“Cut and dry”? Given how google fired a previous AI ethicist in an entirely misleading way (“We accept and respect her decision to resign from Google”), it would be naive to take google at their word here.
Gebru: "Don't make me retract the paper and give me the names of the reviewers or I'll resign."
Google: "We're not doing that. We accept and respect your decision to resign from Google."
Like it's not asking for o divorce to have an affair, but it does make it a reasonable next step for the other party.
She sent an email with a list of demands saying if they weren't met, she'd work on an exit date with the company.
The company couldn't meet those demands. By her own words she would be exiting the company, they worked out that exit date with her in that email: right now
It can both be true that she was the initiator of her departure, and legally it's a firing.
They didn't work "out that exit date with her in that email". They told her she was no longer an employee effective immediately. That is a firing, legally and otherwise.
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?
More like storming in and demanding "either you give me root access to all systems, and the building to myself, and a promotion, or i quit!"
It's a grey area, and I agree there are cases that are not de facto resignations.
But Gebru's demands were absolutely not of the compromising kind. She was effectively demanding dictator powers.
And if "i can't do my job if i can't run the company". Well... I guess you can't do you job, then, according to yourself.
To the company, every demand is unreasonable...
And every negotiation/collective bargaining begins with overstated demands, that's hardly unusual.
I like my comparison in another comment: Having an affair and getting caught is not literally filing for divorce.
Jeff Dean just yesterday officially apologized for this situation so clearly he feels he did something wrong, although he doesn’t admit to anything specific. It wouldn’t surprise me if this quote from his email (and the corresponding behavior) would be on the list though.