>In a message posted to many internal Google mailing lists Monday, Meredith Whittaker, who leads Google’s Open Research, said that after the company disbanded its external AI ethics council on April 4, she was told that her role would be “changed dramatically.” Whittaker said she was told that, in order to stay at the company, she would have to “abandon” her work on AI ethics and her role at AI Now Institute, a research center she cofounded at New York University.
>Claire Stapleton, another walkout organizer and a 12-year veteran of the company, said in the email that two months after the protest she was told she would be demoted from her role as marketing manager at YouTube and lose half her reports. After escalating the issue to human resources, she said she faced further retaliation. “My manager started ignoring me, my work was given to other people, and I was told to go on medical leave, even though I’m not sick,” Stapleton wrote. After she hired a lawyer, the company conducted an investigation and seemed to reverse her demotion. “While my work has been restored, the environment remains hostile and I consider quitting nearly every day,” she wrote.
There was separate protests that the ethics council was inappropriately scoped and those on the council not fit to be there. The protests Meredith was on was regarding the letting go with generous severance packages of employees found to have been sexually harassing co workers, and the lack of resources within Google for those victims of sexual harassment/assault.
There was protest involving the AI ethics council, but it was due to the inclusion of a homophobic and transphobic person on the board, not of the council itself.
> My manager started ignoring me, my work was given to other people, and I was told to go on medical leave, even though I’m not sick.
I'm sure there is another side to this story. Nobody has an infinite amount of time or effort. If you're spending your time organizing protests rather than doing the job you're actually paid to do, you shouldn't be surprised that your coworkers and manager would be upset that they have to pick up the slack and try to replace you.
I worked at Google. My project was cancelled and I quickly found a new one. I didn't like it, and wanted to have the same 3-6 months to find a new project that everyone else on my old team had. After much back and forth with HR, I was told that I was sick and to go on medical leave.
When I got back I was on the performance improvement plan, told any attempt to transfer would be blocked, and so I just stopped showing up. Never heard from them again. (I was there for 6 years and my last performance review was "Superb". Probably not the type of person they want to drive away. But it was time.)
I don't really understand what the point of your anecdote is. You aren't entitled to switch teams after you've already chosen one just because you're a strong preformer. They understandably don't want some teams to be stacked and other teams to be understaffed. If you don't want to wait a year before you switch teams again, you can quit or get yourself fired, which you did.
The only trace I can find of that group/team/whatever is that she leads^Wled it. What does it do?
> in order to stay at the company, she would have to “abandon” her work on AI ethics and her role at AI Now Institute, a research center she cofounded at New York University.
So side gigs need approval, and if there's a conflict of interest (such as: preventing your employer from building something that looks similar to your side gig) you'll be asked which side you're on. Sounds pretty normal to me.
"So side gigs need approval, and if there's a conflict of interest (such as: preventing your employer from building something that looks similar to your side gig) you'll be asked which side you're on. Sounds pretty normal to me."
The rhetoric in the article actually implies that this was an existing thing that only became a problem once she started protesting about google's generous severance package to an employee who was found to be sexually harassing co workers, and the lack of resources to the victims of sexual assault/harassment at the google workplace.
That's the thing about retaliation. Unless the retaliator is really bad at this, it is always going to look gray-area, because you're shading available policy to reach a desired outcome.
You want to do it that way precisely because it plays on some peoples' preconceptions, completely aside from not breaking black-letter law.
A lot of folks will see a enviable company, assume the Powers that Be must get most of it right, and assume the person they already knew was a troublemaker (they were contradicting their betters, weren't they?) was also bad at their job.
IANAL, but nothing I've read in sibling comments and other threads fits the legal definition of retaliation. Realigning priorities in a way that the employee doesn't like, sure, but not technically retaliation from a legal perspective.
EDIT: To clarify, Google's reaction isn't the disqualifier, it's that the employee's action of staging a political walkout isn't legally protected since it conflicts with contractual duties and isn't a typical case of utilizing good faith channels for whistleblowing illegal activity. That type of channel is typically what's protected from retaliation. Not to mention working with someone accused of a crime isn't illegal. Association is a freedom and lobbying to change it is purely political.
It depends on which protections you're talking about (note: IANAL either). From what I can gather, it's true that the organizers may not be covered under laws protecting employees who report concerns internally or file EEOC or OSHA complaints. However, any activities related to collective bargaining (which may absolutely include organizing and participating in protests) are legally protected under the National Labor Relations Act, and would not be affected by "contractual duties" or "utilizing good faith channels for whistleblowing."
Whether the organizers were covered by the NLRA is another matter; those with direct reports are likely excluded by the 'supervisors' exemption, which has been expanded over the years to cover pretty much anyone in a managerial role. For those who are covered, Google's actions could absolutely meet the legal definition of retaliation.
As an aside, the legal standards for what constitutes 'retaliation' are not the only ones that matter. They may manage to avoid a lawsuit, but they will suffer harm to their reputation regardless. I, for one, could not care less whether the law allows them to retaliate against the protest organizers. To me, this is just one in a long line of reasons why I scratched Google off my "short list" of potential employers.
> In an email to colleagues, Whittaker said her Google manager told her to "abandon [her] work on AI ethics" and blocked a request to transfer internally.
From the aforelinked Guardian article:
> In the letters, Stapleton said that two months after the walkout, she was demoted and “told to go on medical leave” despite not being sick. The demotion was reversed after she hired a lawyer, she said.
> Her day to day work is/was in the AI bias and ethics space, even within google.
Her manager apparently disagreed. I can easily imagine that the AI bias work could have been a 20% project which she spent way more than 20% time on, and now the manager decided that enough is enough.
Her manager told her to stop doing it which is why she quit, wasn't that the whole problem? Or wasn't it her manager who told her to stop doing AI ethics things on work time?
My source is the same document that the other poster mentioned.
When did you leave? Because you know, people switch jobs, and her role at Google at the time of leaving was leading the Open Research Institute, which you might imagine has nothing to do with drive.
But no I'm not going to share confidential information just because you don't believe me.
The "Open Research Institute" is a one-person affair that she created on her own. You can put anything you want in your job title in Moma, you know. That's why I was talking about everyone else in her ladder and team.
Before I left Google, I looked her up, and none of her ladder, none of her supervisors, none of the other reportees of her immediate supervisor etc. had anything to do with AI ethics. She was originally hired as a Program Manager on Google Docs. In this light, I view your statement as requiring some backing.
So provide some evidence. I could easily say I worked for XYZ and say the same thing you have.
I worked for the White House as Press Secretary and got an email from Trump drunkenly claiming he ran someone over.
I worked as senior advisor to the Shadow Health Secretary in 2020 and helped leak internal communiques covering numerous malpractice suites.
Blah blah blah. It's all words until you show evidence. It's hypocritical to demand evidence from someone else without showing your own. If you don't have any to show, then that's your problem, not theirs.
