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Comment by ggm | Hacker News Reader

Do you think society at large really benefits from employers doing things this way?

If you were in the ethics department of a company, unpacked deep seated entrenched breach of social norms and were blocked from talking about it but still believed in ethics, what would you do?

I am unsure I would be prepared to do what she and Timbru did but that's a long way from the implied cynicism and also frankly abject legalistic kow-towing implicitly in your statement.

"Yea, that whistle blower had it coming, they signed the same contract i did" is pretty sad. Its not this case, sure, but its in the room, alongside sacking union organisers, refusing to approve talks, private illegal nonpoaching deals with Apple, paying your founder millions to cover up their sexualising the workforce,

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"unpacked deep seated entrenched breach of social norms"

What does this mean in English?

> If you were in the ethics department of a company, unpacked deep seated entrenched breach of social norms and were blocked from talking about it but still believed in ethics, what would you do?

Whatever you do, just don't try to engage in things that go against the rules of employment (and quite possibly are illegal) like downloading and send confidential documents to third-parties.

Sure, simply said its obvious. Now, idieate into the circumstance. Can you find no path to "i better make sure can prove my side of the story factually" as a thought process?

If you fire your "Ethical AI" team lead for disagreeing with you... maybe you are only interested in the appearance of being ethical. Just a thought.

There is disagreeing with your employer and then flagrantly breaking rules and confidentiality and comparing the two like you are doing here is disingenuous.

No, its not disingenuous. It has to be thought about, sure. I think by the time you're archiving company secrets outside the firewall you mentally left some time ago. What led you there? Is that maybe the interest for me? I don't think she wound up there for entirely base reasons, maybe that's what I'm thinking. Most strict legal compliance answers aren't "wrong" but boy, they feel limited. Hard to change things when it's down to contact terms. Why have smart people, paid to critique if you want to wind up submarining their work?

i feel you generally on this issue, but that last question is easy to answer. a lot of these aren't out of the goodness of our hearts type things but are more CYA if needed, kind of like white collar crime training. "well, we did the best we could - we even had an ethical AI team." also is a nice recruiting bullet.

now, we don't know if this joint was one of those "haha, yeah, we'll get back to ya" things in management's eyes from the start, but it sure looked like its leadership either was not informed or intended to make it actually matter. praise ought to be given there, as this industry seems largely morally bankrupt. however - and i'm not intending to be super negative here - she may have known that her and G weren't gonna work out, and this was just the most spectacular way to set sail.

As a manager someone can disagree with me all they want, whatever i honestly don't care speak your mind. But the moment they start breaking company rules it starts to get into a problematic space, depending on the rule it can mean their judgement can't be trusted anymore and they will have to be let go. Some company rules are to meet legal requirements, and breaking legally required rules is an entirely different ballgame as your opening the company up to lawsuits and legal repercussions. Just because your smart and paid to critique doesn't mean you get to break the law, even if you, I, and the company disagree with it.

As a manager you have structural obligations it would be impossible to ignore. I believe Mitchell will fail to argue illegal termination in law. I am sure google will have a mixed outcome here, some aspects (reinforcement of hr expectations and contract compliance obligations will be net beneficial for everyone) and some (confirmation of how strongly there is a gap between Google's posture, post "dont be evil" and the actual reality) less so.

I've met and worked with a small, couple of handfuls of google people, men and women, all amazingly skilled. Meredith Whittaker was one of them and I think her termination was unnecessary. I do think less of Google as a consequence.

Clear violation of company policy is not disagreement. The entitlement of people never ceases to amaze me.

I would agree, when you consciously step over the legal, you accepted the coming dismissal. Entitlement is a label. I think she knows cause exists. She "left" long before and her anger reflects the construction of events which led there. I doubt she really feels entitled, beyond the expectations of respect and recognition somebody in her pay grades would normally expect.

There's room for discussion, certainly. If I hired an accountant to keep me on the straight and narrow and I expensed a dinner I'm not supposed to, I wouldn't want him to go running to Twitter and be like "Hey, everyone! Rene expensed a dinner with this guy abroad! That's a violation of the FCPA! He's a violator, guys! Heeeeeee's a violator!"

Like, if he did that, I'd be pretty incensed honestly. I'd expect him to tell me "Dude, you can't go around taking these guys out to dinner. That's like a bribery violation and shit, homie".

If he had to keep warning me, I could see him feeling that his professional ethics are being called into question, and then I'd expect him to either:

* quit and maybe blow the whistle

* stay and blow the whistle and then I'm gonna retaliate within my legal ability

> There's room for discussion, certainly. If I hired an accountant to keep me on the straight and narrow and I expensed a dinner I'm not supposed to, I wouldn't want him to go running to Twitter

Or emailing your expense report to who knows whom.

Only if the disagreeing was in relation to ethical AI.

As far as I know, she's made this about perceived sexism, racism, and personally attacking hermanagers for failing to step up regarding various topics NOT related to AI ethics. There hasn't been much discussion about actual AI ethics, at least not on her behalf.

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