If you offer to resign if new conditions of employment aren't met and the company accepts your resignation without honoring your exact terms of schedule, it sounds like you largely were responsible for terminating your own employment. Claiming that you were "immediately fired" as she tweeted just sounds dishonest to me.
She said if these conditions are not met, I will work with you on an end date. That's not what happened, she was terminated immediately with the rationalization being that they didn't like the tone of the email she sent to the Google Brain Women and Allies listserv. That alone points to it being a termination.
Is she largely responsible for her employment ending at Google. You could say yes, but fact is that Google is the one who cut things off.
Either party can choose an earlier date, but not a later date.
I don't really care if she left or Google fired her. But framing it as Google is evil for firing her seems dishonest when she was the one who gave the ultimatum.
Google is evil, but not for this activity.
This isn't just a framing. She was fired. Now you may say "she was asking for it" but that doesn't change the fact that she was fired.
There's no accepted relationship if you push someone threatening to jump. You're just an a-hole committing assault and possibly murder.
Is there a link to the letter that she sent? That could help to clarify.
The demand is something around exposing the identities of the peers who reviewed and rejected her paper. If Google doesn't give her the identities of those peers, she say she will leave the company.
Comparing to suicide is a bit much though. When considering death, everything else becomes secondary, so we can't use that analogy for comparison.
"If you eat dinner today, I'll quit my job" - then, I'll probably tell person that they can quit their job. I'm not gonna skip my dinner for that.
I hope this illustrates that, when death is involved, everything else becomes secondary, and we prioritize not death over everything.
So, it's a bad analogy to use in Timnit's situation where she will quit if she doesn't get to see the identities of peer reviewers. This situation is not life and death.
"If you eat dinner today, I'll quit my job" - then, you fire them and get on with dinner.
We can agree to disagree on being fired or not being fired.
But why would 'being fired' (or not) matter since both sides want to part way?
I don't see any unfair treatment. Her ultimatum isn't satisfied, so both part way.
This group of people also hyper-focus way way too much on this part, which is not the important.
It's much better to focus on other stuffs like her paper didn't get approved because o A, B, and C. Or how Google suppresses her paper because of X, Y, Z.
Instead these people are yelling that Timnit was fired unfairly when she was the one who gave the ultimatum first...?
But that doesn't seem right. That looks more like a different type of letter, sent to a wider audience than just Timnit to her manager(s).
I've seen referenced that there was a timeframe for when she was going to quit that she mentioned. I see no such reference in that letter.
Maybe there's a real copy of the letter floating around. My guess is that people pretend that they've seen "the letter" but only read this other one I referenced above.
I'm happy to be proved wrong, though. I have no dog in this fight except to understand the truth of the situation. If you've seen a different letter than shows her ultimatum and time frame, please share.