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I really appreciated this article, but there are a couple things that keep nagging at me (thread)...1/ https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-21/google-ethical-ai-group-s-turmoil-began-long-before-public-unraveling">https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...
-I& #39;m characterized w @timnitGebru as "agitators who weren’t afraid to make waves when challenged." But that& #39;s not true. I was v afraid. I was anxious & scared constantly. I didn& #39;t want to "make waves": I wanted to be a researcher...2/
And I was shocked from day one that the role I thought I had accepted was not the role that was required of me. I joined as a computer scientist; I was introduced as a linguist. Just days before I was thrown out, a long-time collaborator was surprised to learn I was a CS PhD...3/
...Despite the constant work I did that included statistics, machine learning, natural language processing, computer vision, and language. The sheer ability of me to converse about language pigeon-holed me as a "linguist" and erased/marginalized my more real qualifications...4/
...within weeks of joining, I was ordered by a UX researcher to work on a specific kind of research with a specific person. I kind of ignored him because...what? He was neither my manager nor qualified. But management sided with him...5/
I tried to explain that I was allowed to define my own research, and indeed was exploding with my own ideas that I came to Google to work on. But it was this that was aggressive. It was this that did "make waves". I was immediately treated as insubordinate...6/
As someone who has been a peer reviewer for over a decade, I was very good at reviewing peer work & commenting substantively in docs. It was this that "made waves". My reviews weren& #39;t "Googley" enough. I started paying close attention to how all the women around me made spoke..7/
What I found was that they apologized all over themselves. They used the word "just" a lot; they hedged any comment to convey that maybe they didn& #39;t know what they were talking about. They acted peppy or happy, or else were very quiet....8/
I tried so hard to fit into this mold. I began copy+pasting how other women talked to try and make me sound like it. But I wasn& #39;t good enough at it. Writing objective emails like, "Okay, let& #39;s meet then" was aggressive and antagonistic. I began apologizing as much as I could...9/
But still I wasn& #39;t good enough. As I watched women who were more similar to me be treated way below their worth, I began asking to include them. It was this that "made waves". It was this that was un-Googley....10/
Intense and hostile territorialism began to rain down on me as my papers were accepted where my L7+ superiors& #39; papers weren& #39;t being accepted. I watched as they maneuvered their seniority at Google to try to assert themselves as the leaders in the area, including excluding me..11/
I felt alienated, and scared, and anxious. And I tried to stand up for myself. And no one would listen. The groupthink about how someone who looked like me should behave was so thick it didn& #39;t seem people could see past it. It was this that "made waves"...12/
All I wanted was to be the researcher I had worked my entire career to be. This made me insubordinate. This "made waves"...13/
I didn& #39;t WANT to make any waves. I just came into Google with the apparently very wrong-headed idea that I would be treated as a full person and scholar the same way my male peers were. It was wrong of me. I was wrong. 14/
And so I would go give talks, and publish, and be treated with so much respect externally it was jarring and overwhelming. Didn& #39;t they KNOW I didn& #39;t really have value? Hadn& #39;t they HEARD? I enveloped myself in what Google thought of me and how Google wanted me to behave. 15/
And still was harmed even further. Reported to Ethics & Compliance for trying to hire an overqualified Black woman. Regularly reported to HR for who knows what (I was never told; I just was told that I was basically hated no matter what I did)...16/
So I spoke up more, because I would lose any way. I was treated with hostility when I succeeded. But for all of the Googley modes of behavior I picked up, I would not give up being an external researcher...17/
It was this that "made waves". I tried so hard to always, always do the right thing. But I didn& #39;t say it "in the right way". An email spent hours on trying to craft just right to be true and friendly was called a "tantrum"...18/
Eventually I became numb to it. Eventually I "made waves" when all I felt was an alienating hostility, and I needed and wanted help. I cried out for help. I told hundreds of Googlers on mailing lists how I struggled with pain and fear. This "made waves". The problem was about me.
