People bluff but you generally have to be prepared to walk if your bluff is called. If I walk into a manager's office and demand 2x salary or I walk and the response is "we believe you are fairly compensated," you're now in a rather uncomfortable situation.

Which is of course not to say you can't have a more measured negotiation. But it can be hard to walk back from give me X or I do Y, especially if there isn't a lot of middle ground between giving you X or not giving you X.

> People bluff but you generally have to be prepared to walk if your bluff is called.

Then you aren't bluffing.

Fair enough. And maybe the lesson is don't bluff in situations where you aren't prepared to deal with the consequences if the other party calls your bluff.

How do you figure that? If I hold 27 off suit then I still have to be prepared to show my hand if you call me. Doesn't mean my all-in raise wasn't bluffing.

But presumably you understand that your opponent may call you. The relevant MW definition is "a false threat or claim intended to deter or deceive someone." So in this context, it's a claim you won't really leave if you don't get your way. But the other party may decide to get rid of you anyway based on the bluff. (Thinking about it, it's probably reasonable to call it a bluff but that doesn't mean there aren't consequences if the other party calls you on it.)

I suppose there is an ambiguity regarding whether the "bluff" was that she wasn't actually prepared to leave or whether it was that she actually was.

Yep. You don't really know the ranking of stay with conditions granted, leave without conditions granted, and leave without conditions granted rank. (Well #1 is obvious but the others less so.)

Yeah, but your all-in raise is you saying that you have two aces. You're bluffing because you don't actually have the hand you're pretending to have.

If I find myself in a situation where, if I don't get X, I prefer to leave, then an ultimatum is an obvious course: "give me X or I will leave."

It can be to my benefit in negotiation for the other party to think that I am in such a situation, and so I may still say "give me X or I will leave."

If I do not intend to follow through, I am clearly bluffing.

If I intend to follow through, but absent this gambit I have preferred to stay even in the absence of X, I think we can still call it a bluff in a weaker sense - I am not misleading about my future actions, but I am misleading about the strength of my preferences.

"Do X or I'll quit" is a childish way to negotiate, its akin to a child throwing a tantrum if they don't get their way. It's extremely unprofessional and not something a team player would do. I think its clear why they took her up on her offer.

> "Do X or I'll quit" is a childish way to negotiate

I disagree with this. It's really the only way to negotiate, pretty common. The wording is important here. If you word it as "Do X or I'll quit" it sounds childish, if you word it as "I believe the company should X, otherwise I can't see myself working here comfortably and will have to consider my resignation" it sounds professional, but the idea is the exact same.

I would respectfully recommend that you read "Getting to Yes" by Roger Fisher and William Ury. Effective negotiation is often about expressing interests, not specific actions or ultimative positions.

> It's really the only way to negotiate, pretty common.

As I point out in another comment[1], not only is this not true, negotiation experts universally criticize this as a way to negotiate.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25309003

> the idea is the exact same

Yes, in that they are both childish. Your version just added more weasel words. The second you bring up the "R" word as a threat you have played your hand; everything else is window dressing.

Better to word it as "I believe the company should X instead of the current W, and to that end I will work with Y and Z to come up with a plan for moving to W' and what that should look like, once that is complete I will have better clarity over how to get to (W+X)/2, or if perhaps some V would actually be better for all parties.

Is "do X or we'll fire you" childish? Because that's pretty much how most employment works…

This is an unfair take.

If an employee is adversary toward the company, the trade off needs to be made no matter how much valuable the employee's work is.

This is a non-issue tbh. She wants to leave. Company wants her to leave. They both agree to part way because the premises are fulfilled (i.e. company can't meet her requirements).

If you want to get technical, I'd bet her employee's status is still in tact for 2 weeks; she just doesn't have access to laptop and etc.

Her manager said "effective today".[1]

[1] https://twitter.com/timnitGebru/status/1334364736457240577

I don't know what that means. It could mean her employment status is off today. Or it could mean she can't access any corp material but her status is on.

It's fairly standard to let the employee leave the building immediately but still on payroll for 2 more weeks.

Again, I think it's a non-issue. Both wants to part way. Either party can singlehandedly make that date earlier.

It seems one side brings up this point because other points are not salient, so they try to make it like "you see they fire me today. I actually want to leave in 10 days instead. This is unethical!!". It's a weak point and muddles the main point.

You brought it up.

"Effective today" has legal meaning. It's an issue because it shows Google acting in bad faith.

Not really. You want to leave. The company let you leave immediately. That's not bad faith.

What would be bad is letting a disgruntled employee hanging around company accessing company's material.

No, she did not want to part ways. If she did, she would have quit. Instead, she said she needed certain things to keep working there. That pretty obviously indicates a desire to keep working.

> Instead, she said she needed certain things to keep working there.

And, from what I understand, that she wanted to discuss the issue in person when she returned from vacation (which she was on at the time.)

EDIT: I point this out because I think that this potentially recasts the whole communication from an non-negotiable ultimatum to something more like a fair warning to avoid blindsiding anyone going into an in-person discussion in which negotiation is implicitly anticipated.

> And, from what I understand, that she wanted to discuss the issue in person when she returned from vacation (which she was on at the time.)

Then, she should have said that.

It would be ridiculous for Google to let her hang out at the company.

"Oh we cannot meet your meet ultimatum for sure. But please feel free to hang around and finish your vacation. We'll wait for you, a disgruntled employee, to choose when to leave."

> People bluff in negotiations all the time. A normal response would have been, “I can’t do that. Are you still committed to leaving?” Instead Google went all scorched earth and it’s still unclear why. It also indicates that they don’t particularly value her in progress work in the lab since normally you want the 2 weeks or whatever to squeeze some wrap up work out of folks.

I strongly encourage people to read some books on negotiations - as well as read up on legal ramifications to some negotiations.

Pretty much all books/courses on negotiations say: Ultimatums have their place, but are a minefield (i.e. they can blow up on you), and should be used as a last resort. From a negotiations standpoint, the response was adequate - which is why they all caution against using such an approach.

As for the 2 week thing, this is a convention, but not a requirement. In my company, it's not unusual for someone to be shown the door the same day they announce they plan to leave to another company (it's not the norm, but not at all unusual). The manager/company always ponders whether there are risks in keeping the employee for a few more weeks vs the gains, and this is the question Jeff pondered - that he did this is quite normal. Will the employee provide anything useful to us in those two weeks (e.g. handoff work to others, etc)? Could he/she cause problems (bad mouth people to fellow employees, steal IP, etc). If it's a disgruntled employee, they are usually shown the door the same day. In Timnit's case, it's unlikely there was any value in letting her stay for 2 more weeks.

I once intended to leave the company I was working for. The night before, I took out everything of (personal) value from my cubicle, as well as from my work machine. Only then did I have the discussion with my manager.

Having seen how she communicates and handles difficult situations, I think she really should read those kinds of books. Sometimes her behaviors are textbook examples of what not to do.

(Hint: If you're trying to influence someone, or a whole industry, you are negotiating, whether you choose to think of it that way or not).

Do you have a suggested reference for learning about negotiation?

Books I liked:

- Bargaining For Advantage (https://www.amazon.com/Bargaining-Advantage-Negotiation-Stra...)

- Negotiation Genius (https://www.amazon.com/Negotiation-Genius-Obstacles-Brillian...)

- Getting To Yes (https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Yes-Negotiating-Agreement-Wit...)

- The Coursera course from the University of Michigan (and not the Yale one).

- Getting Past No (https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Past-Negotiating-Difficult-Si...)

- Difficult Conversations/Crucial Conversations/Nonviolent Communications

The last bullet (arguably the last two bullets) are about conversation skills, but that is an essential part of negotiations.

I won't claim to be good at this stuff. It takes a lot of effort and practice to change habits you've formed your whole life. But still, I've improved somewhat. What I do think I've become much better at is identifying why someone's efforts succeeded (or in this case, failed).

I would also recommend Influence by Cialdini. It is not a negotiation book at all, but will make much of the material in those books more meaningful if you've read this book.

Books/courses I discourage:

- Never Split The Difference

- The Lynda course (there may be more than one now, but the one I took years ago was bad).

> Google went all scorched earth and it’s still unclear why

Possibly because she made a personal problem into a team/department problem by asking their colleagues to stop working ("stop writing your documents because it doesn’t make a difference"). I couldn't imagine a company where such a call for work refusal wouldn't immediately lose you a ton of goodwill.

It's so obvious that she was "negotiating" in bad faith by threatening to quit if she didn't get what she wanted (i.e. throwing a tantrum) that I'm surprised that other people are surprised at Google's response.

Welcome to the status quo in the Bay Area. Mentally deranged leftists are having public breakdowns because their usual tactic of calling any slight some kind of -ism is slowly ceasing to work.

It's fine to call bluffs. In fact, the definition of a bluff is something that, with perfect action on the other end, should be called.

That's correct, but calling a bluff can mean different things. In this case, it could be "No, and we don't think you will actually leave" or 'No, goodbye".

My guess is they chose the latter because they don't like employees that run such hard negotiation tactics, and she was becoming too internally disruptive. Either way, any employee should know they are at risk after playing those cards, if not in the short term, then in the long term.

Some people don't have time for an bluff game, person choose the tone in negations with in power opponent without considering full extent of bluffing consequences.

I agree. Worth highlighting:

> ...if we didn’t meet these demands, she would leave Google and work on an end date.

Google's response to this was not accepting of her terms, it was to force an end-date for her —immediately— and lock her out of their systems ASAP.

"We can't meet your demand. But sure please hang around and let us know your end date at your liking. I know you are unhappy with the company. But that's okay. Nobody cares about security anyway."

It's just unreasonable.

Which makes a lot of sense. You don't want to keep an unstable employee around.

People are consistently leaving out the fact that she wrote an internal email encouraging her coworkers to reach out to congress about Google's behavior, at a time when big tech companies are being dragged in front of congressional hearings nearly every month