"An absolute must-read for anyone interested not
just in big tech, but in what it takes to not lose your soul in modern-day
America." —Naomi Fry, staff writer at The New Yorker
A whip-smart, darkly funny, and timely memoir of one
woman’s twelve years inside Google and her transformation from insider to
dissenter as the company’s ideals begin to unravel from within.
When Claire Stapleton joined Google in 2007, it felt like
stepping into a worldview as much as a job. The company offered not just a
career, but a moral project. In the heady early years of Big Tech and when
Google’s in-house slogan was “Don’t be evil,” it was easy to believe that
technology wasn’t just changing the world—it was going to fix it.
Stapleton quickly became known as the “Bard of Google,”
pulled into the rooms where the company narrated itself—writing speeches, blog
posts, and executive communications for leaders including Larry Page. As she
rose through increasingly rarefied roles, from the storied Creative Lab to
YouTube marketing, she helped shape the myth from the inside.
But as the gap between Google’s ideals and its reality
widened, the dissonance became impossible to ignore. In 2018, amid outrage over
the company’s handling of sexual harassment, Stapleton helped organize the
20,000-employee Google Walkout—a defining rupture in Silicon Valley’s
self-image that The New York Times called a “watershed moment
in tech.” Overnight, she became a public face of employee revolt—and no longer
someone the company could neatly fold back into its story.
Sharp, witty, and unsparing, Don’t Be Evil is
an insider’s account of how power actually works—and a deeper reckoning with
the stories we tell about work, purpose, and ourselves. In a culture that
collapses identity into work, and as tech elites blur the line between private
authority and public life, it asks: how much can you change from within—and
when is it time to walk away?
About the Author
Claire Stapleton is a writer, communications
consultant, and tech labor activist. She lives with her family in Brooklyn.
