Don't Be Evil - Claire Stapleton

Don't Be Evil Bad Bosses, Fake Promises, and My Escape from Big Tech Claire Stapleton Hardcover BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY/Science & Technology A whip-smart, funny, and timely memoir about one worker’s 12 years at Google and her journey from buying in to buying out, and being radicalized in a sea of false promises, fake work, and bad bosses. When newly graduated Claire Stapleton accepted a position at Google in 2007, she thought she had found the perfect job. The company promised not only a career path, but a mission: to do good, to connect the world, to provide a sense of value and purpose for its employees. It was the heady days of big-tech optimism, a time when it seemed like technology would help change things dramatically for the better—and also make employees rich along the way. Soon, Stapleton was dubbed the “Bard of Google” and, known for her consummate “Googleyness,” was pulled into higher-level meetings, helping to write speeches, emails, and blog posts for executives including Larry Page. But as she moved into bigger and more prestigious roles—working at the revered Google Creative Lab, and then in marketing for YouTube—she couldn’t ignore the way that the company’s stated values diverged from its practices, from the toxic workplace to the real-world harms. So in 2018, when company dissatisfaction around Google’s mishandling of serious sexual harassment allegations started to swell, Stapleton found herself using her voice in an altogether different fashion: to help lead the 20,000-employee Google Walkouts, a groundbreaking protest against Silicon Valley culture which The New York Times would go on to call a “watershed moment in tech.” Overnight, Stapleton became a public face of tech discontent—and realized there was no going back. Hugely clever and uncanny, Don't Be Evil is a memoir of one worker’s radicalization and a biting look back at a surreal era in tech, asking: How do we disentangle ourselves from work, when work demands our whole self? For readers of How to Do Nothing and Careless People, this candid book grapples with what it means to find a sense of identity and power beyond our jobs, in a culture that tells us our career is who we are.