The Former ‘Voice of Google’ Speaks Out

Tech companies like Google famously started with a culture and psychology centered on doing good and changing the world. But as Google expanded, it had to adapt to its growing money, power, and influence, and Claire Stapleton, who worked there during this hinge point, describes how that felt from the inside. In this episode, Stapleton talks through her perspective about what happened to the company—and how for her, the work went from being inspiring and mission-driven to what she came to feel was a “bullshit job.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:19Speaker 01

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• 0:35Speaker 02

  I do think that inevitably, having so much money and power, you know, I think it seems like it creates a form of brain rot. Like, I just don't think that you exist in the planet in a normal way at all. And, you know, like, but I can't really account for how quickly the masks slipped with the tech CEOs who were seemingly so offended by Trump at the beginning and now are like on the MAGA train as hardcore as anyone else. It's genuinely surprising because they were much more interested in, you know, positioning themselves as sort of like benevolent kings of the universe before and now, you know, it's just the vibe has completely shifted.

• 1:19Charlie Warzel?

  I'm Charlie Warzel and this is Galaxy Brain, a show where today, we're going to talk about what happened to Google. At the risk of sounding ancient, I still remember an internet before Google. Like a lot of people, I'd been burned by plugging keywords into other old search engines and getting these weird, barely relevant results. It's as if the computer didn't understand what I wanted. Before Google, there were all kinds of tactics that you had to use. It was almost this language that you had to speak to get what you wanted. And Google changed all of that. It felt as the best technology does, like magic. And now I probably don't need to outline what happened next, how Google dominated

• 2:03Charlie Warzel?

  search, how it became an advertising giant, how it rented money and became arguably the foundational online company of the 21st century. Their mission statement was to organize the world's information. And honestly, it's hard to disagree that they at least in part accomplished that goal. Search, maps, Gmail, books, photos. They branched into phones, into workplace software. They bought YouTube when it was still a fledgling video site. They became a behemoth and they got so big and so rich that they started trying what they called moonshot projects, like self-driving cars, drone delivery services, and trying to cure death.

• 2:46Charlie Warzel?

  In some ways, the story of Google is the story of the commercial internet. Or maybe more specifically, it is the story of what we often refer to as big tech. Google famously started in a garage with just two people, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. The company built something ingenious with search and it quickly developed this quirky, upbeat, benevolent, California company ideology, all built around a very specific credo: don't be evil. And then it grew and grew. It had to adapt to the realities of having money and influence and real power. It had to make unpopular decisions like partnering with the military or changing permissions on how it collected data on users.

• 3:28Charlie Warzel?

  Its search dominance grew from this success story to a monopoly. It faced criticism. It became a target of the late 2010s tech clash. It got hauled in front of Congress, sued by the FTC. Claire Stapleton was there for this hinge point in Google's history. She joined the company in 2007 and she worked on a team that helped shape Google's image internally with its own employees. Over the next 12 years, she worked across the organization, in executive comms and at YouTube. She watched all of this change happen and eventually, she grew frustrated by it. In 2018, she was one of the leaders and organizers of Google's walkout for real change. This was a landmark moment in this burgeoning tech labor movement.

• 4:13Charlie Warzel?

  Her involvement, she alleges, ultimately led to her having to leave the company in 2019. And so now Stapleton has written a memoir. It's titled, very fittingly, "Don't Be Evil," and it's about her time inside Google. I wanted to talk to her about Google's transformation. What happens after a tech company succeeds in its initial mission? And so Claire Stapleton joins me now to talk about it all. Claire, welcome to Galaxy Brain.

• 4:46Speaker 02

  Thank you so much for having me. This is a thrill.

• 4:49Charlie Warzel?

  So you joined Google in 2007, if I'm right, a time that for Google, but also for the internet, feels almost unrecognizable for today. So my first question here is, what was Google like when you joined?

• 5:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it's like such a time capsule in so many ways. And 2007 was like, there was this feverish rush to capture college talent in a way that they sort of never did again. They were doing like large-scale college recruiting to just bring in people fresh into the workforce. It was not hardly a startup, but it still had this sort of fresh, fresh energy of, you know, American innovation and yet like not yet corporate. It was not yet at all really considered to be sort of like some scary behemoth, or should we be wondering about all the, you know, power and money that's sort of like flowing into this company? It was, you know, it was on the cover of Fortune magazine, best place to work, like a couple of years running at that point. It just felt like, wow, they not just like reinvented the corporation, but it was sort

• 5:49Speaker 02

  of this like Willy Wonka, you know, brand new kind of model of a corporation. You know, certainly I'm sure people were, you know, not totally bought into it, but as a young person entering the workforce, and of course, for the record, you know, 2008, the recession would happen the next year. So it was sort of like this very limited window to come into this sort of tech boom, feeling like, you know, the world was ours, I guess.

• 6:14Charlie Warzel?

  Yeah, I remember at the time, there was this idea of like, oh my gosh, you go to work and it's like beanbags and parties and like ping pong tables. And that was the Silicon Valley vibe, the ethos overall. But there was this feeling that the Willy Wonka thing really tracks for me because I was like, what goes on there? Like, the internet happens in that building or in that series of buildings. What was, describe the atmosphere, the campus, the people, the free food, the, you know, the optimism.

• 6:43Speaker 02

  It was like this continuation of college, which was really bizarre because you were also sort of transitioning into the hierarchy of a fairly normal corporate environment, frankly. I mean, there, you know, were plenty of executives and, you know, some corp speak and all sorts of like rules that governed being a young person there. But they really did encourage like socializing and staying on the campus. It felt very lush. When I was, I was moving out from the East Coast, from college to the Bay Area, and they encouraged the people to live in these sort of like new developments in group apartments. I was giving campus tours almost immediately after getting there. So yeah, I was very deep in the bones of sort of like, here's all the like thoughtfully sourced natural materials, as well as here are all the sensory touches.

• 7:28Speaker 02

  I mean, now I think there's probably people would roll their eyes a bit more to it, but also I think it was sort of like a celebration of neurodivergence in that way. Like, here's the ball pit, here's like the yoga balls, here's like the ways that the engineers can sort of like get their yayas out in between like their, you know, coding sessions, whatever. So I think there were certain things that were, you know, very considered. It's like how you can have like some, you know, amazing person designing, you know, a children's playground. It was like they had all these great minds thinking about how do you foster innovation and collaboration and, you know, of course, like soak the most, you know, productivity out of people, get them to give, you know, 110%. But it was like, you know, it was quite thoughtful. And then separately, there was so much rhetoric pumping through, which was also quite thoughtful

• 8:09Speaker 02

  because I think, you know, at the time, they said a lot that, you know, you really have to have people sort of hooked into the mission so they feel a stake in it, so they sort of like come up with their most creative ideas. So it was like, oh, we want to capture and harness the amazingness of humans, you know, sort of like the, the, all of the kind of talking points, which I know because I was giving the campus tour, talking about how amazing the campus was.

• 8:34Charlie Warzel?

  Did those perks feel to you at the time? As earnest perks, like this is so great that like, you know, we can get laundry done. We can, you know, we can basically live our entire lives inside this little ecosystem here that is work. Or did it feel a little bit like, oh, we're being trapped in a system. So all we do is work.

• 8:57Speaker 02

  Part of, part of my job, working, I was working in PR at the beginning and I, they were giving me kind of lower priority journalists to take through. And in that, in, in, in those days, it was a lot of foreign journalists because the American press had covered the campus a lot. So, you know, you get a lot of journalists from Europe and they were much more skeptical. So I was aware of this whole thing where they were like, this is totally just an idea, a plot to like, keep the workers here 24/7. This is very big brother, you know? And so I, you know, I think internally or externally, I'd be combating that like, wow, the cynical, you know, person, of course, like this is completely virtuous. There, there was always a really thoughtful talking point to counter that because, you know, who does want to go home when you're exhausted at the end of the day and do your laundry?

• 9:42Speaker 02

  It's nice to not have to drive off campus to get lunch. It's like right there and, you know, whatever. So, I mean, I think that like, you know, I was able to sort of see that, um, you know, that there were some aspects that were kind of about keeping people there and keeping them super engaged, but only much, much later was I able to actually analyze the emotional effects and also the, um, the kind of difficult golden hat handcuffs effects where then people feel uncomfortable speaking out, you know, any sort of like difficult situation with management because you're so grateful and you sort of feel spoiled and all these other things where, um, you could see how it degrades a kind of like healthy, you know, kind of back and forth in, in office culture. But, you know, I, I felt really lucky to have this job. And I think there, at the time, it was like, everyone's so impressed by it.

• 10:27Speaker 02

  It's just like the way it is in life, you know? And people are telling you, it's like, hey, you know, what a lucky girl you are to have this job. The reality of it, you know, as I trace in the book, you know, was always a bit more complicated.

• 10:39Charlie Warzel?

  So you, you write about, um, you were, you were involved in the internal marketing for Google, right? Selling the story of, of Google to itself. And you write about in many ways that you became the voice of Google. So how did that happen? And then for those of us who might be blissfully unaware, what is the voice of Google?

• 11:01Speaker 02

  With Google's sort of obsession with its own culture, there was a lot of lore, internal lore. So, you know, there, the executives would kind of become characters in the TV show because there was, you know, so much internal communications, people Larry and Sergey hosting the, you know, weekly meeting, kind of felt like a revival, you know, like all the, the executives would kind of get up there. And, you know, there was a meme message board that was launched, you know, sort of just a few years after I got there, there was so much internal chatter. So I think the, the, the company culture created its own little characters. So I, when I first got there, one of the first things I was ever assigned to do was work on TGF, the, the internal communications team wrote the script for Larry and Sergey.

• 11:44Charlie Warzel?

  Who are, who are the founders of Google for people?

• 11:46Speaker 02

  The founders of Google, yeah. I think of, you know, they are like Ben and Jerry, you know? It's like, they're kind of these like folksy, American characters, though now they're, you know, seem much more nefarious, but they were huge celebrities internally, but they were really accessible. And so they would broadcast the TGF, uh, video, you know, to the far flung locations in Mountain View and, you know, all this kind of growing satellite offices around the world. So I, one of the first tasks I had in a few months in was sending around the logistical information for this like meeting, like how to tune in to this meeting. And so I, you know, it was like a very straight email at first and I just sort of, sort of like, you know, as it went with this huge, growing company, I had a lot of like leeway, you know, a lot of leash, you know?

• 12:31Speaker 02

  So sort of like starting, you know, kind of slowly getting a little, put a link, a little more personality in it, which I think like, you know, for better or worse, kind of hit the vibe of Google at that time, which was like, kind of geeky, kind of like riffing on the sort of like rhetorical talking points of the time and the products and the new things. It's just like how you, you know, the, someone that sends like the emails for your kid's school has like amazing name recognition. That's like, I don't want to like oversell, but like, it was kind of like that. It's like, you can't not know who Claire Stapleton is because I'm sending this email like every single week for five years. I mean, it was like, kind of amazing that I went on for so long. I think back, you know, very fondly of it.

• 13:07Charlie Warzel?

  So part of this book, as I see it, is, is really about what happens when a company evolves into a corporation, right? When company culture becomes more bureaucratic and a little bit less human. And you describe some of the features of Google's corporate culture, these sort of endless performance reviews, but also something that really stuck out for me is the corporate idea of radical accountability. What, what was radical accountability inside Google and what effects did it have on, on the culture of the place?

• 13:41Speaker 02

  They put all the new comms hires, and I think like broader swathes of the new hires that came out of college into a, a training program, which was, it was run by a guy named Fred Kaufman, who Sheryl Sandberg has sort of credited with profoundly, you know, altering her life. He's sort of like a valley executive coach guy. But it was theoretically about, you know, how to live your values in a, in a career, in a, how to be courageous in the world. It was sort of sounded like very, um, tonally in tune with everything else about Google. You know, here you are, be an owner, you know, be, you know, like this is, this is a place to, you know, really, uh, contribute to the world, to help change the world. But actually, really what the training was about was something called radical accountability,

• 14:23Speaker 02

  which was that, you know, as a young person in the corporation, you should really never blame your circumstances. So this is, there's, you know, a classic example would be you come into a meeting and you're a few minutes late. You, you shouldn't say, um, traffic made me late. You say, I should have left earlier because of traffic, you know? It's sort of like presenting yourself that way in a corporation, um, makes you a very attractive young hire. That's basically what they were saying to us. One of the other lines was, um, that you should strive to be a player at all times, never a victim. You know, victims are bad, you know, this is, this is like, you know, you're a taker. You know, nothing is ever the system's fault, the hierarchy's fault. And so I, I found this like amazing G chat that I'd sent to my brother when I went to this training, being like, today I found out that if my team is dysfunctional, it's my fault.

• 15:09Speaker 02

  And I was joking about it. I was able to kind of have the, you know, distance from it to be like, this is a little slightly whack that they're like telling people who are like 22 years old, um, that, you know, don't expect to change anything around you because your life is what you make of it. And like, if you want to be a rock star, then like, you know, you better not be kind of criticizing, you know, anything, anything about the corporation. And even, even though I was sort of criticizing at the time, um, I found that it was very pernicious, you know, the pernicious ideology for me personally, because as I, you know, wended my way through different roles in the company, um, and found myself in situations that were like pretty messed up. I, I think I was sort of like, be a player, not a victim, be a player, not a victim. You move on, one's, one foot in front of the other. Your life is what you make of it.

• 15:52Speaker 02

  But there's real limits to that, uh, when you run up against the company doing things that you really disagree with, or things start of sort of like, start to pile up as they did, um, in me.

• 16:02Charlie Warzel?

  You talk about Larry Page as the ultimate techno optimist, right? The ultimate, like we can solve anything through innovation and, and hard work. Uh, the, the wanting to cure death, the project calico, uh, with the infamous time cover there. And then these phrases he had, this quote, have a har- healthy disregard for the impossible or computers should do the hard work so humans can get back to doing what humans do best, learning, living, loving. It's very live, laugh, love, uh, coded there. Because not a lot of people get a front row seat to this type of person. I am curious, from your perspective, how much of that techno optimism felt really genuine from your vantage point?

• 16:45Charlie Warzel?

  How much did you feel that these people really believed that?

• 16:51Speaker 02

  I think I, I think I did. I was sort of like still kind of going with, going with the tide and Larry came in pretty hot with this. You know, I, I think that his ambition to sort of like, if we had 2 million Googlers, he used to say, if only we had 2 million Googlers, think of all the good we can do. Because again, we're, we're continuing here from here we are, the sort of like rarified species of, you know, world changers with all these resources.

• 17:16Speaker 02

  And we need to solve the world's biggest problems. He was really like putting the whole Google mission thing on steroids at this time. I think that two things are true. Like at the same time that I was sort of saying, um, you know, this, this sounds kind of hokey, it sounds kind of unreal. It also seemed like inevitable that yes, Google will, you know, solve these things and that sounds great. I, I look forward to Google, you know, curing death.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  Even though, yeah, looking back, you know, sort of like, wow, some of, some of the actual progress Google was making was like quite banal. You know, Larry Page's role as the CEO would be that, you know, everyone has not only, you know, amazing world changing problems to work on, but that they feel that they are, you know, seen and sort of nourished as, um, you know, human beings within the company. And, you know, I think that even though he, you know, interpersonally sees him sort of on the stage at TGF, he was, you know, not the warmest and fuzzyest person, but he seemed to have like a very strong kind of moralistic streak about how, um, you know, companies should operate and, and how they should really, you know, take care of their employees. So, you know, it would be really hard, would have been really hard for me, even with a little bit of like cringing at the rhetoric to think like, oh, this guy's totally full of it.

• 18:25Speaker 02

  It was, it's actually sounded like to some extent, like, you know, quite refreshing because I think they were, he was even putting a little bit more bones behind the kind of like freewheeling fun campus stuff of, of yesteryear.

• 18:35Speaker 00

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• 19:08Speaker 01

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• 19:39Charlie Warzel?

  This might sound naive on my part, but you talk a lot about being, everyone being really bought into this idea of helping build the future. What future did you personally think you were building, that Google was building? Like, what did that look like in your mind's eye? Was it really vague and just kind of like, it's gonna get, it's gonna be better because of all this? Or did you have like your own ideology about it?

• 20:06Speaker 02

  Where things started to kind of slowly break down for me over time is, what is actually my contribution? Not only can I not exactly see the world that Larry Page is proposing with the sort of like army of Googlers, you know, kind of flipping everything on its head, but here I am writing like internal comms for like, you know, or doing ghostwriting for, you know, executive who's like, kind of an a-hole, you know, who's like, you know, selling ads. He was always like, working on the ads business for a while, you know, which is really, that's actually what the company was doing, like was, was like, you know, building a online advertising juggernaut. It was a little sad when I was like, you know, looking, you know, kind of going through

• 20:47Speaker 02

  the book process the last, you know, year or two and thinking like, no shade, but like, what did Google actually ever do in any of this sort of, in any of the categories of things that Larry was talking about?

• 20:57Charlie Warzel?

  Well, not to, not to, not to defend Larry and Sergey here, but as a devil's advocate, I think what's fascinating about a company like Google and some of these tech companies is the, the initial thing actually is wildly impressive, right? Organizing the world's information, like you can make a strong case, Google, that was the, that was the mission statement, Google did that, right? Like, they built something incredibly powerful, changed the way that everyone accessed information. These things were very powerful. I think it's easy to, and not that you're doing this, but it's very easy for everyone to say, yeah, like, what, what did they do, right? And then you look at like, you know, like Gmail was a revelation when it came out.

• 21:38Speaker 02

  Google Maps, yeah.

• 21:39Charlie Warzel?

  Google Maps has changed the way people get around. These products are huge, like the photos, the cloud storage, the things that they have done. Even the ad business and the juggernaut, you know, propelled a lot of people into having sustainable business models on the internet early on. So I totally actually understand that feeling, but there is something that's fascinating about the vagueness of it. You said in an interview previously that during the Google tenure, you had that feeling that there was like a meaninglessness to the work sometimes that you were tasked with doing. I'm curious, what specifically felt meaningless?

• 22:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay, so I never once felt that in my early kind of internal comms journey, but then I spent another five years at Google in the marketing department of YouTube. And that was, this is where all that's coming from, because Google marketing team specifically was creating, you know, hiring like gangbusters, not just internal full-time Googlers, but also we had a whole, you know, cottage industry of agencies. And what we were doing was brand marketing for YouTube. Some of it would cycle through as we're trying to, you know, improve our relationship with women or creators of color.

• 22:54Speaker 02

  So there'd be specific, you know, initiatives, but really we were like a social media operation that was massive. I mean, it was just like, you know, millions of dollars for every campaign. I mean, we had multi-million, multi-million dollar budgets with all these agencies. And what we were doing was producing like a couple tweets a day, right? So we'd imagine like, you know, 30 or 35 people at YouTube, working on the Twitter account. So that kind of stuff, and so my husband's an architect, and, you know, which is like, you know, has its frustrations in different ways, but like, you're building a house, you know, like brick by brick. And here I am, like, you know, it's just like, you know, kind of, this is a bullshit job, you know, I was like going to the gym every day, you know, it was just like, everybody's there just like, you know, gravy train, you know, there were, I would have these existential moments where I'm like, okay, what is YouTube doing?

• 23:39Speaker 02

  YouTube is, you know, connecting the world through video and, you know, we had all these vague goals about being part of the cultural conversation, but all this is, there's tremendous resources, human resources, money, you know, sweat, you know, the urgency of it all the time for what was like forgettable tweets. I mean, no offense to the people who still work on this stuff, it's, you know, I'm sure people find, people find meaning in their jobs in all these different ways. I personally found that really hard. I think particularly because I had, you know, been weaned on this sort of, your work should feel like it matters. By that point, I was just like, I look around and I'm seeing bloat and seeing like, you know, as my former manager's big character in the book said, you don't get a gold star for coming in under budget, which is what she said to me, trying to justify us doing

• 24:22Speaker 02

  some like, you know, ridiculous creator event in LA, which it didn't matter. And it's for, all these things are just like, making, you know, YouTube branded cupcakes. I mean, people would be shocked where the money goes.

• 24:33Charlie Warzel?

  The cupcake budget, I would love to see the cupcake. Please leak me the cupcake budget if you don't, if you haven't already. This is, this is what I wanted to get into because you described Google as becoming bloated and inefficient. And in many ways, like, this is fascinating because it's a criticism that's shared across ideologies, right? Back in 2024, Mike Solana, this Teal, Peter Thiel, Orbit guy who has a, has a website as well and blogs, has argued that Google got bloated and stagnant as a result of being overly woke, right? But then there, there is, there are other arguments that have nothing to do with the,

• 25:14Charlie Warzel?

  you know, the liberal-minded nature of this, just that there was bloat and stagnation. What happened in your mind to Google in this time period, this 2010 to, you know, 2018 period where that stagnation was, was really occurring?

• 25:34Speaker 02

  You know, I think it was, it was a couple of things, and a lot of it was, you know, organizational psychology. I think you had, it's probably this weird wonky strain of the be a player, not a victim thing, where you end up with incredible kind of corporate game players who are able to kind of play the court politics. I think, you know, what happens between, you know, 2010 on is the sort of, you know, political landscape is changing, the social media landscape is changing.

• 26:01Speaker 02

  I think the executives are feeling like they're losing their grip. So with my zone of social media or social media marketing, it was sort of like, all the kids, you know, Gen Z is all on like, you know, TikTok or Instagram and YouTube's gonna lose this audience unless we, you can make any, any number of arguments there, right? But we have different teams working on smartwatches at the same time. Like, that's kind of vaguely demoralizing, it's also inefficient. So I think like, you know, but again, the smartwatches thing was like, well, this is in the air and like, Apple's coming along and we need to, you know, we need to be in this because otherwise we're gonna, and Google Plus was also motivated by, you know, we're gonna lose the, you know, we're gonna lose being people's portal to the web because Facebook, Google is gonna be a Facebook browser and then, you know, we're screwed or whatever.

• 26:42Speaker 02

  So, you know, I think the, you know, Google, Google's domain, the, ended up, you know, it's like all the internet's domains kind of bled together where, you know, social media becomes dominant, you know, search is still huge, but then AI comes along and it's really hard to, to keep it all sort of like organized with a vision because it's just so unwieldy. And then in that, you know, unwieldiness, I think you end up reading a lot of different toxic work cultures or, you know, opportunistic, you know, kind of leaders come in and all these other things. But yeah, I constantly hear from people that it's just, it's just not been a happy place to work for a long time, despite the tremendous resources and still like impressive workplaces and everything else, or offices, that is.

• 27:25Charlie Warzel?

  Well, it feels, it feels like a victim of its own success, right? When you grow in that way, when you have unlimited money, where you're not gonna get any points for coming in under budget and people spend and people, people build out those things, but at the same time, you have to be in this defensive crouch, right? That's what it feels like from the outside is, is that, is that there was, there were these initial world-beating products and, and after a while, you just start guarding them. But at the same time, you are growing. But if you're guarding and you're growing at the same time, it just turns into this really odd, and it sounds like just a totally unwieldy bureaucracy that nobody really knows

• 28:09Charlie Warzel?

  what anyone else is doing, which gives them ability to do things that maybe other people wouldn't want them to do, or it's not, it's not organized in any way.

• 28:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's a lot of anxiety and not enough constraints, probably, like, just the right, the unlimited money of it. People could always argue for more money and what does that all lead to?

• 28:26Charlie Warzel?

  It's all kind of leads to the 2017, 2018 timeframe. You're, you're best known for helping to organize Google's famous 2018 walkout, which is in response to a number of issues inside the company, including what you and others alleged was a culture that had problems with sexual harassment and discrimination. And in the case of one executive, Andy Rubin, a very lucrative exit package after allegations of sexual impropriety that he, we should note, still denies.

• 28:57Charlie Warzel?

  But I want to understand more how you ended up playing such an important role here, because that's not, there's this way that you describe yourself in the book as being a real, you know, cheerleader for, for this company and, and feeling, you know, really in line with the, the type of messaging and kind of like plugging into the system. And yeah, you ended up playing this crucially important role in, in this dissent. How, how do you feel like you got there?

• 29:25Speaker 02

  For me, the lead up was the radical experience of having a kid and coming back from maternity leave was sort of like bleary, you know, fresh eyes, but my work at that time at YouTube was so focused on cheerleading the virtues. I was like, you know, plagued with always having a cheerleader role, like no matter what my, you know, kind of technical title was, it was like, we're putting Claire on like, you know, the new thing we're like gonna trumpet and be enthusiastic about, it's like paid enthusiast, right? Mercenary. So I think that, you know, that kind of job, which requires a lot of sort of like inner conviction, because if you really think that that's not true, or that's a lie, or you're selling something that's like false, then it's really hard to do that job. So I'm just sort of like usually able, was able to kind of manufacture enough, you know,

• 30:09Speaker 02

  enthusiasm to do these jobs. Did this big get out the vote campaign, which was sort of- You know, understood to be about helping, you know, get out the vote for the youth, but then also YouTube's creator class was becoming really complicated. And the dark underbelly of YouTube was sort of coming to the fore, where a lot of the biggest creators on the platform were kind of, you know, pushing the Overton window, or, you know, like the becoming, you know, this sort of is becoming very popular to be provocateur, like PewDiePie, becoming, you know, anti-PC and all these other things. It's not to put a value judgment on the sort of like, you know, gamers of the platform, but more that simultaneously being told to run an International Women's Day campaign, when every time we post something about that online, people are like, why do

• 30:53Speaker 02

  you never take any action, you know, to protect women on your own platform? It's like, you sort of want the credit for, you know, the pink washing or the big pride campaign. But when, you know, the creator community raises the things they'd actually want in terms, it's like, you know, can you, you can talk the talk, but can you walk the walk? It was like, I was constantly faced with that cognitive dissonance because of being the sort of like, you know, forward-facing person for the company, but then also seeing all this very, very valid, you know, criticism and just, I think, also trying to kind of grapple with, you know, this sort of narrative that YouTube was a net positive for society at a time when it seemed like it was contributing to a lot of things that were very polarizing and negative within society. So all this is to say was sort of brewing in me. And

• 31:38Speaker 02

  I just, you know, I had not been in organizing before. There was, there was, there was already the, the kind of fabric of Googler, the tech won't build it movement, which is a really great phrase, which is basically like, you know, people who are technologists who are, you know, thinking of the implications of their technology. Very interesting ethical conversations were going on, like in different pockets of the company. I was not involved in any of that when, when I got into the organizing with the walkout, simply was someone who was used to being in all these message boards and internal threads, probably from my, a vestige of my years in communications department, where I used to monitor these things, you know, whatever. But I also just, just loved to sort of like chat online. It's kind of my, my way around. And so, you know, I was big in this moms group. There's an

• 32:21Speaker 02

  anonymous moms group. It was not political at all. But the day that this sort of big New York Times story broke, which was about Andy Rubin, but also about a couple of other executives who'd either had relationships with women at the company, which had ended badly for the woman, or during the, there were some stuff during the hiring process where there'd just been like, it was a weird soup of things in this article. And what, what, you know, what's fascinating for me was that it created this rupture in the moms group, where people were all of a sudden starting to talk about the ways they'd been disappointed by, not, I mean, not just Google, it was like their, their life in tech, of just sort of like how little progress, it seemed, the tech industry had made since the kind of like bro culture, brotopia, you know, back in the, you know, kind of old

• 33:04Speaker 02

  days of the 90s and early aughts, that still, there was a lot of opportunity discrimination, a kind of boys' club environment, as well as people being outright sort of sexually harassed. And, and how hard it was, given this sort of radical accountability culture, to raise it, to have any semblance of justice. And it was exciting to think that, you know, in a company that did, at least on paper, celebrate employee voice and, you know, welcome, you know, dissent and all these other things, which whether or not that was, you know, authentic at all at that point. I thought, this is a time to push it, because, you know, the, the world seemed to be having this kind of interesting conversation around, you know, the patriarchy.

• 33:45Charlie Warzel?

  Me too.

• 33:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, me too. I mean, it was, it was me too, was, was really the, you know, the, the biggest context here, I know, in a lot of different ways. But anyway, so yeah, so it, you know, even when I started to write the book, I was like, how did I end up doing that? Because I am like, you know, not the ultimate like stay-in-line rule follower you've ever met, but it's a little, it was a little bit out of character. But I can really see how it was sort of just like, things were bottled up, but I was a little bit like, I also, I felt that, I felt quite safe, because, you know, I was like, you know, even if Google would want to punish the women who were doing this, you know, someone like me, who's been around forever, I have, I have the protection of the fact that it would look so bad, you know, to, to do, you know, to do, flex around with anyone's job, even though that was incredibly naive.

• 34:29Speaker 00

  If you're trying to get news today, you'll find a lot of biased algorithms, rage bait and AI noise. Thanks, social media. That's where InPress comes in. It's a social platform on top of factual journalism, not the other way around. Track your reading and earn points. It's like Strava for your brain. Plus, you can connect with other users in your city who share your genuine curiosity. Ditch the echo chamber for reality with InPress. Download it today for iOS or Android at inpress.app. That's I, N as in news nerd, press.

• 35:02Speaker 01

  When was the last time you indulged your desires, felt true Range Rover refinement? When was the last time you drove in total serenity, the outside world reduced to a hush? The last time you were confident on uncertain terrain? The last journey that made you feel at home, conveniently connected at every step? In a Range Rover, pioneering innovation meets leading-edge luxury to make every drive and occasion limitless, effortless, pureless. How far will you let it take you? Range Rover, designed for distinction.

• 35:32Charlie Warzel?

  The walkout is this very, very prominent event in the world of tech that spills out into broader culture as a part of this, you know, the, the me-too stone in the pond rippling out everywhere. It was initially praised by your bosses, right, as representing the classic principles of a Googler, just standing up, doing, doing the right thing, having that, that virtue. But then there's what you've alleged as this retaliation from Google, right? That your, your boss starts to reassign your role, change who you report to. And, you know, you note that at one time, the company's narrative seemed to be even that

• 36:16Charlie Warzel?

  you were having your own, like, mental struggles alongside all of this, as the fallout of this. So then, you know, you start to negotiate your, your exit. And, and you left in, in 2019. There are parallels that I found going through your story to the pandemic era, right? Where there's this employee backlash over politics and labor issues in Silicon Valley around George Floyd protests, around COVID, all of that, followed by almost immediately, once people start to return to the office a little bit, an employer crackdown. And so I'm curious how you viewed that tension, going through what you went through from

• 36:57Charlie Warzel?

  afar. Like, and broadly, the question, I guess, is, how do you think big tech's executives view their workforces?

• 37:07Speaker 02

  I think that, you know, they really overcorrected, because even though that, you know, with, with Meredith and me, and there are a couple of other women who, who, you know, there was this funny business around our roles and the shifting of our responsibilities, which, you know, we thought was clearly illegal. But then, you know, in the coming months, I mean, there were these five people that they, they fired. They outright fired five people around Thanksgiving that very year. So we left in June. And the NLRB sued on these people's behalf, and they settled with Google. So Google was like, at that point, like, no more Mr. Nice Google. Like, they, they were clearly like, we need to completely rearticulate the relationship between the workforce. Yeah, I think it has ever since then, it's been this, this, this constant rearticulation of the power, where I think that the, they're so, the, the, all the philosophy that was

• 37:52Speaker 02

  around giving workers power, because that was great for not only the company culture, but for the company bottom line, because people bring their best selves and all that. They've just completely thrown that out the window in the service of, we'd prefer to concentrate control with the executives at the top. And if that sucks to be you, well, then fair enough, because we think now precarity and the threat of layoffs and, you know, all these other things, the chilling effects are more important for, you know, serving our goal of like maintaining leadership's steady hands or whatever.

• 38:21Charlie Warzel?

  It's maybe an obvious, but of also just such an interesting about face, because the, the Larry Page idea of this should be a family was not unique to Google. This was broadly like a tech industry trend, right?

• 38:36Speaker 02

  Salesforce, Ohana.

• 38:38Charlie Warzel?

  We are, right. We are here doing this thing together. You're going to give as much focus and attention as you would to your family, but you're also going to be rewarded with that, that broader feeling. And then the crackdown coming was very much, you know, I experienced it, reporting on it, or in, you know, 2021, as like, you will not bring this part of yourself to work. In fact, you will just bring the part of yourself that works and everything else, we're going to leave this to the side. It is such a, such a fascinating about face. But I want to talk a little bit about the idea of empathy, because there's this period of the time in the book where you're, you're working at the creative lab at Google, and you detail this like boys' club atmosphere,

• 39:21Charlie Warzel?

  where the executives are always talking about empathy, right? Empathy is king, and Google needs to adopt this radical empathy in the design of its products, step into the user's shoes, but also in the workplace. And then, cut a couple of years later, you recount the story of James DeMore, this Google engineer who wrote this manifesto about the Google echo chamber, and how women were less represented in the tech industry because of biological differences. And this memo is, is rather famously hinging on a lot of specious claims about gender and issues of DAI programs, things that would later become, you know, like the conservative reactionary obsessions. But one thing that DeMore points

• 40:02Charlie Warzel?

  out in that essay is this need to, quote, de-emphasize empathy. And this, to me, is this subtle but important shift in Silicon Valley that you got to experience firsthand. And I'm, I'm curious how you parse its evolution.

• 40:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think what was really interesting with that kind of Creative Lab thing was how it was a marketing tool. I guess it was sort of like they were trying to hack the mainframe, that if you feel Google is so friendly and so non-threatening, then you'll let it sort of deeper into your life. I mean, that was how I took what he meant by empathy, which was, which, you know, if you're listening to it, didn't feel like completely manipulative and nefarious, but it actually is quite disconcerting.

• 40:47Charlie Warzel?

  The reason why I ask is because, you know, Elon Musk and some of these other titans of Silicon Valley have adopted the more like framework around empathy, right? Musk calls it suicidal empathy. You have, you have Marc Andreessen talking about the need for no introspection. The reason why I'm curious to ask you this is it does feel like a pretty big shift because that, even if it was lip service, even if it was in order to get people to, you know, buy into a very specific culture, the, let's say, 2014 version of empathy is king is so different as a mindset for how to run your organization than, no, no, no,

• 41:31Charlie Warzel?

  empathy is dangerous. Empathy is keeping us from doing, making the decisions we need to make to build the things that are going to change society. And I'm just curious, like, where that breakage, did you feel that breakage happening?

• 41:44Speaker 02

  No, I agree that it like back, back then, like there were, there was something to it that was like, you know, that it was, that was true. It's like, we have this responsibility. I feel like the, the way that they're kind of write the, the book about it, the suicidal empathy, this sort of concept that's sort of swinging around is so sad because I think that is actually trying to disconnect people from their, you know, their natural connection to other people. And I also like, you know, as was my situation with the walkout, the idea that caring about other people and, you know, wanting the world to be, you know, more inclusive and hospitable to people. I mean, I think people have tremendous ability to affect the world around them, even as, you know, a manager of a small team, right? Or, you know, raising your voice in certain ways. It's not, it's not to say that that,

• 42:27Speaker 02

  you know, always, always is like a, you know, a linear, you know, path forward. But the idea that we should be cutting ourselves off from empathy because we might, you know, start to care about, you know, a person in a war-torn country, and this is, you know, sort of politically threatening to the like right wing project or something like, it, yeah, it feels very sad that it's now been sort of weaponized. It was, it was, it was being perhaps appropriated in ways that were sort of like a little creepy or weird. But I think, you know, ultimately, like, there, there was something about, you know, Larry Page, you know, back in the day, not that he was talking about empathy, but the whole learning, living and loving thing. I think it was sort of like, you know, that humanity is something that we should celebrate and protect, whether it's the humanity of our workers or, you know, the humanity of people who use our products. And now I think everything

• 43:11Speaker 02

  just feels quite craven, you know? And it's sort of like, it's our team, you know? It's like, it's like the West must win, or, you know, all these other things where everything feels so politicized and so tribal that we've broken down like any of the more kind of utopian aspects of, you know, Google's philosophy or rhetoric, whatever it was back in the day.

• 43:30Charlie Warzel?

  But you, you worked in this culture. What do you think attributes that, that change? Is it just, is it just like sniffing the political winds and latching on to something because, you know, it's advantageous? Or do you think it's a kind of, you know, almost madness that's induced by just having all the money and, and, you know, and resources at your disposal? What do you think is responsible for that change? I know you can't answer definitively, but you worked for those people.

• 44:01Speaker 02

  It's weird. Like the, if you, like, someone leaked the TGIF when, when Trump was elected the first time, and Larry and Sergey are there, all the executives are up there, they're shocked. Sergey gives this whole speech about, you know, myself as an immigrant, I'm so offended by this, and I know this is, it's just so hard to realize some people don't share our values. And he was like, you know, protesting the immigrant ban, you know, this, this time. And to now imagine that, you know, by the time Trump was reelected, he's, you know, second row at the inauguration with all the rest of the, you know, tech CEOs. You know, I, I do think that inevitably, having so much money and power, you know, I think it seems like it creates a form of brain rot. Like, I just

• 44:44Speaker 02

  don't think that you exist in the planet in a, in a normal way at all. And, you know, like, but I can't really account for how quickly the masks slipped with, with the tech CEOs who were seemingly so offended by Trump at the beginning and now are like on the MAGA train as, as hard as, as hardcore as anyone else. And I think that, that, of course, all the layers of people underneath will get in line at the company. Because my team and the marketing team, you know, by definition, we were, you know, deploying whatever the corporate wind was. So before it was kind of, you know, the resistance, we want to stand up for trans kids and all these other things in the, you know, earlier Trump administration. And now they've dialed down all the political stuff. There's no mention of sort of, you know, diversity and all these other things. They've got to reword it things. There's just no longer could be, you know, accused from the social media

• 45:29Speaker 02

  channels of being lib, you know, in any way. So there are these sort of trends and these things that sort of fall out of favor because the marketing team's following the executives or what they think is popular with the public. You know, we don't, we're no longer, these companies are no longer trying to like take a stand as a brand, you know, on social media. But the people at the top, I, I think it's completely confounding. And I don't understand because they, you know, they, could it really be so simple with all of them leaving California for the wealth tax? Of course, that, that amount of money would, you know, never affect their life, you know, whatever that one-time payout could be. But they're so kind of vehemently and existentially opposed to that. You have to think they're just like, you know, radicalizing each other in group chats, just like any other segment of the population. But it just,

• 46:13Speaker 02

  it's genuinely surprising because they, they were much more interested in, you know, positioning themselves as sort of like benevolent kings of the universe before. And now, you know, it's just the, the vibe has completely shifted.

• 46:23Charlie Warzel?

  And you, you write that tech didn't solve the world's problems, but it sure intensified and monetized them. And you continue saying that Google said it would change the world. It did. I just didn't expect the transformation to feel so relentlessly hollow. I mean this question not flippantly, just earnestly. What did you expect the transformation to feel like? When you look back on it, does it feel like that early faith in the company was naive? Or does it feel like there was a different path that like Google did not have to evolve and grow in the way that it did? How do you see that?

• 47:00Speaker 02

  I think that, you know, the company was more guided by, you know, engineering feats and technological challenges. And then something shifted as we've entered a later stage and sort of like empire, the industry, whatever, where everything seems to be just driven by your typical kind of like capitalistic pursuits and exploits and the, you know, shareholders, you know, whatever, all these things, right? And, you know, it, it seems more like trying to preserve the empire than doing literally any of the things that Larry Page was talking about in 2010 of like, you know, solving the world's problems. Yeah, I mean, Google was always, you know, doing their earnings call and doing, you know,

• 47:44Speaker 02

  doing the sort of like talking points every, every year about how, how we're going to continue to grow and da, da, da, whatever. But, you know, it, it just seems like the whole thing is guided by wealth and power, which is the exact opposite of what they said they wanted to go. So I just, I, I, you know, even though Google, you know, has, did have incredible, you know, you're right with the search and the maps and all these other Gmail, these, these, these sort of utilities and the technologies that are so transformative to the world. But anything else outside of, any, any other problems, you know, that humanity faces, Google isn't tackling those. It's just sort of like continuing to just, you know, siphon money out of the system. It's like the input of everything

• 48:28Speaker 02

  in the world. And let's keep it that way, is what the, the kind of mission of Google feels like to me today, which is, which is quite bleak. It's, that's not an inspiring vision. And it's just, it's, it's just such a change, you know, from even, what, 15 years ago? I mean, most of this was happening.

• 48:42Charlie Warzel?

  There is a moment near the beginning of, of your memoir where you're describing an early job you had as, as, as a kid, as a waitress, and realizing at some point or hearing someone say that you got promoted in part because you looked the part. And in this moment, you write, "How do you challenge a system, things you know are messed up, when the system is rewarding you?" And I wanted to end by asking, how would you answer that question today?

• 49:13Speaker 02

  I think that for me, one of the sort of radicalizing, most radicalizing moments was when we were planning the walkout, I sent around a Google forum saying, "What compels you to do this? Why are you doing this?" And I, you know, I got, you know, a couple hundred responses and I read them all, sort of agog at what other people had experienced. And it was starting to knit together these, you know, this latent layer of things that I'd experienced at the company, some of my kind of more, you know, existential qualms with the direction of the company, with the rhetoric, you know, with the day-to-day things I was experiencing, and, and, and starting to form, you know, a worldview that is less

• 49:56Speaker 02

  understanding of the, of the system, right? Like, as a manager, I'd seen so many things, you know, happen with the contractors on my team, you know, kind of getting cut or shuttled around in ways that felt quite inhumane to me, or I didn't have power over, or maybe I did in certain ways and different times. But, you know, I am someone who's like sort of guided by empathy for other people. And as part of my, you know, sentimental education here, my arc was to be able to say that even though things genuinely, generally speaking, work for me, this isn't the kind of world that I want to live in, the kind of world I want to like, you know, have kids in, and, you know, all these, all these things. And I think that the, you know, the, Google capitalized on this impulse, which many people

• 50:38Speaker 02

  have, to be part of something bigger than themselves. That was the, kind of a lot of the philosophical thinking about the mission was if people, it doesn't matter if you're like a, you know, customer service operator, if you feel like the company is doing really good things that are going to make the world a better place, you're going to be excited and invigorated to come in and, you know, do your job in the widgets factory or whatever. And, you know, that, when that started to break down for me, I still had the feeling that I wanted to, you know, contribute to something bigger than myself and to like leave the world better than I found it, or, you know, whatever. Yeah, I no longer feel so attached to, I must protect the status quo because I have my place in it, you know, and I'm rewarded for that. You know, if, if, if I, if I truly still felt that way,

• 51:22Speaker 02

  you know, I could have easily, you know, put my head down and just not, you know, rocked the boat, upset the apple cart, so to speak. But, yeah.

• 51:30Charlie Warzel?

  Well, Claire, thank you so much for coming on Galaxy Brain and talking about all this with us.

• 51:35Speaker 02

  It was fun. Thank you so much.

• 51:42Charlie Warzel?

  That's it for us here. Thank you again to my guest, Claire Stapleton. If you liked what you saw here, new episodes of Galaxy Brain drop every Friday, and you can subscribe on The Atlantic's YouTube channel, or on Apple, or Spotify, or wherever it is that you get your podcasts. And if you want to support this work and the work of my colleagues, you can subscribe to the publication at theatlantic.com/listener. That's theatlantic.com/listener. Thanks so much, and I'll see you on the internet.

• 52:18Speaker 00

  If you're trying to get news today, you'll find a lot of biased algorithms, rage bait and AI noise. Thanks, social media. That's where Inpress comes in. It's a social platform on top of factual journalism, not the other way around. Track your reading and earn points. It's like Strava for your brain. Plus, you can connect with other users in your city who share your genuine curiosity. Ditch the echo chamber for reality with Inpress. Download it today for iOS or Android at inpress.app. That's I, N as in news nerd, press.