Skye Is Leaving Google

Why are you leaving?

I know the usual line is "Google today isn't the Google I joined". The unfortunate truth is, Google is exactly the same. The Google I joined is one where management dates their subordinates, leadership ignores the concerns of marginalized people, and programmers collect massive amounts of data while cavalierly dismissing everyone's concerns.

The company's continuing commitment to chasing revenue (ethics be damned), collecting data (privacy be damned), and protecting predators (morality be damned) proves that the company has not changed, and has no intention of changing.

But I have changed, and I'm no longer thrilled to work at a company where workplace organizers get fired while sexual harassers get ninety million dollar payoffs. I'm no longer excited to tell people I work for a company that will happily censor information to make a little more money. I'm no longer happy to tell people that I work for a company in the business of war.

I have spent 18 months trying to turn my misery into something useful. I have succeeded only in being miserable. If Google is an aircraft carrier, I've been trying to turn it around by giving it a good, hard shove. I have finally accepted that this isn't going to work.

What are you doing next?

I'm going to motorcycle around Washington. I'm going to camp in the Hoh Rainforest once the weather warms up. I'm going to swim 100 miles (over the span of several weeks). After all that, we'll see.

To my colleagues in Privacy:

You're the best people I've ever worked with. Thank you for giving a damn. I wish you the best of luck shoving the aircraft carrier, and I hope that, one day, it turns.

Yours in calendrical heresy,

Skye