I empathize deeply with Gebru and I have no doubts that she has experienced institutional racism at Google and in tech generally. I do think that, despite me being white, however, there is a good chance that I would be fired, were I to make an ultimatum about quitting unless the company did X. Based on conversations with managers who have worked at big companies like Google (full disclosure, I work there now), it sounded like this was nearly an explicit policy HR holds at some companies — i.e. that ultimatums would never be tolerated and could result in termination.
That said, supposing such a policy were in place, given the understandable frustration she felt about the situation and given the potential institutional racism that led to the event in the first place, an exception likely should have been made. Moreover, one would hope that a company would trust an established ethicist about whether it were appropriate to issue an ultimatum and would take it very seriously if they did, opting to take time to consider it, as opposed to issuing a quick termination.
That said, supposing such a policy were in place, given the understandable frustration she felt about the situation and given the potential institutional racism that led to the event in the first place, an exception likely should have been made. Moreover, one would hope that a company would trust an established ethicist about whether it were appropriate to issue an ultimatum and would take it very seriously if they did, opting to take time to consider it, as opposed to issuing a quick termination.