“We were still trying to change the world from the inside… and the empire struck back.” — Claire Stapleton on the Google Walkout
Earlier this week, the New York Times published an op-ed on how to fight back against big tech which included a reading list from previous guests on the show like Karen Hao, Yanis Varoufakis and Astra Taylor. Not included was Claire Stapleton’s Don’t Be Evil: Bad Bosses, Fake Promises, and My Escape from Big Tech. Partly, I assume, because this anti-Google jeremiad only came out yesterday.
An idealistic English major straight out of college, Stapleton joined Google in 2007, when few questioned Silicon Valley’s utopian language. Her first job was in Google’s ministry of truth, an internal communications department designed, as she now admits, to get everybody high on the mission. And that mission was to train Googlers into becoming obedient corporate cogs by neither blaming the system nor questioning authority.
While not exactly Winston Smith, she nonetheless rose in the bureaucracy. Rachel Whetstone (Steve Hilton’s wife) promoted Stapleton to the CEO’s communications team where, as the archivist of the sayings of the company’s two big brothers (Larry & Sergey), she became known as the “Bard” of Google. As an obedient corporate cog, she was both the message and the messenger. Until she wasn’t.
Like Orwell’s Smith, Google’s Claire Stapleton eventually turned her ministry of truth language on the ministry itself. In response to the $90 million exit package of a senior Google exec accused of sexual misconduct, she co-organized the Google Walkout of 20,000 employees. Two months later, her role was hollowed out. Then she lost her job. Not quite Room 101. No rats. But not a lot of fun.
So is Google evil? Stapleton doesn’t know. But the former Bard of Google acknowledges that Larry & Sergey’s promises of making the world a better place are no longer credible. Today, idealistic young college grads want to fight back against Silicon Valley. Today, nobody outside the internal communications department of Google, OpenAI or Anthropic believes that technology is making the world a better place. Like Claire Stapleton, we all now want to escape from big tech.
Five Takeaways
• Getting High on the Mission. Internal comms existed to pump the mission into the workforce — “letting Google be your housewife” — while Kofman’s training taught: never blame the system.
• The Bard of Google. Larry Page’s archivist, then Creative Lab, then a YouTube “curation” team nobody would miss: Graeber’s bullshit jobs, live from the inside.
• Normie, Not Whistleblower. A coming-of-age from the rank and file — the workers’-eye view of tech labor organizing. “The empire struck back.”
• The Walkout and the Bill. Me Too summer, Rubin’s $90M exit; talking points “designed to absorb dissent” radicalized their own author. 20,000 walked out. “They sure got you out cheap.”
• Don’t Outsource Your Moral Compass. From “treat workers well” to “your job could go to AI, be grateful.” Audiences are booing the AI ads anyway.
About Keen On America
Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen.
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Buy Don’t Be Evil at bookshop.org
Chapters:
00:00:31 Introduction: McMillan Cottom’s reading list — and one more
00:01:53 2007: straight out of college into the hot corporation
00:02:55 Internal communications: pumping the mission
00:05:50 Campus tours: “letting Google be your housewife”
00:06:26 Kofman’s training: be a player, not a victim
00:09:30 Dario and Sam borrowed the script
00:10:25 Twelve years: the rise of the Bard of Google
00:10:58 Rachel Whetstone, Larry’s voice — and losing it
00:14:15 Normie: a coming-of-age in tech
00:17:53 Constraining manager power: Bock’s Work Rules
00:18:50 Bullshit jobs: the curation team nobody would miss
00:23:53 Me Too summer, the memo, and the Rubin story
00:29:12 Sergey, Glass, and the honeypot
00:31:02 Susan Wojcicki: “you have no idea how hard it was”
00:33:07 The villains of my story are women
00:34:01 Hollowed out: retaliation after the walkout
00:36:44 The nuclear option — and severance
00:37:17 An entitled workforce? M&M’s and day care
00:38:07 From “treat workers well” to “your job could go to AI”
00:40:35 Is Google better than the rest?
00:43:35 Don’t outsource your moral compass
00:45:21 Thanks and goodbye