If you're paying attention to news from the Social Justice Universal Overlords you've probably heard that Timnit Gebru has parted ways with Google. Dr. Gebru has worked in AI and Machine Learning and has been an advocate for diversity in high tech. It should come as no surprise that most of her life has been spent in academia having earned her PhD in 2017.
Google ain't academia. Google is big business. Yes, high tech. Yes with an impressive R+D department, which is where Dr. Gebru was assigned. But is IS business. So when Dr. Gebru co-authored a paper (does anyone write alone anymore?) it received internal review by her colleagues in the Research group and the feedback was not positive. Now this happens all the time with submissions to refereed journals in the academic arena. The author who prefers to publish rather than perish will make changes and re-submit. That is how academic publishing works.
In business things are bit different. When you work for a company your work product, like research, papers, software and patents are assigned to the company. Especially in high tech. So while the good doctor may have expected Google to hold her in the high esteem she would likely enjoy in academia this is business and it is Google's research and Google's paper to publish. Or not.
Dr. Gebru's reaction was what anyone in DeKalb would expect: overestimating her self-assigned importance she threatened to quit. And Google did what any company should and most would do: they accepted her offer. She tried to characterize this as "being fired" but it was she who laid a threat on the table demanding they respond and expecting Google to back down and let her have whatever way she wanted. The SJW community reacted but impact was limited. Why you ask? There is no certain answer but it just may be that most folks are suffering from "whiner fatigue" exacerbated by pandemic loneliness.
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