[vfclists]

What exactly does toxic mean if she has the sympathy of her coworkers?

Toxic to management, embarrassing to her line managers or toxic to the colleagues she co-produces her work with?

Was she toxic to the company's profits, toxic to the company's profits, or both?

[bpodgursky]

She has the (public) sympathy (of some fraction) of her direct (subordinate) team.

You can have the loyalty of a couple of close coworkers and still be toxic for the company as a whole, if you don't have professional interactions with other teams, or with your own managers.

[jasonwatkinspdx]

Last I saw the internal petition supporting her was at above 1,200.

Stereotyping is doing a lot of work here, driving people's assumptions about Gebru.

[concreteblock]

There are significant incentives for anyone critical of Gebru to remain (publicly) silent.

1. If someone is to sign a petition for Gebru, what could they lose?

2. If someone were to speak out, under their name, against Gebru, what could they lose?

3. If someone is neutral on the issue and a pro Gebru petition gets passed around asking for support, what is the path of least resistance?

See also https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/k77sxz/d_t...

[6gvONxR4sf7o]

I mean, there’s no counter petition (nor should there be) so it’s pretty tough to know whether those 1,200+ are representative.

Where I work, if someone is ousted, people might talk about the person’s toxicity or whatever got them fired one on one or in small groups, in a pretty off the record kind of way.

I’d bet the people who agree with the petition think it’s representative and the people who disagree think it’s not representative (“people are generally like me” is a reasonable prior).