If someone says "if you don't fix this thing I will look for work elsewhere" that doesn't mean that you can say "I accept your resignation." If you want that person gone immediately, you have to fire them.
> If someone says "if you don't fix this thing I will look for work elsewhere" that doesn't mean that you can say "I accept your resignation."
I think you'll find from a legal standpoint, it does.[1] At least I know that they teach in negotiations courses that any time you make a counteroffer, the original offer is legally null and void. So if I give you an employment offer that is good for 30 days, and you counter the following day with a higher salary, then I legally can say "No, and we will not hire you" (i.e. the 30 days clause became invalid once you gave me a counteroffer).
This isn't exactly the same, but we are at least taught to treat it similarly.
Also, she didn't merely say "I will look for work elsewhere". She said something to the effect of "Let's meet to decide my end date." There's a significant difference.
[1] Although being an at-will job, the legality is rather moot.
The difference between being fired and resigning isn't moot, even in an at-will job where the employer can fire you without cause or explanation. How/why you departed can affect your severance, unemployment insurance, and other financial considerations. In some industries, it may also affect the report submitted to an industry regulator.
In that case an employee gave a resignation date of 11/15. Employer cut off the employment two weeks early and court ruled that it shouldn't be considered a resignation, but instead a termination by employer.
What's the parallel between those facts and the dispute here? Just not seeing any applicable precedent.
> In that case an employee gave a resignation date of 11/15. Employer cut off the employment two weeks early and court ruled that it shouldn't be considered a resignation, but instead a termination by employer.
> What's the parallel between those facts and the dispute here?
That it's, at best for Google, the exact same thing, except that Google gave Gebru, in writing, an explicit, non-resignation reason for the early separation, making it even less disputable that it was a firing and not merely accepting the (disputed) resignation? Paraphrased most favorably to the Google management narrative, Gebru said “do X or I will conduct discussions around setting a date on which I will resign” and Google management said “we accept your resignation and, further, based on an internal group e-mail you sent after this dispute started which we find unacceptable, we are ending your employment immediately.”
That’s about whether pay is owed. I’m certain that Google did not simply stop paying her checks, but told her to go home and that the remainder of her employment would be paid out. I suspect that’s enough for the law to agree that she was terminated voluntarily.
If you ever say something like this and you are fired, you should not be surprised. There’s basically never a reason to do this. If it’s something that your manager can fix, and you’re valued, you wouldn’t use an ultimatum. You’d have enough influence and mutual respect to have a conversation about it. If it’s something they can’t fix, your ultimatum is useless anyway.
Otherwise, this is an all-in bet, and you need to be fully committed to leaving before doing it.
Yes, actually, it does. That's how the disjunctive "or" works.
If I tell Perl to
do_the_thing() || die();
then the Perl interpreter is well within its rights to say "Well, doing the thing doesn't work, so I am terminating your script." Indeed, that is what one would expect it to do.
Ridiculously untrue. This specific case aside, if you are a manager and see all of these as equivalent statements, it's a pretty clear sign you don't care about your team.
I've stated before that I don't want to work at a job without intending to actually leave the job or having a last date. In those cases I was venting and was burnt out. I've even admitted this to managers I could trust to talk about how to unburn me instead of declaring I've 'resigned', because I bring a lot of value to teams I'm on.
So, that's getting fired for cause, maybe, but not resigning. Google's official story is that she resigned. You have to stretch things pretty far to say that taking an action that might get you fired is the same as resigning. Resigning is handing in your badge and laptop and leaving the building. Getting fired is being called into a 4PM Friday meeting with HR and they escort you from the building afterwards.
I am not really even sure how meaningful an email telling your coworkers to stop working on their projects is. It really depends on the tone. When I was at Google, I used the internal social media extensively. I am sure at some point someone said something like "I'm really depressed about how my project is going" and I would reply with something like "You should join my team! I have a req!" That's technically telling someone to stop working on their project, but is a completely acceptable thing to do.
Ultimately the exact details matter, and we don't have them.
That's a completely separate issue as to whether or a set of statements all mean the same thing. I entirely agree that there was serious unprofessional behavior in venting out to a listserv of direct reports. But that doesn't mean all the criticisms laid out are correct, such as "saying X means Y".
The key here is that you were venting to 'managers you could trust about feeling burnt out'. If you were talking to a manager who didn't see this as just 'venting', nothing stops them from accepting your resignation.
I've never regarded those as equivalent. Some are equivalent to others, but they range from expressing displeasure about your job to flat out quitting.
Edit: if you say "I don't want to work here anymore." And you get your "resignation date moved up" you still get your unemployment benefits because you were fired.
> if you say "I don't want to work here anymore." And you get your "resignation date moved up" you still get your unemployment benefits because you were fired.
I can't speak for California, but in my state, if you are fired and not laid off[1], you don't get unemployment benefits. I've anecdotally heard this is also the case in California. However, I've also heard that many tech companies state they will not dispute unemployment claims when fired (my company certainly says that), so people in these "privileged" companies often do collect unemployment even when fired.
Generally, if you are fired for poor performance, or poor conduct, you are not eligible for unemployment benefits. If the company is eliminating your position or downsizing, then you are.
There might be specific criteria that needs to be met for each, so details matter. My guess is the reason my employer does not dispute unemployment claims is they've calculated that the cost to dispute them exceeds the amount they expect their unemployment insurance contributions to go up.
It's fuzzy. If someone in a heated dispute says, "I resign, effective some time in the next month", what do you do? Keep them on until you agree in a date? Even if they give a date like "Dec 31", do you let them keep all their access to sensitive company data, or you lock them out for security's sake and settle the legal and payroll paperwork separately?
All states are at-will states but not all employment in an at-will state is at-will (at-will states allow and make default at-will terms, but specific employment contracts may still set other terms.)
