[tinalumfoil]

Reading the comments here I feel like HN lives in a completely parallel universe. The number of employees who have the ability to threaten to quit and not immediately get fired are very very few. Even at the executive level you can't just make ultimatums for your employment and expect that they won't consider just firing you. Even if you're the representative of a union speaking on behalf of thousands of employees you need make sure you have enough leverage before making demands like that.

This not some crazy conspiracy that she got fired. It would be noteworthy if someone who did what she did didn't get fired.

[beisner]

The reality is that the research organizations at big tech companies have always been a very different kind of labor relationship than typical rank-and-file business units. Many of the senior or otherwise high-profile researchers at FAANG companies would otherwise be professors or academics, in positions where there is essentially unbridled academic freedom and no expectation of separating personal convictions and principles from the academic environment.

Google lured many of these researchers away from academic roles, with the tacit promise that they would be able to continue their research - and at times political - endeavors relatively unencumbered. Google has built a research empire on this promise, which has been responsible in part for their continued dominance in various markets.

My point here is that these researchers have a lot of leverage. Advocating for action within an organization, counter to the current immediate goals of management, is only taboo (and thus “fireable”) in most companies because workers have almost no leverage, generally speaking. Not because it’s some inherently “bad” thing. If Google becomes seen as a place that fires researchers for advocating for their beliefs, especially in a capacity that they’ve been explicitly hired to do, then I think a lot of researchers would - and rightly should - reconsider whether such an environment is consistent with their values as academics and, often times, activists. Google’s research group is enormously valuable to the company, and there’s only so much reputational damage of this nature the organization can sustain before academics decide to take their talents elsewhere.