Her manager said "effective today". That means no gardening leave.

If she was cut off without “gardening leave”, then she was fired. It can then be true that she both quit (two weeks notice) and she was fired (no two weeks for you). I’d be surprised if the latter was true as it would be petty on Google’s part. More likely would be gardening without access which would still be gardening.

"Effective today" has legal meaning. The NLRB just credibly accused Google of acting pettily in other cases too.[1]

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/02/google-spied-on-employees-il...

It's really just academic and not germane to the larger overall discussion whether or not she got that one pay period's worth of money.

IMO, it’s germane. “I quit. My last day will be sometime in late Dec.” “We’ll pay you and recognize your employment through that date, but you are relieved of all duties effective immediately” is quite different from “Nope; your job ends today.”

How is that really a big difference? She's gone either way, because they wouldn't let her publish the paper. This way I guess she's more eligible for unemployment, but beyond that?

> How is that really a big difference?

Well, I mean, for one thing it about $20K difference in salary alone.

> She's gone either way

True.

> because they wouldn't let her publish the paper.

That's...less clearly true in any meaningful sense. The public statements from all the other Google AI people about how the official narrative is inconsistent with general practice on publication review suggests very strongly that the management actions related to the paper were a pretextual component of a constructive termination campaign, and that even when it succeeded in generating something management could at least seize on as a “resignation” the result was insufficiently immediate requiring finding another pretext for immediate termination.

Should she have been fired for her email to the group? It's hard to discuss if people don't agree she was fired.

Should we believe her or her managers? Her managers pretending they just accepted her resignation is dishonest.

What makes it dishonest? Do you not believe that she stipulated that she'd resign under certain conditions? Do you not believe those conditions then came to exist? Do you not believe that her managers accepted her resignation?

I don't have a strong opinion in the matter (and have no connection to Google), but if she in fact unambiguously offered her resignation conditioned on her paper not being approved to publish and Google accepted her offer, I don't see how she can turn around and claim she was fired.

She didn't offer to resign immediately. Her manager explicitly rejected her actual offer and imposed new terms as punishment for her email to the group.

If the text Jeff Dean wrote below is overwhelmingly true, I'd agree that she resigned rather than was fired. I suspect that it is overwhelmingly true as I'm fairly sure that Google legal would have reviewed it and ensured they didn't say anything falsifiable and likely that this paragraph is entirely true.

> Timnit responded with an email requiring that a number of conditions be met in order for her to continue working at Google, including revealing the identities of every person who Megan and I had spoken to and consulted as part of the review of the paper and the exact feedback. Timnit wrote that if we didn’t meet these demands, she would leave Google and work on an end date. We accept and respect her decision to resign from Google.

Notice he doesn't say she resigned immediately.

Do you believe she fabricated Megan's email?[1]

[1] https://twitter.com/timnitGebru/status/1334364735446331392

To me (and I suspect the courts): In the second case, she was fired today prior to her offered last day. In the first case, Google accepted her resignation and just didn’t require her to work through her last day.