life I just took for granted that what the history books had to say about racial inequalities at those times was true. It's hard to miss, though, that people are saying the exact same things today when I can look around and observe that they aren't true and haven't been at any point in my lifetime. It doesn't make me question my perspective on the world as it is today, it makes me wonder how true the history books reflected reality at that time.

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#248

Post by CydeWeys »

busterarm wrote: post #213
CydeWeys wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He sold Android to Google in 2005 for a hefty sum, and he drew a large salary and stock package every year since. Why in the world would he need a $90M exit package on top of all that when he's being fired for severe workplace misconduct? He already got paid for those contributions.

Because Android is arguably worth a hell of a lot more than the $50 million + salary that he received and if they didn't kick him some money, they would never be able to make a similar acquisition deal in the future. Nobody would sell a technology like that for that little and Google would have to forever compete with future-Androids. If they had fired him under more favorable circumstances his payout would have been…

He sold the company to them in 2005. If he didn't think that was a fair price he wouldn't have agreed to the sale. That was when he was compensated for his creation. After that, he was compensated through salary.

I don't understand your point of view here. If I sell something to someone else, I'm not expecting to get more payout for it fifteen years down the line unless some kind of residual was explicitly negotiated in the original sale agreement. Acquisitions would never happen at all if the acquiring company was on the hook for unbounded amounts of money decades later just because they made it successful. This point of view seems very un-businesslike. Andy Rubin was not owed that $90M, it shouldn't have been paid to him, and Google has admitted to its mistake and will not be paying out in similar cases going forward.

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#249

Post by PascLeRasc »

JamesBarney wrote: post #164
minikites wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>she has to follow the corporate culture and norms or she won't be surviving in Corporate America "Corporate culture" isn't fixed, the whole point is that it needs changing.

"Corporate culture" is a culture of bland, and empty niceties, with a veneer of politeness and it's 100% needed so that a large corporation can focus on getting things done without every interaction turning into twitter. Hacker news also requires a certain amount of politeness in the way you speak and it's one of the many reasons the discourse is better than twitter.

What makes you think our discourse is better? We have plenty of low-quality comments (see this one for an example) and nearly every thread goes off-topic (like what we're discussing now).

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#250

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

root_axis wrote: post #228
6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they mean that a brilliant asshole of a different type of assholery would have been fired much sooner. The fact that she’s qualified is separate.

Ah, I see. I would say in response that we're pretty much at a subjective impasse then. The thrust of my argument is that brilliant assholes are generally well tolerated. By "asshole" I don't mean someone who got canned for a harmless joke, I'm talking about toxic aggressive egomaniacs who wield their expertise and prestige as a cudgel to demean and abuse their colleagues.

I think we're in agreement, to a degree. There are some types of asshole that the industry has agreed to not tolerate. Then they say "See? We don't tolerate any kinds of assholes! You have to partner well and communicate well with people now!" Even though they absolutely do still tolerate certain kinds of assholes, like the kind you mean, and, to a degree, people who wield popular ideas like a cudgel.

I feel like the industry has at least made big leaps forward. Went I joined (during the great recession) it felt way worse, but I've also found a great company, so maybe I'm insulated in a kind bubble.

Post reply on HN