Don't Be Evil

Claire: I saw that a lot because like with my also my role it within corporate communications was kind of about the neutralization of dissent and the company always getting the last word. Because even though the there was a sincerity, I guess, to the Larry and Sergei meeting every week where people could come and answer questions, if there were company controversies. They would get absorbed into the executive perspective. And a lot of, the training of being a communications person was about that. Was I think about writing the talking points that become the company narrative
Karen: Today, something different. Recorded during a somewhat regular live Zoom of friends and colleagues, I chat with Claire Stapleton, author of Don't Be Evil, Bad Bosses, Fake Promises, and My Escape from Big Tech. Claire documents her 12 years at Google from earnest college grad to seasoned and disillusioned insider. It's super brave and honest, funny, timely. Mostly it's a reckoning with the stories we accept and the ones we tell ourselves. Welcome to Open Studios. I'm so glad you're here. Yeah.
Karen (host): okay. Claire Stapleton, you're the author of Don't Be Evil, Bad Bosses, Fake Promises, and My Escape from Big Tech. Claire joined Google in 2007, fresh out of college and into this bravenew world. There, Claire was responsible for developing the internal and external voice of the company, and the voice of its executives, including its founders, and quickly became known as the Bard of Google, which kind of carried her. Haunted her. We'll talk about that. In the book, Claire captures a intense and sort of head spinning time at Google and and culturally. And she continued from her work in Mountain View into Creative Labs and then to YouTube. We'll talk about all of those all of those steps along the way. until ultimately becoming really the force behind the big Google walkout in 2018. It was like 20,000 plus people. And then eventually left the company in 2019. So here we go, as Claire likes to say. welcome, Claire Stapleton.
Claire: It's such a cool group.
Karen (host): Gonna be cool. Okay. So Claire, I mentioned in my email that your book just so good and so fun to read, and very emotional to read it as well. it had it really had me thinking about my days and work with big tech, specifically Google, and Stealing Your Words, the Willy Wonka esque environment that was that was Google and also sort of the times back back then. But I wonder if we just Can we just start at the start? you you joined after the don't be evil, you know, motto that came that came out. Let's take off from there. Can you just kind of level set us the year's 2007, the iPhone just came out, Presidential elections loom, recession looms, the Sopranos is on TV. So time capsule that for us a bit.
Claire: Soprano's amazing. yeah, so Google went public in 2004. So that was sort of like that was a big watershed moment where this brand new corporation, which was, you know, many companies have sort of fallen in that line of Facebook and Twitter, Instagram, you know, all these sort of sort of social tech but utilities. but Google was really interested in kind of reinventing the corporation. So it sort of felt like a startup, even in 2007. They were hiring en masse. It was already maybe 10,000 people. I mean, it was not a small company, but they were building these sort of fun university-like offices around the world. So I I was a senior in college, seeing college recruiting go by, and I went to Penn's very kind of pre-professional sort of school where you really want to get a career going after school. So I was an English major. I probably wanted to go to into writing, but I I w I thought getting a substantial job sounded really like the right thing to do. And Google just sounded like a lot of fun. I mean, it was like on the cover of all these magazines, you know, best place to work. And so I was sort of, you know, that was the first red flag, probably drawn in by the lore and not a passion for corporate communications necessarily, by a passion for technology, certainly. you know, and but yet, yet, it was a really interesting story to tell at that time. And so I got kind of looped right in from the beginning on this internal event. Which Larry and Sergei, the founders, hosted called TGIF. And it was a kind of celebration of Google, like time capsule of Google in that moment. So it was, you know, Gmail was still pretty new. They just bought YouTube. the company was becoming a big kind of conglomerate, but you would never know that from the fact that the founders of the company are coming every week to a moderately sized auditorium where anybody could ask them anything and the culture was so open and so loose and You know, it was it was anathema to the idea of the traditional corporation. And they always said, you know, we're not gonna become a conventional company. The don't be evil thing was circulating around a lot. That was part of this shareholders' letter they'd written in 2004 when the company went public. So it was just it was you know, Obama would come into power a year later, and you know, it was like celebrities were coming through all the time to, you know, tour stops. It was like we were this There was this sort of I mean it it it the word cult I think is overused a lot, but really there was such a sense of identity implanted in people working there. you're a Googler now, you're kind of reborn as a Googler and they also kind of encouraged the meshing of work and life in a lot of ways. People stayed late, there's food late, there are, you know, video games and they they kind of encourage everybody to live in this almost like on campus housing or like all these high rise buildings in Mountain View. So, you know, it was a really heady haddy an interesting time to come into it. It sort of felt like as I look back on it, it was kind of sad because really a lot of the rhetoric and the lore from that 2007 to 2011, 12 time when I moved to New York was was basically that how could we fail? You put all the world's, you know, talent together, all these, you know, smart people, give them all the resources, give them all the sort of tools to collaborate and innovate. And together we can solve the world's problems. Every now and again you'll still see some of this sort of rhetoric with the I feel like with AI now it's more like we're gonna humanity's gonna die or something. But like it was so grandiose and so but it was inspirational because we had nothing really to there's no reason to doubt, right? At that at that moment. I mean, maybe mu kind of a more critical or sort of Marxist thinker or something would be like, this is just like, you know, where we're heading with like late capitalism or surveillance capitalism as it would be coined later, that we're just gonna farm information and monetize it. But but really at that time it would they were ta Larry Page was talking about curing death. We're gonna we're gonna attack with these moonshots, the the the biggest threats facing humanity. And you know, we're we're so much faster and more nimble than governments could ever be. We've got more resources, we've got more people. So it was, you know, when you look back on it, it's like you're cr rolling your eyes because really these companies didn't do any of that. I mean, we've not cured death. We've got a lot of the the problems of society have only intensified. But at that time there was this idealistic spirit that came into the kind of like bonkers fun of the workplace that, you know, made it a kind of irresistible corporate environment.
Karen (host): That's what I was gonna say. Like, don't you think l the majority or enough people working for Google wanted to believe that? Like, that's yes, let's do it. Let's cure the problems. I mean, the language is so gross. It's like, especially now, but you know, and even then it bristled a little bit. But all and also like there's such resources there. There's such right. And if you you're a young ideal idealistic person Like you want to believe those things, So you do. I mean, did you did you have did you have a sense of that?
Claire: Yeah, I mean, I you know, I I I think when when I du when I was writing the book, I really dug into what did I believe at age I actually was 21 years old when I started. A lot of times my book, my my pitch or my story has been simplified as like I went from true believer to like, you know, leading the resistance. But and and I did believe. I mean, I did think I didn't have the presence of mind to say, I don't think they're gonna solve these problems. I I looked forward to them doing that. I I think that You know, it's more that I was someone who'd like, you know, gone to Catholic school. I was a pretty good girl. And the expectations of going into a communications or marketing job is you kind of have to match your internal belief system to the company. Otherwise, it's it's so draining and frustrating and the cognitive dis and that's what happened to me later. But at the beginning, it was sort of like this is what's expected of me. I was quite literally giving the campus tours, kind of you know, evangelizing the talking points about, you know, the amazing workplace and all, you know, all this and you know. I sort of looked back on it and I was like, you know what? The offices were actually kind of crappy. And I sort of knew that because a lot of the other than the main campus, you know, where you would really they kind of like, you know, dressed it up. Now they all look so like, you know, interior design and gorgeous. But like at the time, it's like they had quickly converted a lot of these office spaces from this company called Silicon Graphics that had gone under. And it was they were just sort of like fluorescence and they'd throw some like, you know, Google color bouncy balls and they had ball pits and there's someone Kind of odd touches, but a lot of them weren't physically impressive. I mean, maybe the lunch and these other things, you know, and and over time, you know, they they they embraced design more. But, you know, all this is to say, I think I did have some moments where I was just like, huh, is the is this a little bit kind of spin or polish or gloss, you know, over the kind of whole thing. But I was so young and and so tied in with, you know, Google also, I mean, for people who've been and out of these tech companies, what what works really well psychologically and in named dangerous ways is the performance review cycle, which is constant. I
Karen (host): I still want to get to that. I also want to get to that. It's kind of jumping ahead, but let's do it. Yeah. The amount of performance reviews that, as I understand, employees have to go through, it's like you're under constant surveillance, I felt like you're in
Claire: You're quite literally trying to get an A in school at all times. So where does
Karen (host): Where does
Claire: your personal belief system begin and end when you're you're you're having to like show up in an agreeable way to every person around you at all times because they get peer reviews and there's other like you know, senior people. I mean, I and I coming out of my, you know, which I dig into in the book, my kind of good girl nature, people pleaser nature, coming out of a highly structured environment, it you know, my parents have clear expectations, all those other things. Google was such a natural fit. Sometimes I've met people that immediately went into like their crazy art practice or something else right after college. And I'm like, wow, you must have had a lot of self-worth that wasn't tied in it wasn't tied into continuing getting gold stars from everybody around you. So I think that, yeah, Google really does a number psychologically with that. But yeah. Over time, as I, as I grew up, you know, I sort of I developed more independent thoughts.
Karen (host): For sure, for sure. just back to like your actual words. you are handing pieces of paper to Larry Page, to Susan Wujitsky, to sh all of these executives I say go up on stage and say something or write an email or whatever it is. These are thoughtful, thought out words. Did any of them ever go off script? And how did you feel about that if they did?
Claire: yeah. I mean I think that that and that's part of, you know, as as I kind of dug into understanding AI, it's just like being AI because you're constantly trying for me, I was when I I writing what?
Karen (host): Like you were the AI? Like you were the AI?
Claire: Yes, because I'm saying is that when I would start to write for someone, y you know, internally they have transcripts a lot. you know, a lot of transcripts from internal meetings and people executives, the way it was set up was that yes, we would have a very simple script for T the T GIF meeting. But then they would mo maybe 60% of the meeting of the hour was open form QA. So that generates a transcript. From the transcript, you learn how they talk, what what's a priority for them. The sort of you get a sense, you know, of of their of their thinking and their patterns of speech and all that. So I think that the you know, if they did sort of go off script and I think that they, you I got trained a little bit early on. Okay, Larry and Sergio like things really straight. They like a lot of metrics. They like, you know, simple words. They don't, you don't want, you know, too much. But then over time, you learn them enough. And and and studying these transcripts and all that stuff. I mean, AI must be completely changing how corporate communications is done because you can, you know, it's just like it doesn't need to be art. So it's like, you know, you can totally just, you know, and and executives, it's sort of like I I could feel that it was this sort of Jedi mind trick thing where when they recognize their own language, in the in the talking points, they feel more safe, but they and but you also want to make them look good. So it's like you're trying you know trying to make them sound, you know, you want to edge it up. And sometimes executives would say, you know, you want to sound more creative. You want to have more personality, you want to sound less corporate. And that's that's sort of became my beat was like corp speak, but with some originality, something intellectual, something felt you know quirky to quirky in that little way. So it was you know synthesizing Google culture and tone, synthesizing what that exec said before. synthesizing what and Google is the most chatty communicative company. Here's the priorities for the quarter, here's the priorities for the year. There's so much internal communication. And I don't know if it looks anything similar now, but probably does, where you have executives just, you know, one to many, one to many all the time. So there's a lot of material. yeah, and it iterates.
Karen (host): Yeah, yeah, yeah, got it. let's move into maybe what your act two was. So you're at Mountain of View for a while, you've gotten the barred of Google title, which is great. it's actually quite nice. I mean, i y you got to really use your own voice in a lot of that communication as well, it would seem. But like you said, synthesized. and it's taken and people have noticed you're like got the nice girl worker syndrome, working for you. You are being managed by people who are your age or not that much older, which means they don't have any experience in managing. So that's interesting. But all of that starts to change a bit. when a new opportunity comes up just to go in a timeline here, and you take a gig at Creative Labs. Is that right? That was the next step.
Claire: Yeah, yeah. And what a change. Yeah.
Karen (host): Totally. maybe we'll we'll lean into, you know, the topic of cringe, but there was one part in the book where you you set an example or you wrote an example of what one of the mottos was Google Creative Labs. And it was in like neon or something on the wall, I'm not saying this to make fun of anyone. I'm saying this to mark a time also and maybe make a little bit of fun. Here it is. This place is about truth, beauty, freedom, and above all love.
Claire: quote from Mulan Rouge, it's so embarrassing
Karen (host): Okay, okay. Well, that's fair because that is Nicole Kidman. So anyway. but it There you go. All right. So but that's what you're walking into. So can you can you just remind everybody like what Creative Labs was, is and and what your sort of reception was there.
Claire: Yeah. So, you know, I had been in Mountain View for five years and, you know, do I was writing these weekly emails that, you know, sort of, you know, apparently captured the Google voice for what it was at that time. And so I was kind of recruited. Like it was like, here's the next level, the big stage that you've been doing all this stuff kind of internally. And now Creative Lab is the place where we are shaping the image of Google and disseminating the message and all these things externally. They did Super Bowl spots, they did lots of these sort of documentary short type thing that Karen knows all about. that showed how people were using, you know, different Google products, you know, in sort of these kind of hyperbolic, do-goodery type of ways. they they did a lot of branding and consulting for internal projects. So Google Glass wasn't really that's a that's a time capsule. I mean, that and now the glasses have come back around, which is so embarrassing, but they they did the naming for that. They were doing a lot of the concept videos. And so it was a small team and it w it was. So I you know, I had had a really smooth ride actually. Like probably you know, really frictionless, fun, lots of responsibility, you know, it was really in mountain view. I look back on look on back on now and think like, you know, if if Google was selling to young people, you come here and you get to jump in and do all these like, you know, fun things that's kind of flat in a certain way. I mean, there was hierarchy, but really I did have a lot of opportunity there. So I was kind of expecting that, you know, you go, I go to Creative Lab and it would be I'd be leveling up and it would be sort of the, you know, more of the same, you know, goodwill, good vibes, good culture. And it was so shocking because, you know, it was really the the department was run with creative directors mostly from Wydan Kennedy, and the head guy had come from Ogilvie. so it was really kind of a traditional ad agency culture with these sort of imperious men at the top. And the way that they did it, which was a shock for me coming from Google Culture, was everybody came in as a freelancer. And so you wear a different color badge and you sort of have different access to the building and all these other things. And as they were doing their you know creative projects, everybody's working together. Yeah. But people are, you know, it's very competitive because people are competing for you know extension of their contract. And you know, it's very precarious, you know, labor. and that really set the tone. But for me, what was it's just so bizarre was that the guy who headed up writing there really seemed to know what he liked, which was in these kind of sports writer guys that had come out of wide. That had all gone to the same ad school for that. There's like, you grad degree, you know, from a VCU. I think people were doing, and there were a lot of designers from that school too, but the people had done copywriting. I'd never heard of any of this. I had no traditional copywriting background, only this sort of like gut instinct for what googliness was. And you know, they had said to me at various points that this place is a lab, you know, we we'd love an experiment. And I was kind of an experiment.
Karen (host): In the title to the name of the department. Right. Okay. Yeah. Creative left. Right.
Claire: You know, the experiment that was me was such a spectacular failure because really the the guy who was the manager was so kind of busy and caught up in the sort of urgent the day-to-day urgency and insanity of the sort of stress of this place. And from everything I've heard, because I, you I I name I name them, I'm naming everybody in the book that everybody's still there, and all the you know, the the top people, and people have been messaging me like crazy, like it's the exact same thing that's going on here, which is that you come in every day to prove yourself and that. Know and so I was ready to do that, but I really didn't have the training or background to do that. And then to make matters worse, this guy has like a supply of of talent of these copywriters that know how to do exactly what he wants to do. So he like basically didn't put me on any projects. It was sort of like, yeah, yeah, you know, we'll find you just just watch what we know, all the the videos we made, we'll find something for you to work on eventually. And then I just had you like a couple of times where he'd put me on something, and then he would tag in his like you know, one of his mainstay writers. Then and then before you know it, I would be like not I'd see everybody assembling for a team meeting, and I wasn't in the meeting. Like it was so bizarre. And I was sitting with another guy at at a desk who who was the same thing. They'd hired this guy, it was a really talented writer, they'd hired him outright as a full-time writer, and he had like no shot. It was just and they fired him. So, like, kind of like I'm just sitting there, like really coming undone because the combination of my desire to please and do a good job, and then I'm trying to like cast around, and the guy was telling me. I whenever I would get into a meeting with this manager, this creative director, Kevin, he'd be like, This place is all about pitching projects and initiating projects. You need to be coming up with things that like to show the Google brand out in the world. But I I was so confused because everybody else around me was getting tagged into all the really high priority projects. I just was so completely undone. By this experience. And meanwhile, every you know, when I did kind of get, you know, towards the end of that time, I only stayed a little bit over a year, but towards the end of it, they had me work on this project that was kind of like a podcast to rally the troops at Google about I think that they thought this is in Claire's wheelhouse. Like in the old days, this is gonna be a kind of Bart of Google thing, you know, all about the future vision of the company. And they called it Epcot was the code name. And I wrote this whole thing out, and that that was the moment I'm listening to this podcast that was just, you know, I'm stringing together. all the kind of lofty talking points about saving humanity and all this. And I'm just like, here I am in this like absolutely toxic effing workplace where we are in the most grandiose possible way that you think these people are solving the world's problems, but they're really like creating there's they're creating in in one case the end credits for this Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson movie was like took up the entire department's resources for like three months. They created the end credits, which was like a kind of an ad for Google products. And You would think that the urgency and sincere you know, the seriousness of this project was if they were like solving world world peace. It was like that serious. And not to say I don't I don't want to dog marketing work because I think that there's good funny thing funny and great things about the world of marketing, but the way it was wielded to create this incredibly high stakes, you know, and the number of people that have written me to be like who I thought were like well established in the department to be like, when I left, I had a nervous breakdown. Like I left because I had a nervous breakdown after that department. I was like, I'm so validated that I'm not the only person that just crashed out of this department completely. but anyway, that was that was that I think that that it was a profoundly, you know, in interesting and disillusioning experience because it was just a really standard kind of toxic mismanagement, you know, whatever. It nothing nothing illegal happened there. It was just it was a bloom is coming off the rose scale falling from my eyes because We were in the business of burnishing Google's brand as the most amazing workplace in the world where it was like just a really kind of standard madman-esque, you know, not great environment.
Karen (host): I think we you know you obviously put so much identity into our work, especially as a younger person where, you know, your identity does change when you add people to your life, right? And things shift and you learn things But identity is such a big thing. And for you to s use those words coming and done part means that's cracked. It's not your identity. Where do I fit? Yeah. Right. And I and especially when you're working in a place that has like a cult of personality aspect to it, which I think a lot of people in this in this audience will be very familiar with. cause sometimes that's what it takes. Sometimes it does take top down. But one of the but when it's when it's got toxicity to it, you know, that's that's a tough one. But you were you were there for you said just a year. So you knew to kind of like, okay, it's time for me to move on or get out. You almost you almost left Google altogether at that time, right? But instead, well we can move to your Maybe you're act three here, which was back into the belly. Consequently, yeah. Right, right, absolutely. Cause I I wanna get back to the naming names part too, but I'm saving it for your time at YouTube. So so you're in Mountain View, then you're at Google Labs, and then you're moving into YouTube. It's almost like your master's in Googliness or something going over into YouTube, which was kind of just starting and it get not well, no, I it had been established for a while, but acquired maybe.
Claire: becoming big much more complex.
Karen (host): much more complex, right. Getting a lot of resources. And that also was in New York and that was on the social media team. Which, you know, back then what was that like twenty sifteen? What year was that?
Claire: Yeah, twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen I started.
Karen (host): Asking because of you can't talk about it without thinking about what was happening in the world right then also. So in that in that mid.
Claire: It was the time when social media was starting to look less rosy. Right. I think f but in the and with Trump won, that was when it really kind of he hotted up.
Karen (host): hot it up for sure. Right before that though, you said in your book, being the keepers of the voice of YouTube that you had to sort of meet the language of the internet at that time. And that actually probab I remember that. That was kind of fun. Like these memes and this stuff and it you know, but but also then trying to keep it within, you know, the the the mission state money stuff of YouTube Like it's a lot to balance that here you guys are just this small crew architecting the voice and values for this giant company. Were you hopeful that the work was gonna turn back into meaningful work, like places into that time and, you know, paint the picture of getting into U T.
Claire: Yeah, you know, I it was so not my husband often talks about, you know, people being like, you know, driver's seat and passenger seat people. You know, it's like it seems like a tech jargon thing. But really at that point, I mean, that was such a weird thing with that job because I was about to leave Google and they kind of offered me this other place to go. initially was on the curation team, which I thought was the definition of a bullshit job, which is a sort of like another kind of radicalizing thing. It was like a job that didn't need to be done, and yet there was a lot of sort of like urgency and Know whatever around it. And then they and then I sort of shifted into the social media team. And at the at this point, this was not me being a driver's seat person. This is just sort of like, you know, I'm entering into this different phase of my life. And you know, maybe just I can just sort of take the paycheck. And it's was, you know, less inspired. However, however, social media be ended up becoming it's like I always ended up in a in a weird catbird seat for better or for worse, because YouTube. Social media was becoming big for brands. And that was sort of so they sort of like had had an agency sort of randomly doing it. But they realized that social media was a place where you burnished your brand, where you express your values, where you're engaging with the community. And so social media was the sort of weird power center of the company voice with company values. And You know, we were we were like running a get out the vote campaign when Trump was getting elected because all the executives were, you know, worried about Trump getting elected. What can we do to get the youth vote vote out and all this? So it it actually and I, you know, I once again kind of clicked back into, you know, I'm able to use my voice and strategic faculties and all these other things. It was like sort of starting to grow a small team and these other things that, you know, these other things that create a sense of meaning that aren't just, you know, the top, top, top, you know, sort of like, you know, urgency project at a company. But yeah, it was it was actually really kind of interesting work. And it became frustrating over time because there was so much swirl. And that and that's when the company started to feel just so big and un unwieldy and the c no one could ever decide how to react. And I think that the the other thing that became really interesting about the job, but also really frustrating, was that we would get a briefing every morning of all the kind of you know brand vulnerabilities and negativities that were going on in the site, all this, you know, which is euphemism for. bad things going on on YouTube. So you know, it's like here's an influencer who's like, you know, encouraging their young followers to go put a t do the Tide Pod challenge where you swallow a Tide Pod, you know, can die from that. Or, you know, the guy filming it the influencer filling filming a dead body. You know, the rise of the far right was also happening on YouTube. And you know, it was it was disillusioning to see how even though we were playing this important role of writing the apologies, you know, trying to burnish the brand. It was like, why are we the ones dealing with this? We're the social media team. Like what about, you know, what about actually taking action in the product for these things instead of just always damage control, always optics? why
Karen (host): Why didn't they do that? Why didn't they, from an engineering standpoint? Did they think it was a problem?
Claire: And butter. The bread and butter is clicks. Click clicks are the site. There's an amazingly revealing Susan Wojiski quote from like she went to like there was a huge fiasco during Pride Month, one of these years, building on many years where the gay community was like, there's so much bigotry on the site. There's all these far-right creators are like calling us F-word all the time. And sh but yet YouTube was trying to run a huge pride campaign. Big splashy. You know, we got all the social media banners. We got we're doing a big float for pride and all this. And they sent Susan Wajiski to lesbians who tech conference. And y YouTube had just been mired in in one of these, you know, specific, specific issues where there was a creator who was being totally doxxed and harassed by one of the big far-right creators. And they never took the videos down. And it was like I seen in the rooms where they would say, you know, he's right up to the edge of the free hate speech thing, but really it's in context, and here's the you it's just like one of these things where they They can't decide how to deal with it because this guy was hugely influential and they're getting all this blowback from creative the cr conservative side that they're censoring creators and all this. And so she gets asked point blank, why didn't you take that video down? Where this guy's calling him like, you know, Hispanic slur and F-word and all this. And she's like, if we took that video down, there's so many other videos we'd have to take down. And that's the root of it, which is that YouTube has decided that they're and they've even gone even more this way since Susan died. There's a new CEO who's like much more cozy with the right side of the political aisle. And they YouTube decided, and I heard this even then when Susan was there, that the one value everyone can agree on is free expression. So when you say that, it means you default to keeping everything up, it's public record. And I've heard on the, you know, the regulatory side of the house says free speech should not equal free reach, meaning once someone starts to get a lot of clicks for controversy and provocation. It gets more clicks because then the algorithm is feeding it, feeding it, feeding it. And you know, YouTube will t sometimes try to throttle it with this controversial content, but really YouTube's business model depends on drama and clicks and on all this sort of like debate. So even it's really hard to counterweight with here's a strong point of view about what's best for society, because there's just a lot of different voices and opinions about what that looks like. And again, they usually just default to freedom of expression, keep everything up.
Karen (host): Right, right. maybe they've stopped pretending then.
Claire: Yeah. Exactly. I mean, I mean it's it's truly like the mask slip. So when I was there, there was this mask, which was and they still probably do it. A big pride campaign. We want to do go balls to the wall for Black History Month, International Women's Day. They stopped support they stopped doing international women's day, I think, at a certain point because it's too controversial. When whenever we do International Women's Day, we would get absolutely flamed in the comments because people would say, This is true sexism, you know, th that, you know This is, you know, where's International Men's Day? If you're gonna really be fair, you have to do International Men's Day. I mean, it's it's it it was really it was it was a lot. So to to try to deal with the executives who are very kind of liberal values to say we want to be social out there on social justice issues. You get a lot of blowback for that. And then now I think so, but but they still, you know, we there was a lot of trying to maintain the two sides of the aisle. And now I think it's just like straight down the middle and or kind of just lean lean right, lean conservative, lean free expression on all this stuff.
Karen (host): let's talk about bad bosses Tenure title. you do name names and and we can talk about those names. boy, I I did some of my own Googling on some of these people. Like Woof. but I I just wanna know more or ask you more about like the personal either catharsis, maybe that like you'll never have to go to therapy. You wrote this book, right? Like you yeah, well It was it would seem it was cathartic. but it's also very brave. I I was talking to my my daughter and I was like, I'm gonna I'm gonna talk to this woman Claire and she'd seen the book in the house and stuff before she left for school. And she's like, Yeah, that that book, that's ballsy. And I was like, Yeah. And so she wants to know, and I wanna know, like, did it feel ballsy? Or you like how what was your emotional journey in like drafting a Finding a publisher, like getting the book out there and naming names of said bad
Claire: Yes. So, you know, when I left Google, I wrote an essay. it was in L magazine. It was just sort of like, I need to get the last word, because Google had sort of said, which is kind of interesting, the battle of the narratives. Google was like Claire choose to leave on her own terms and all this, right? Right. So I was, you know, I wanted to kind of wrap it up in a bow. And so I wrote this essay that was really like the bones of my story, everything you've sort of heard already. And, you know, I And then you know, like agents come around after that and say, you want to extend this into a book? Now's the time if you want to sell it. And I was like, I don't really have anything else to say on this particular topic. There's nothing, nothing more for me to process at this time. But then as as the years went on, and I started I started connecting more with other kind of tech workers who were kind of like, I was like, we're in this interesting moment where the institutions that were supposed to hold us as kind of millennials or you know, people who launched into the workforce, you know, at a certain time. They no longer seem kind of worthy of our trust in a certain way. And I think people are struggling with what to do with work. So I was sort of like answering those questions for myself, which was a little bit now what? That was kind of like the the inciting the inciting inquiry was a little bit now what. But then I I I I kind of ended up to go to go forward. It was like this retrospective where I was like, I kind of need to understand how I, you know, got to this point. I'm really interested with the, you know, seven years of time to kind of look back on. You know, how how do I look, you know, how did my arc really form? And I had all this amazing kind of source material because I had so many conversations in G chat and Gmail, like ironically, the Google products of it all, you know, processing my early work experiences and, you know, going back and forth with my college roommate about my jobs and all this. And, you know, so I you know, but I wasn't sure. I really I really I was like, I don't, you know, I don't know really. If this if I s if I have it in me to write a book. So I went to a writer's program in Tahoe called Community of Writers, like I think I went three years ago. And it was really inspiring because it was like being around other people who are writing nonfiction. There's a lot of fiction writers there too. I never did an MFA and you know, you know, a little bit like, you know, wanting to own that, wanting to own being a writer, which is a little bit hard, you know, when you're kind of coming from a more corporate writing and then you look, you know, there's so many books coming out all the time, and you're like, Whoa, you know, feels imposter syndrome, right? But I I I got a great syllabus of memoirs after that. After that course, and we did a bunch of workshopping. And I was like, I you know, I'm ready to go for it. So I put together a proposal. I just kind of cold queried people. I ended up with a great agent who was very, you know, she's the right kind of you know, Goldilocks and the three bears. I I feel like she was the right, you know, kind of early career agent person. And she, you know, we we workshopped the proposal, she took it out, and then you I I sold the proposal and then wrote from the proposal. So the process of writing, I could if there is an adjective for it is. Feverish. I mean, it truly was like therapy. It poured out of me. It was so raw. It was so real.
Karen (host): Yeah.
Claire: And I'll I'll tell you that, and it was so many things are so personal about it. Obviously, I'm so emotional. And you know, but it and in heart. Sometimes things were hard to write. And I rewrote a lot as I drafted. But I will say that I my my pro people are now like, you're so ballsy, you're so brave. I can't believe you're like going up against these people. I think that I would never, when I was writing it, you have to shield yourself from. From thinking about the world ever consuming it. So I really managed to do that because it felt so far away. But some of the people, these people in the book, I felt okay calling out because they're sort of like public figures. If you're a director above Google that's actually considered is considered a public officer of the company, but yeah, I mean now so now I'm I I it's really strange. I really don't feel That it I it yeah, I guess it was sort of ballsy, but I think that it's what I more feel like is, you know, should I have talked to everybody's in the book? Even like ex-boyfriends and stuff, I'm like, so many people are catching strings.
Karen (host): That's some of the fun parts. But no, no, you you really humanize. I mean, you talk about yourself. Like I'm going through this personal thing and then I have to go to work and put a mask on, or the mask slip slips, and this is what happens as a consequence of that. But I'm just curious w with the with the bad bosses, with the the named names, has anyone has anyone come to you and and said, Holy, did I act no one? So no one's come and said, Let's make this right clear, let's clear the air.
Claire: One person, the person who at the beginning of the book kind of chides me for wearing a skirt to work. That person apologized. Which I was like, that's amazing. I'm as opposed to being mad. She's in the book, she's named. and then there was another person who's who said to me that I had said that, you know, she was kind of a pseudo-manager peer that I irked her with my, you know, nature. She was like, I you didn't irk me. That wasn't fair, you she was sort of like, that wasn't fair or whatever. But she was like a totally. Fine to be in it. But no, clear the air. I mean, s someone was like, you know, Marion is the big boss who's the person I allege retaliated against me, but also is just she is a she's a corporate player par excellence. And someone was like, Do you think Marian's gonna reach out to you? I'm like, Are you kidding? She's gonna ignore this. Slash. Do you think
Karen (host): Marian's read this, surely she's like snuck it into like no.
Claire: No, I think she probably had an analyst or a deputy read it, summarize it. No, she's pretty high up there now. I don't I don't think she would, definitely. I think it's easy enough to ignore. So and a bookseller gave me that advice, Emma Straub, the woman who owns Books or Magic in Brooklyn said, you know, it's a book. It's like it's people can ignore a book.
Karen (host): Also congratulations, you're you're fa you know, even more famous you know, like the no press is bad press no press is bad.
Claire: There's plenty of people who I think are and and Google Google had its own narrative about everything, you know, with me. I don't know what that narrative could possibly be because it's my my my receipts and my narrative so detailed and theirs is just like Claire decided to leave on her own. You know, their narrative is doesn't answer the question of why why I I I say I was retaliated against all this. But they I'm sure they have their own narrative, which the narrative at the time I think also was like that I'm crazy.
Karen (host): Well, I can I can I can almost guarantee that people working for Marion and the Kevins are reading this book. and so maybe this is maybe somehow
Claire: They definitely are.
Karen (host): helpful there. So so there's this this cauldron, of things that have happened and and all of that led to, you you organizing theGoogle walk out, So you're walking out along with nineteen thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine other people and you're getting a lot of press from that. And like, were you ever like, it's w it's you must have been, it's so worth it. I'm gonna be a big part of this big thing that's happening because that's how strongly I feel about the conditions here, which were really friggin' terrible. ThenThere's this huge sexual harassment lawsuit where just just really ugly stuff. Anyway, you got radicalized, I guess, and then you become an organizer. And so where does that leave you now? Like, do you recognize that, Claire? Are you more that, Claire, than And the other Claire's like, where are you in that?
Claire: Yeah, I think that, you know, the the walkout was a really fast. I mean, we organized it in the one week that elapsed between this sort of bombshell story about Google paying $90 million, which asterisk later turned out to be $150 million to this guy who was not just, I guess, known sex predator pest guy, but that Google had investigated it and basically been like, okay, this is credible. You gotta go, but we're gonna
Karen (host): Give you a hundred and fifty million dollars. incredible.
Claire: It's like four million dollars a month for two years or something.
Karen (host): Yeah, AndyRubin Congratulations. Yeah.
Claire: Yeah, but so he so that happened and then the walkout happened a week later. So it was really again another thing that in the writing, I'm going back and being like, what happened there? Because there was a match that lit the flame. How did I get so involved in this? What was I thinking? You know, because it was not that I was like, I've had all these really toxic work experiences. I'm really frustrated with my current job at YouTube. So I'm gonna go like blow it all up. It was not like that at all. It was that I was deeply, I had a really difficult time for reasons that are are both kind of classic, classic issues of coming back from maternity leave, but also unique to my relationship with my manager, that the culture of that department. I was just having a rough time. It was like I I think I'd been back exactly a year from maternity leave and You know, it it is a it's emotional, it's hard to balance all that. You're r reconciling a lot of different bits of identity. But so I was really deep into this mom's group that was just like an email group where people I'm still involved in like so many different like local moms groups and Facebook groups and all. It's just like kind of my nature is to be like chatty online. So I, you know, I would I I was I was tuned in with these other women, and sometimes people would talk about, I'm dealing with this weird thing and it's anonymous was anonymous lesbian. I'm dealing with this weird thing, and there's a little bit of solidarity and deep support, you know, of other women who were like, you know, it was for expecting a new mom. So it was sort of like that kind of, you know, in that right freshly in that stage. and when that Andy Rubin news broke, a lot the women started kind of doing this Me Too movement thing where people were just like, I'm so effing over it with this whole sphere of, you know, the company's sanctimoniousness, meanwhile. This is what the reality is like. And I it was more that I felt that I was a conduit and hearing other people's stories and experiencing rage, you know, because the message that the the payment to Andy Rubin said, and also this New York Times article kind of shares some other stories that basically demonstrated that when women are experiencing bad things at Google, the men get rewarded and the women get punished for complaining or for making a complaint. So it's it's a complete collapse of HR. Of equity, of you know, justice, any semblance of justice, because it just shows that kind of the the the kind of sexist voice club nature is that the system is replicating itself in this really ugly way. You know, it's it was, you know, it was it was really kind of disheartening. So as people kind of shared their, you know, smaller scale on the ground stories of what they've had to put up with in order to maintain their status and place at the company, really shocked me because I'd never really been through that experience, maybe with the first Kevin. That when I left, I wrote this whole thing to the HR person who was a completely disempowered young HR person who the they never really seemed to listen to anyway. But I was basically like, before I go, you need to know what this culture is like and how and how kind of how Kevin manages and how you know this, this, this, and this happening. And, you know, not that I expected anything there being any retribution for him per se. But I think like six months later, he got promoted to VP, which is a huge, you know. Absolutely huge wealth of it, you know, in your, you know, and it was just that was just a little bit like this guy is such a bad leader. And and for some reason, he's valuable enough to this corporation that they're elevating him to this incredible height, you know, you know, within the company. and how that feels to be on that team, you know, and it what that the message that that sends. And I've heard a little bit since I've left. even just yesterday, I was getting an email from someone talking about how. The people that are most loyal to Marion, my, you know, the kind of the chief bad boss in the book, people who are most loyal to her replicate her behaviors because that's what's modeled. You know, it's the the the way that she
Karen (host): Things top down. Yeah. Things are top down.
Claire: Rocks from the head down. So if the if the boss is, you know, acts in certain ways they know that I'm kind of saying are like, you know, unethical, actually work counter to Google's values, you know, not creating a good team and all, you know, team culture and all this, that that's what other people go and do, you know, and as they kind of come up through her ranks. and you know, and that's it, would be one thing if Google was just like, Yeah, I'm sorry, you know, this is just how we run it. We're and some of these other companies, like you know, Twitter, Elon Musk's Twitter, somebody's just Yeah, it's ruthless, whatever. But Google still goes out and like tries to place op-eds about you know where they're pontificating about building like you know inclusive and diverse teams and psychological safety and how like you know how we are so smart about HR and all those things. Like they wanna have their cake and eat it too. And that's you know, I think that that that adds a layer of like, you know, infuriatingness to
Karen (host): Yeah, certainly. Totally. Well, you know, I know that empathy is it's I think it's important to this group and I hope people that involve in my life, but it certainly is de-emphasized, it seems, in a corporate way these days, and you know, for for filmmakers and storytellers, empathy is critical. Like you that's that's a critical component, a character trait to have. And so that contrast, it seems like the way we sort of sort of to me want to naturally be is empathetic and that like now there's this like de empathy, you know, vibe and flavor running through it would seem, you know, big tech, or at least it's getting the microphone quite a bit right now. I don't know. Do you see this book as maybe a counter to that or just exposing that? Or like, do you even feel like that's important to try and I don't know, highlight some
Claire: It tends to be as a sort of like institutional concept.
Karen (host): Y well, I g I guess, but I mean d okay, h a better question maybe is like can it be? Can it be? Can it survive? In
Claire: You I think it's a huge
Karen (host): this context, in a corporate context.
Claire: I yes, I think, you know, like it was really interesting because I I I kind of riff in the book about how Creative Lab was becoming obsessed with empathy. It was like, but it was the really it was a weird perversion of the word. It was like, you know, to some extent it was talking about a a creative quality that when you you know, that that you know broadcasting the company's humanity, you know, in a in an authentic way or something like that. But you know, it it also was being used to sell Google products and sort of specifically by that, like they they were doing these ads that Google, you know, does a Super Bowl ad like this every year, but it was basically like a really human story about using Google products, you know, over the course of a lifetime and you're tearing up and it's you know, someone's wife's dying or losing her memory, or it's a kid growing up. And you know, it's really hard for me not to look at that cynically now and be like, Yeah, sure. The thing is oozing with empathy for you know and all sorts of different, you know, ways you could define that. But it's also about trying to bring people emotionally into the technology, or rather, Trojan horse the technology into people's lives and make them feel like Google's so kind of quirky and friendly. And you see this with AI now.
Karen (host): Here, take all my information I love you. You love me. Take all my photos.
Claire: Is you know, this technology is so personal and requires so much trust and it requires, you know, and people now I think it's just like we're so even though like people are so mistrustful of like these tech companies, we're we keep letting the tech into our lives, you know, in these ways that it was hard for me not to think it was sort of like a hollowing out of like what empathy actually is. And also I I I thought a little bit too about how There's a funny point in the book, which peop people have now drawn out for me. And I I didn't even think about it that much then, but that, you know, when I was being retaliated against by Marian, that there's this point. She never engages with anything. I've I I keep saying to her, what is like, why are you doing this? What is going on? You you've stripped my role for parts after the walkout. This is girls like retaliation, all this. And finally she gets really emotional with me and basically accuses me of not having enough empathy for her and all she has to manage and all that she's going through. And that really sums up. How the empathy was was really institutionalized for young people in the company. And there's a lot of this stuff about you have to be a player and never a victim. You can never claim to be a victim in your circumstances, otherwise you're a loser. And I really felt that like, wow, did that do a number on me mentally that you're expected to be completely compassionate to the executive perspective that they're always balancing really complex problems and all these stakeholders and you know they have hard lives and all this other stuff. And but the empathy never flows down. And then I was like, I'm completely destabilized by what's going on with my job here. And she's like, You're not having enough empathy for me to be like accusing me of this. I mean, it was crazy, but it also reflects the way empathy had kind of become perverted in the corporate context. So I mean, yeah, in my life, I totally believe that like empathy is important and it's like the connection between human beings is so important. I just think that Google is really interested in like modulating all this stuff in a corporate way that like benefited the company.
Karen (host): I think it's so it it's so it it's just I almost almost can't believe it exists, some of the scenarios, and certainly that one. because in our in our studio in our film world, there's aspects of that, but I won't it's also feels like we don't have time for that. We have to like make a movie. Like it just doesn't and there's a thing that comes out at the end of it. We're mate we're making something, there's a thing. But okay, maybe we'll just end with this. we're post a lot of this. You are post Google now, we're post-COVID. we're post moonshot, we're all these things. mottos do still exist. They mission statements still come up. So not to be too cheesy about it, but Claire, what do you have like a do you have a new motto for your yourself that's that's getting you through this this part of life?
Claire: You know, I really and it's hard to do. I am trying to let live life offline. I think it's it's a kind of funny post book that, you know, I like I feel like I've, you know, been more hooked into like notifications and you know, whatever else. But I think that, you know, Google, the promise of Google, in addition to the, you know, the don't be evil and it trying to be virtuous and all that, was really that computing can tackle the world's greatest problems. And I increasingly find that anything that makes me feel optimistic. Is all about the like real life connections between people. And not that the tools aren't, you know, to some extent able to facilitate, you know, connections and communities and all that. Cause I think that that's true too. But I think that like, you know, it's like being in nature, like being with my kids, you know, like all all these things that, you know, the way that phones and like the the ease of this technology and AI and it's making us baby brain, it's making us angrier, polarized, all these other things. Like, it's really sad to me how for all the promise and all the rhetoric, that that tech has intensified the problems of humanity so much. Like insofar anything that they might have anything that big tech has done to connect humanity is completely outweighed, I think, by the way that it's basically like you know, monetized, intensified, you know, all these problems. and so yeah, I mean that that's my sort of motto is just like limit screen shirt. Sorry, it's so generic, but it's true.
Karen (host): No, it's not. It's simple and simple is good and simple is hard. And maybe it's also just to steal a embroidered pillow logo touch grass, right? So maybe we'll leave it with that. Yeah. Yeah.
Claire: Grass. There we Let's go.
Karen (host): Claire, so cool to have you. Don't be evil. Bad bossess fake promises and my escape from big tech. We're glad that you escaped. And so cool that you could come and and chat with this group. Yeah, yeah, course. OKAY any questions. We're gonna open it up And if you have a question, Tristan, I see you. Hi. can I say thank you to you both? this has been absolutely enthralling and I've had questions from the moment you started speaking. So many I've I've forgotten all the early questions. I think what I really want to screw down into is is the nature of truth and where you think that sits now. Because you you talk about this cathartic process of writing this book and getting it all out there so people could see it. But actually we live in a in an environment where you can be accused of the most heinous things and simply by saying no that didn't happen is fake. It kind of goes away. You know, I mean the president, you know, God bless him, did say I could kill someone on the street and get away with it. And and indeed there is an element to that that is, you know. believable. And you know, we're now we're now in a position where truth is not defined by its own word. There are now shades of truth, there are manifestations of truth, there are types of truth, because you can have any damn truth you like. And I just wonder where what you what you feel about that now you've written this book and you've put it all out there. But You put it out into an environment where people can just go, No, this is nonsense, this fantasy, you know.
Claire: Yeah, I mean I think that that sorry, you
Karen (host): No, I was just sorry, I was just going to quote Andrew Wakefield, you know, he was being multiply discredited for his views on on vaccination and in fact is now held up as some kind of guru by the anti vax by the huge anti vax population as as being you know the voice of truth. When is in in fact he's you know in in any other age he would have been dragged through the streets facing backwards on a horse whilst people petted him with eggs. You know, it's not it's a different world now. It's remarkable. But Tristan, I love that. The nature of truth. Like, perhaps was that clear some of your motivation, like, let's get down this truth, my truth, but the truth, not an alternate truth.
Claire: I mean, I think it's so meta. Everything about the book is meta, right? Because Google is this arbiter of information, right? And particular and like in YouTube too, I think has really, you know, hastened the the undoing of any single source of truth. I mean, I think they were trying to like police, you know, medical misinformation during COVID. And again, they've like completely rolled that all back. And it's I mean, I think that the, you know. Science denialism is like something that YouTube probably fully embraces now. And that was something that was like very deeply felt that the founders and Susan cared about. I think that, you know, the the you know, I I I I I saw that a lot because like with my also my role it within corporate communications was kind of about the neutralization of dissent and the company always getting the last word. Because even though the there was a sincerity, I guess, to the Larry and Sergei meeting every week where people could come and answer questions, if there were company controversies. They would get absorbed into the executive perspective. And a lot of, a lot of the training of being a communications person was about that. Was I think about writing the talking points that become the company narrative and you know and how that works. You know, and so I think it was really bizarre for my story to become another kind of talking point that, you know, was basically like we completely refuse, we, you know. I hear you. We hear what you're saying, but you know, this there's this other thing and this other story that we're gonna tell. So I think that, you know, I had kind of farmed my voice out for a lot of this, you know, stuff over time. And then this the I not that I feel that my story is like incontrovertible. I think it's more that it's it's sincerely told from my perspective, you know. So it's sort of like I actually try to give some perspective to even like when I'm talking Kevin and Creative Labs His what his perspective might have been. I don't know how he ended up with me on the team or you know how how he managed or the other things, you know, again, my trying to give empathy upwards, but that doesn't change the fact that this was my experience. So the whole thing is sort of hued hued to that. So I mean, it the nature of truth is so complicated, and yet it felt very satisfying to say we we're we're increasingly letting the powerful own truth. Because like we we are in this sort of like authoritarian sort of moment and these tech companies have so much power over the way information flows and they're quite fickle with it, the way it it shifted from the Trump to Biden and then back to Trump. I mean, it played played a huge role in what you can see in the US. And you know, not that we even thought that the Biden era, you know, policed things very much, but it was more and now it, you know, whatever. that, you know, it's it felt important to be able to. refute the narrative because I think that if there's one thing that I'm I know my book is doing is that the people that are in inside Google and these big tech companies are like, I'm not alone. I'm not crazy. Because people experiencing experience the stuff that I did in microcosm every single day, which is that you have a a a punitive manager or something that's unjust. And usually the it it falls to the complainer. You you you know you you c the as the saying goes, you you point out a problem, you become the problem. you become something to be kind of managed away, which is a s a very sad state of a of any sort of culture. but you know, I think that, you know, that people so many people have been like, it's eerie how many parallels there are in a completely different team or org, you within these tech companies, but you know, there's a lot of like familiar moves. And the moves are about isolate, you know, eject from the cell. So yeah, I mean there I think there's a truth to that. The truth to that experience. And so it I've been surprised that so many people have said to me, the details between your story and mine are so eerie because my story is so comically personal and the details are so specific, you know, but and yet, you know, it there's obviously some universal things going on.
Karen (host): Right, right. Tony Tony has a question. Hey Tony. Yeah, hi. Hello. First of all, thank you so much. This has been so fantastic listening to you. Would you say, knowing that you know how much you've seen so closely how this all this whole machine is working and where it's all going, are you fundamentally optimistic or pessimistic about where everything's going? Great question, Tony.
Claire: I mean, I think I s I definitely skew like pessimistic because, you know, it it just seems like we're marching towards, you know, technocratic, you know, AI scary. It it's just everywhere. The tech seem the tech the worst aspects of tech seem to be the most unfettered at the moment. that said, I when I heard I was I heard over the summer that when they were playing the Odyssey and IMAX, people are booing the Claude ads, the AI ads that ran before. There's a the popular shift against big tech and particularly the younger generations, I think is is genuinely hopeful. I mean, I think it's you know what that looks like as, you know, resources become scarce, climate change intensifies, you know, the sort of like authoritarian waves, you know, royal, I do think that there hopefully more kind of resistance is activated, more solidarity. in the tech industry, I think there's like, you know, there seem to be the inklings again of tech worker movement where where people are, you know, willing to to play an accountability function that involves some risk that that the governments aren't doing as much for tech companies. It's a really important thing that, you know, employees. can use their conscience to put a little grist in the mill here and there. I I feel a lot of appetite towards that. And the sort of like broad disillusionment moment, the three D disillusionment moment, I think could could go interesting places, but you know, also we're all like kind of like numbed and entertained and pacified by our phones and that's hard. I know some
Karen (host): I feel guilty that like, well look at what the kids are doing, isn't that great? Like, well what were we doing? You know, like why why is it their responsibility? having said that, I have really mad respect for those graduates who walked out of commencement speech from Sundar, the current CEO of of cool. So I mean incredible, incredible. the boldness of it and you know, that's a big moment for anyone and to choose choose that one is yeah, I was inspired by that.
Claire: Yeah. That was so cool. I mean, I yeah, I do think that, you know, though that generation of kids coming through COVID, you know, they they have an inherent dislike of of this of of the consolidation or they have their eyes open, shall we say, to the consolidation of money and power that big tech represents. And so I think it again, like the irony of me kind of being in this sort of marketing role, making Google seem as friendly and quirky as possible. Those narratives aren't landing anymore, I think, with you know, it and that's good. I think that's that there, you know, there should be skepticism and and questioning and all that. So it yeah, that's good.
Karen (host): Yeah, for sure. Tammy. Hey Tammy. my gosh, Claire. Congratulations. And I just I mean, it feels like you're fearless in this pursuit. And I can't honestly I've been in toxic work environments and I'm like, I would want to be like you, you know, and be able to say it and and and I feel like that's a huge it's a huge thing to do. So I just want to say that this is like just a little process question, but you said and at one part that you had to like kind of re-remember what the actual experience was for you because it was kind of like it wasn't like you just went from this to this. how did you what was the process of going back and really, really remembering? Like if you weren't writing it down at the time. I always wonder this about any kind of memoirs. Like if you weren't writing down what you were thinking and feeling at the time, how did you like really get into that mindset in like a nuanced way?
Claire: Yeah, and I'm like so ADHD that it's like I'll be picking up these like of all these notebooks on my desk and it's like morning pages from six years ago and I have nothing filed. I like
Karen (host): Morning pages at that time.
Claire: I yeah, in 2012, when I was in creative lab, I did the artist way for the first time. So yeah, I mean a lot of it was was in Gmail. So I would go back and like so I did and it it's so daunting to say, okay, I'm gonna write a book that's 12 years of my life. But when you really get down into chunks and I kind of, you know, put myself to a schedule, a lot a lot of times in the editing of it or the writing of it, I I would have two weeks per chapter period of time. And the challenge is, and it is almost meditation and like dreams and all that. I mean, it's a little little like that. You have have to drop yourself in as much as possible. So I would go and look at my Gmail inbox from that period of time, my outbox. I had a phone that I I kind of stole from Google. No, I should say I stole. I had a phone from the end of my time there. my personal phone. So in my personal phone that I, you know, have lots had lots of texts and stuff that, you know, little bits and pieces. So that so that helps. But it's it really is Like I think there's like a quote, like attention is like prayer. It's like the more that you would pay attention, the more that you drop into that period of time, the more it comes back. And and I also sometimes would go back to I sent a lot of voice notes to people that I worked with at that time. A lot of people that appear in the book, I actually had gone back and forth with to say, What do you remember? Or and I, you know, and then someone says something, just a word or a memory or phrase, and then People also know people don't remember anything. I'd be like, Can you remember this like crazy thing that someone said to And be I don't remember that, but I remember this other crazy thing that they said. So the things and then things come loose. So it it so people have been saying to me, like that I knew from various periods of time, like, wow, you have the memory of a lion. And I'm like, no, actually, it's really that I had the I had the scraps and the shards. I did the work to try to like put myself back in to different things. you know, running it running it back and forth with with people that were around at the time. And, you know, yeah, it it sort of just came came out. Cause I I really wish and I've seen like the the woman who wrote Anna Wiener, who wrote a book which is called Uncanny Valley and a great, a great tech memoir. I think she came into the industry as a writer and, you know, with aspirations to write. And it just it the book felt to me like she had incredible real time documentation. And even careless people where it's a shorter period of time, but she had like a lot of dialogue from like being on the private plane and you're with Cheryl Sandberg like you're reconstructing conversations. It in my book, it's pretty clear that I would say sometimes I'll say, you know, they said something like, or also a lot of times the other amazing thing that I had that was the complete tent pull of the book of the writing of the book, so much so that I almost titled the book Performance Review. I sent my parents all my performance reviews, which is so embarrassing. It's like school reports. But the that has so that gave me such a flavor of how I was showing up at work at that time because you have other people, you know, you have all these other people commenting on you. You have to list out your accomplishments and all this. It's so funny and rich because you you know, you it was like the internal spin. And what was my internal spin? So also like reading when you read memoirs, but like I think a successful memoir is like it's not just what happened, it's how much you can bring the voice of wisdom. that you have now the perspective you have now over that material, the whole thing. And so like I think that's like a common thing people say in workshop for memoir is that like, yeah, I like you I feel the story, but I want to know why it matters or what you how you felt about it or you need to take me through that period of time. So I the more I built on in the process, the clearer that voice got, which is what is my perspective now that, you know, I don't have I have not answered all these questions about, you know, the future of humanity or of selfhood or any of these things, but I'm more grounded in in in who I am now and and and so I can see the the delta from like, you know, you know, where I went all of my.
Karen (host): Yeah, that book Careless People. It's Careless People, right? That's about Facebook and that is an absolutely incredible book too. It's such a good book.
Claire: Because she what she did too was I think, you know, it's more reflective of the kind of company Facebook is than Google, but they are so punitive, you know, and they they you know they they have muzzled her, you know, and and you know, I think that it's like been an out she's suing them, counter suing them because they, you know, didn't let her promote the book and all you know, all this this other stuff. And good because she had that access to be on the plane hearing them say all these like, you know, kind of really damning things. And she had the notes. She was, and then what surprised me most reading it is that it actually is a toxic workplace story too. There's there's actually overlap of I think two or three people from her book. Elliot Schraig is the boss who advises her to cover up the sexual harassment. He's the boss of my department when I came to Google. And this the woman who I was describing chided me for wearing a skirt. She is in careless people as well. And Basically she, yeah, I mean I she had that level of access, which I don't have any dirt on Larry and Sergey, you know, like it's it's not like I withheld any, you know, gossip or, you know, whatever. Not gossip, it's not about gossip, but more that like the the real portrait of them being cavalier with, you know, or you're careless with with the tremendous power that they have. And and she put that all out on paper and she really paid a price for it, but and she had what an impact.
Karen (host): so Claire, you got the book, you've got a substack. Are those the best places for people to kind of find you and and check in with you and see how you're doing? Yeah.
Claire: I I've been on LinkedIn left and right recently, which is so funny. I'm like it's just such a conversation about like burnout and disillusionment and where it's it' the layoffs I think have done a
Karen (host): No, yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe I'm on a different algorithm there. Okay. So the book again. Don't be evil. Bad bossess fake promises and my escape from big tech. Thanks everyone for coming. Claire, if you want to hang with me for just a second Thanks everyone. So good to see you guys. Let's all catch up. soon Bye. let
Claire: That was great. What a fun discussion.
Karen (host): That was great. That was that was really SoGood Let's get let's get a movie optioned on here.
Claire: People keep saying that. Someone someone who read the book went and went so far it was so funny to like cast it, like all the different people. I was cracking up
Karen (host): Or Anne Hathaway, obviously.
Claire: Well, I think she was too old to be maybe a twenty Well yeah.
Karen (host): Yeah, that's true. That's true.