They submitted thee paper for internal review one day before their external deadline.

They set themselves up for failure regardless of the paper's content.

A manager with every reason to cover his ass is claiming that.

Her email, sent before that claim was made, suggests that wasn't even remotely the case - and it's entirely possible to think "she seems like an ass" and "this smells like bullshit" are both true.

I suspect reality is somewhere between our two accounts, where one describes this as a purely deadline-related problem and the other describes months of effort to seek feedback via various channels and moving goalposts for what types of review were expected.

Their paper was accepted by the conference's peer review system. Google, not researchers in the community, wanted it retracted. The only logical explanation is that it was good science that did not put Google is a positive light.

> Their paper was accepted by the conference's peer review system.

Source? The linked article says it was submitted but nothing about whether it was accepted. If it was accepted, is it available for public viewing?

I don't think the paper has been accepted, because the conference itself has not made decisions on the papers. This article [1] says that the paper was submitted to "ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency", which sends paper decisions (accept or reject) next week [2]. Of course, it might be accepted at that time, but that doesn't seem to be decided yet.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-03/google-s-...

[2] https://facctconference.org/2021/cfp.html

What's your experience with corporate internal processes been? Mine has been that they often exhibit an extreme disinterest in the judgment of external parties that are not part of the internal process. Whether or not the external group accepts the paper was likely irrelevant to what would be internally seen as a breach of process.

Generally "It worked out, everything's fine" is not a line that flies.