Speaker 1: Google is in the midst of a major upheaval. It's
Speaker 1: not an understatement to say it could change the way
Speaker 1: the world's largest Internet company operates forever. Since it was founded,
Speaker 1: Google has had a special relationship with its employees, especially
Speaker 1: the engineers who write the software code that runs the
Speaker 1: services we love and have come to depend upon, things
Speaker 1: like online search, maps, Android phones, and the Chrome web browser.
Speaker 1: Google pays these people very well. Famously, working at Google
Speaker 1: also comes with tons of perks, like swimming pools and
Speaker 1: free food. But what's really unique is the amount of
Speaker 1: responsibility and autonomy the company gives staff. Google shares an
Speaker 1: unusual amount of internal company information with its employees and
Speaker 1: encourages them to speak up about things they disagree with.
Speaker 1: Over the years, everything from app designs and search results
Speaker 1: to what kind of kale should be served in the
Speaker 1: company kitchens has been up for debate, and as a result,
Speaker 1: Google services and products have benefited from the collective intelligence
Speaker 1: of many of the world's smartest engineers. It's a big
Speaker 1: reason why the company's offerings are so user friendly and
Speaker 1: why they make billions of dollars in profit every quarter.
Speaker 1: And this symbiosis ran pretty smoothly until about two years ago. Now,
Speaker 1: after a series of controversies and protests, some workers are
Speaker 1: openly at war with Google. It's already duailed important business initiatives,
Speaker 1: and its sparking employee uprisings at other tech giants like
Speaker 1: Amazon and Microsoft. We're going to take you inside these
Speaker 1: foundations shaking developments with Irene Nap, a self taught senior
Speaker 1: software engineer who's been at Google for almost five years
Speaker 1: working on security and privacy projects. I'm Pierre Gadkari, and
Speaker 1: I'm Alistair Barr. You're listening to Decrypted, So Alista tell
Speaker 1: us more about Irene. I first met Irene last year
Speaker 1: at Google shareholder meeting. Irene was there speaking in favor
Speaker 1: of a proposal to hie executive pay to progress on
Speaker 1: diversity and inclusion. Irene has had a front row seat
Speaker 1: throughout the last two tumultuous years at the company, either
Speaker 1: by being personally involved in protests or via relationships with
Speaker 1: co workers on the front lines. Irene is trans and
Speaker 1: goes by the gender pronoun they or them. They agree
Speaker 1: to talk about all this, but not any private work
Speaker 1: they're doing for Google. We met up last month at
Speaker 1: the Bloomberg office in Silicon Valley. Now I wanted to
Speaker 1: get into the first time, maybe where Google management and
Speaker 1: some of the workers maybe started parting ways a little bit.
Speaker 1: So to me, things really got back to James the more.
Speaker 1: In August of seen you published what we have all
Speaker 1: called the mammos since then. Um, when thinking that about
Speaker 1: people realize that there were many versions of the mammo.
Speaker 1: I can't refined over a period to read circuit focus
Speaker 1: stance for argument, which was this misogynist view that women
Speaker 1: are not suit engineers. Let me quickly refresh everyone's memory
Speaker 1: about this incident. A couple of years ago, Google was
Speaker 1: facing accusations from a group of female employees that the
Speaker 1: company was paying them less than men doing similar work.
Speaker 1: Around that time, a long essay which had been circulating
Speaker 1: on Google message boards got picked up in the press.
Speaker 1: It was written by James Damore, who was an engineer
Speaker 1: at Google at the time, and its central theme was
Speaker 1: that men may be more suited to working in tech
Speaker 1: than women. Offensive and harmful. That is how the CEO
Speaker 1: of Google is describing an anti diversity memo written by
Speaker 1: one of Google's male employees. Now, the engineer behind the manifesto,
Speaker 1: which claims women are and how did how would you
Speaker 1: rate Google's response to that crisis? The company fired him
Speaker 1: after getting its little ducks in a row. The Google
Speaker 1: software engineer behind this controversial ten page memo is out
Speaker 1: gone after blasting diversity and women in the workplace. A
Speaker 1: source of go I was pleased out that I was
Speaker 1: not so pleased that there wasn't anything internal communication. Um,
Speaker 1: and there were. There was a planned series of town
Speaker 1: halls which was canceled actually about half an hour before
Speaker 1: the first one would have happened. And why did Google
Speaker 1: scrap these meetings so abruptly, iron said. Questions and answers
Speaker 1: that had been prepared for the town halls were leaked
Speaker 1: to the public. Then James Damore and other plaintiffs filed
Speaker 1: the suit against Google, alleging violation of their labor rights.
Speaker 1: The complaint included screenshots of internal company communications. Conveniently, all
Speaker 1: the people who pomittedly agreed with their names had been redacted.
Speaker 1: But you know, all of my friends had been named.
Speaker 1: In fall, and many people began featuring on harassment websites
Speaker 1: for Irene. This was the moment when Googlers began to
Speaker 1: really work in unison to change things several of us
Speaker 1: put together a petition UM and we did get a
Speaker 1: meeting with the company's upper management the West time to
Speaker 1: my knowledge that a petitioners had not resolved. The company
Speaker 1: has some responsibility there because this is a part of
Speaker 1: a social change which was enabled by the Internet. Um
Speaker 1: and you know Google, Google is a big part of
Speaker 1: the Internet, part of the Okay. So that's how it
Speaker 1: all got started. What happened next, I'd say the next
Speaker 1: big flare up between workers and Google management happened several
Speaker 1: months later. It had to do with the project that
Speaker 1: Google had in the works with the Pentagon to provide
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence to analyze drone footage. Internally, it was known
Speaker 1: as Project may Even Now I mean and most other
Speaker 1: workers didn't hear about this until details were leaked to
Speaker 1: the press in March two thousand eighteen. Some three thousand Googlers,
Speaker 1: as Google employees are known, have sent CEO Sumed Arpachai
Speaker 1: an open letter asking him to end cooperation with the
Speaker 1: U S Department of Defenses. Project may have it that
Speaker 1: venture includes the secrecy around Project may Even seemed to
Speaker 1: violate Google's actors for open communication with employees, and importantly,
Speaker 1: it also veered away from the companies focus on consumer
Speaker 1: products and into military work. As an engineer, I think
Speaker 1: something perhaps a little bit different when I hear that.
Speaker 1: I think most people think bombs. I think surveillance, because
Speaker 1: you know, the United States does have I fine drones
Speaker 1: which could just survey an entire city at once. But
Speaker 1: I don't think any government deserves that level of power.
Speaker 1: I think it's too much. If I had wanted to
Speaker 1: work for a defense contract, or if I'd wanted to
Speaker 1: work for Key Martin, I would have done that. Google
Speaker 1: employees didn't like working on artificial intelligence projects for the military.
Speaker 1: They thought it was war work, so they demanded that
Speaker 1: we the Google step back, and they did. Google committed
Speaker 1: not to redo that contract. The best of my knowledge,
Speaker 1: that has happened, although I have the strong feeling that
Speaker 1: that the military may have simply hired some versity into
Speaker 1: a startup and that they're still running it on, you know,
Speaker 1: our public facing service. That last part is pretty damning.
Speaker 1: Irone is saying that because Google's cloud services and many
Speaker 1: of us AI tools are available for anyone to use,
Speaker 1: there's a way for the company to continue helping the
Speaker 1: Pentagon without directly working with it, so is that true?
Speaker 1: I ask Google about this and several other points Iron raised.
Speaker 1: The company declined to comment, but Google's top lawyer, Kent Walker,
Speaker 1: has said that Google let the contract expire and worked
Speaker 1: closely with the Pentagon to make the transition quote in
Speaker 1: a way that is consistent with our AI principles and
Speaker 1: contractual commitments. So Alistair, as I recall, the controversy over
Speaker 1: Project Maven, died down after Google said it wasn't going
Speaker 1: to renew the contract. But within a few months Google
Speaker 1: was back in hot water with its workers again. Google
Speaker 1: has been working on a secret project code named Dragonfly.
Speaker 1: Dragonfly was a censored version of its search engine for China,
Speaker 1: and so today the New York Times broke the news
Speaker 1: about a protest letter signed by four hundred employer ease.
Speaker 1: They wanted to quote raise urgent moral and ethical issues,
Speaker 1: saying currently we do not news about this secret project.
Speaker 1: Dragonfly caused an uproar inside Google once again. I found
Speaker 1: out through the press, and I was frankly shocked. Of
Speaker 1: course this was going to be a censored search engine. Um,
Speaker 1: I saw a version of the search result page, and
Speaker 1: you know, working at Google, the search result page, we're
Speaker 1: all well aware that it has a very high standard
Speaker 1: to be neutral, to reflect the world as it is,
Speaker 1: which is not the only possible moral choice, but it
Speaker 1: is the moral choice that has been consistently made, and
Speaker 1: that the company's reputation is built on um And to
Speaker 1: see a version of that page where with a search
Speaker 1: for Tianeman Square, which had I believe the first result
Speaker 1: was something about the myth of Tanneman Square and that
Speaker 1: it didn't happen, or something to that effect, So I
Speaker 1: mean and other employees this undermined as the reason Google
Speaker 1: exists to organize the world's information and make it universally
Speaker 1: accessible and useful, because you know, if if Google can't
Speaker 1: be remid on to say what's true, who can? Who
Speaker 1: do you trust? Project Dragonfly also divided staff. There were
Speaker 1: other employees who argued that providing services to China's huge
Speaker 1: population was aligned with Google's mission, But in Washington it
Speaker 1: was a double punch. This combination of Google withdrawing from
Speaker 1: a US military contract while simultaneously building a search service
Speaker 1: that would help an authoritarian communist government censor information. It
Speaker 1: was too much for some politicians. Eventually, Google CEO Sunda
Speaker 1: Pichai had to testify in front of Congress to explain
Speaker 1: himself that happened in December. So I want to ask
Speaker 1: very specifically, are any employees currently having product meetings on
Speaker 1: this question, on this Chinese project and where, if not,
Speaker 1: when did those end. We have undertaken an internal effort,
Speaker 1: but right now there are no plans to launch a
Speaker 1: search service in China. As I said earlier, are there
Speaker 1: any current discussions with any member of the Chinese government
Speaker 1: on launching this app? Currently we are not in discussions
Speaker 1: around launching. And President Donald Trump was commenting on this
Speaker 1: as recently as March. In a tweet, he said, quote,
Speaker 1: Google is helping China and their military, but not the US. Terrible.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. As two thousand and eighteen progressed,
Speaker 1: it really started to feel like the clashes between Google
Speaker 1: management and workers were heating up in a way we've
Speaker 1: never seen before. The Dragonfly controversy was still playing out
Speaker 1: in Washington when the next bombshell landed And what was that?
Speaker 1: Here was a story published by The New York Time
Speaker 1: in late October, and it said that Google had given
Speaker 1: one of its top executives, a man called Andy Rubin,
Speaker 1: who co created the Android mobile operating system, a massive
Speaker 1: ninety million dollar exit package, even though he'd been accused
Speaker 1: of sexual harassment and an internal investigation by Google had
Speaker 1: found the allegation to be credible. Andy Rubin has said
Speaker 1: reports about his conduct and departure from Google misrepresented the facts.
Speaker 1: I knew that was in the works. Um. I was
Speaker 1: very at least it was possible to tell that story,
Speaker 1: and it was possible to gather testimony from so many
Speaker 1: people that it was simply an incontrovertible I fl um.
Speaker 1: And the response was pretty much a media I think
Speaker 1: it was within a matter of days the walkout happened, yea.
Speaker 1: And who came up with that? That? Did that start spontaneously? Yes?
Speaker 1: Actually it was a number of people who had previously
Speaker 1: worked little that I gathered that they had been doing
Speaker 1: things very similar to the kinds of efforts I have
Speaker 1: been doing. You know, I came from a remote part
Speaker 1: of that campus that day I headed down UM to
Speaker 1: join the It was really a protest atmosphere, UM and
Speaker 1: you know, all my sign not okay Google, and hear
Speaker 1: what people had to say and see the real strength
Speaker 1: and numbers, and then I believe the final number was
Speaker 1: twenty thousand people worldwide structural change in the name of
Speaker 1: transparency accountability. Google tried to contain the rage by going
Speaker 1: along with the protest to some degree. CEO sund Our Pitch.
Speaker 1: I made sure that managers could make arrangements to cover
Speaker 1: for staff who wanted to take part. And how how
Speaker 1: did the company restpond because in a way, in a
Speaker 1: way they were kind of supportive. I think they at
Speaker 1: us a table of like pagels and coffee, a joke
Speaker 1: like the revolution will be catered. But then I've realized
Speaker 1: it's not it's not really a joke. It's um it's
Speaker 1: actually a very common management tactic to portray any descent
Speaker 1: as officially sanctioned fit for you personally. What what do
Speaker 1: you think of the most important things to actually have
Speaker 1: changed so far? I think the biggest thing that has
Speaker 1: changed is that Google's understand that we need to talk
Speaker 1: to each other or we won't understand what's going on
Speaker 1: their company if we don't, you know, share our stories,
Speaker 1: we won't. No, we'll just all be compartmentalized. And everyone
Speaker 1: who's going through something horrible, something like any of what
Speaker 1: any of the women who spoke to that reporter experience
Speaker 1: they'll just think, Oh, this is just me. I'm alone.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm the crazy one, which is certainly how companies
Speaker 1: everywhere have always tried to make people feel in those situations,
Speaker 1: and Google is no exception. Alista, what's happened to Irene
Speaker 1: and all the other Google workers who have been protesting
Speaker 1: so much in the last couple of years. I can't
Speaker 1: imagine Google is very pleased with them. Well, some employees
Speaker 1: said recently that Google has retaliated against them, so I
Speaker 1: brought that up with Ireen Personally, what I have experienced
Speaker 1: is everybody I know, everybody who's doing positive change of
Speaker 1: the company, UM, who's working to make place better, UM,
Speaker 1: has been feeling disheartened, has experienced, you know, something, even
Speaker 1: if it's even if it's small, even if it's an
Speaker 1: interaction with HR where they say, um, you know, step
Speaker 1: back from communicating. I'm my internal mailing lists and you say, UM, well,
Speaker 1: are you telling me that I have to do that?
Speaker 1: Or are you suggesting? And they say, oh, I'm just suggesting.
Speaker 1: And then afterward they follow up and they try to
Speaker 1: get it in writing that they told you you have to.
Speaker 1: When you follow up and say, no, I that's not
Speaker 1: my recollection for meeting. It was just advice. Correct, you're
Speaker 1: not telling me that I can't and why why why
Speaker 1: would they do something like that? Just a difficult tactic.
Speaker 1: I don't think there are any different from any other
Speaker 1: company in that regard. It's um you know, establishing a
Speaker 1: contemporaneous written record of what happened is likely to carry
Speaker 1: more weight than your testimony about how that conversation really went.
Speaker 1: Some protesters say they've been demoted or had responsibilities taken away.
Speaker 1: One of these people is Meredith Whittaker. She's a Google
Speaker 1: researcher who specializes in AI and co founded a group
Speaker 1: called AI Now that studies the impact of this technology
Speaker 1: on society. So she founded a nonprofit called AI Now,
Speaker 1: which you know, in my opinion as an engineer who's
Speaker 1: work is relevant to this stuff, is doing absolutely incredible work.
Speaker 1: Meredith was told, and I the form of it was
Speaker 1: a bit ambiguous. I think that she would not be
Speaker 1: able to focus on that work in her capacity at Google,
Speaker 1: and that the company's priorities were no longer online where
Speaker 1: they are now, which is a startin thing to say,
Speaker 1: since it's like saying the company's priorities are no longer
Speaker 1: relige with what's good for the world. Then in May
Speaker 1: some Google is organized a sit in to share stories
Speaker 1: of retaliation by the company. But this event was a
Speaker 1: lot smaller than the walkout protest. Google has policies to
Speaker 1: prohibit retaliation at work and provides ways for workers to
Speaker 1: apport such behavior, and it investigates all reports. But I
Speaker 1: mean said the company didn't sanction the sitting. Combined with
Speaker 1: the reports of retaliation, people may have felt nervous about
Speaker 1: taking part. I think this is the test of um,
Speaker 1: you know, can they get rid of what they must
Speaker 1: view as the troublemaker saying all that work? I think
Speaker 1: everybody else is watching to see what happens to us,
Speaker 1: the poor group. And how do you feel It sounds
Speaker 1: like you feel a bit targeted, yes, now as an individual,
Speaker 1: as a member of that group, And what do you
Speaker 1: think is going to happen to the group? I think
Speaker 1: we're wrong to wear I think the company tactics here
Speaker 1: show a great desperation. They wouldn't do anything so blatant
Speaker 1: if they had any better options. Um. I think they
Speaker 1: know how the world views this, now that they know
Speaker 1: that Google isn't some magical place where everything is perfect,
Speaker 1: that it's a company like any other corporation, um like
Speaker 1: any other multinational corporation that you know, ultimately tries its
Speaker 1: best to think of people's interchangeable. Okay, I want listeners
Speaker 1: to stop and mull that last comment for a second.
Speaker 1: I've been covering Google on and off for about five years,
Speaker 1: so this is shocking to hear. Co founder Larry Page
Speaker 1: has always wanted Google to be an unconventional company, but
Speaker 1: here I mean is saying this is no longer the case.
Speaker 1: So Ali, I'm curious about whether all of these protests
Speaker 1: by employees are starting to hurt Google's business in any way.
Speaker 1: I think it could for sure. I think Google's ability
Speaker 1: to hire and keep talent is a really under appre
Speaker 1: created part of its success. And you know, these these
Speaker 1: protests really are are all about how that special relationship
Speaker 1: between Google and its workers has started to break down.
Speaker 1: So it could be it could be a lot harder
Speaker 1: to keep hold of talented people or higher new ones.
Speaker 1: And so what about Google's actual businesses. You know, we've
Speaker 1: already heard that Google had to step away from Project Maven,
Speaker 1: which is a valuable contract that could have led to
Speaker 1: more business. So there are other projects that are at
Speaker 1: risk in a similar way. I think the main thing
Speaker 1: to look at here is Google's cloud computing business. This
Speaker 1: is the business of where you basically have a bunch
Speaker 1: of servers and data centers and you rent them out
Speaker 1: to other companies. And Amazon and Microsoft really lead in
Speaker 1: that business. It's a really booming industry and Google is
Speaker 1: third and a bit late to that business. Now. A
Speaker 1: big cloud customer in the US is the US military
Speaker 1: and the border US government. So if officials worry that
Speaker 1: Google staff are going to keep derailing projects like Maven,
Speaker 1: that could make them pick Amazon or Microsoft, you know,
Speaker 1: when other contracts come up forbidding. And what about the
Speaker 1: popularity of the CEO, Sunder Patty. He's historically been quite
Speaker 1: popular within the company, and I wonder if that's beginning
Speaker 1: to change at all. So there was a an internal
Speaker 1: employee survey that actually Google does it every year that
Speaker 1: this latest one, which came out in around early two
Speaker 1: thousand and nineteen, again got leaked into the press. We
Speaker 1: wrote about it as well, and it showed that among
Speaker 1: employees sunder pitch i is still still has a solid rating,
Speaker 1: but actually it went down by by more than ten
Speaker 1: percentage points compared to compared to the previous years, So
Speaker 1: there has been there has been a drop in the
Speaker 1: way that employees think about him, and over the last
Speaker 1: few months, pitch I has had to address the protests
Speaker 1: from workers. He said that Google has listened to concerns
Speaker 1: about the way the military users AI, and the company
Speaker 1: has made quite a few changes in response. He's also
Speaker 1: said that employees should be able to choose what they
Speaker 1: work on, but he emphasized that Google is going to
Speaker 1: continue working with the U. S. Military. Here's a clip
Speaker 1: of him talking about this in November the New York
Speaker 1: Times conference. We don't run the company by referendum, and
Speaker 1: I think, you know, there are many things good about
Speaker 1: We've given employees a lot of wars and out of
Speaker 1: which we've done well as a company, and I think
Speaker 1: it's part of the process. I think other companies may
Speaker 1: not be used to it. And so it looks like,
Speaker 1: you know, that is how everything works, but that's not
Speaker 1: how everything works. Our positions we make, which they may
Speaker 1: not often you frustrated though, and then coming back to Irene,
Speaker 1: I'm wondering how they're feeling at this point because employees
Speaker 1: have managed to push through some real change at Google.
Speaker 1: At the same time, these recent reports of retaliation must
Speaker 1: not be very encouraging. Yeah, I did ask them about that.
Speaker 1: I wondered looking back over this roughly a year, even
Speaker 1: more than a year, Um, do you think it's all
Speaker 1: been worth it? So? Clas absolutely no question. I came
Speaker 1: through the tech industry and to Google with the idea
Speaker 1: as to go of making positive change in the world,
Speaker 1: and I still feel that Google does that in some
Speaker 1: respects um. And I also I feel greatly privileged to
Speaker 1: be in a position where I can make my own
Speaker 1: positive change to the company, or at least try to.
Speaker 1: And has this come at a personal cost to Irene? Yes.
Speaker 1: Irene also talked about the toll of anonymous people goading
Speaker 1: and harassing them online. Frankly, we're talking about white supremacists here,
Speaker 1: and they are as shallow as you can possibly imagine,
Speaker 1: perhaps more shallow. I think they They would say that
Speaker 1: somebody like me is um, they might say effective, or
Speaker 1: they would just express dis belief that anybody of my
Speaker 1: role could possibly be somebody at all important than anybody
Speaker 1: like me, you could do anything significant. I Rene managed
Speaker 1: to remain calm through more than an hour of discussing
Speaker 1: all this with me. The only time they really got
Speaker 1: set was discussing how these anonymous harasses targeted Google co
Speaker 1: founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. But you see the
Speaker 1: founders are you know, they have Jewish backgrounds of various natures,
Speaker 1: and so to these as Larry and Sergey, who are
Speaker 1: brilliant engineers who invented the algorithm that the company is
Speaker 1: built on, personally, um are simply nonentities because Jewish it's
Speaker 1: just so shallow. It was clear to me from this
Speaker 1: that I mean still loves Google at least what the
Speaker 1: company used to stand for and what it could once
Speaker 1: again be. Now, what do you think the future looks
Speaker 1: for for both you? You and and Google and you
Speaker 1: at Google? Excellent question. I don't know. You know how
Speaker 1: much mongerl be with the company. Everybody reaches their moment
Speaker 1: and you can't rely on single individuals forever. But I
Speaker 1: think that there are many people at the company now
Speaker 1: we're aware of all these issues and tapped in, and
Speaker 1: I know that we now have a robust movement to
Speaker 1: hold the industry account of ball. It's not even just
Speaker 1: Google anymore. And that's it for this week's episode of Decrypted.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. If you have a story to share,
Speaker 1: or if you're a tech worker who's concerned about the
Speaker 1: company work app, I'd love to hear from you. You
Speaker 1: can write to us at Decrypted at bloomberg dot net,
Speaker 1: w I'm on Twitter at Alistair m bar and I'm
Speaker 1: at Pierre get Curry. And please help us spread the
Speaker 1: word about our show by leaving us a rating or
Speaker 1: review in your favorite podcast app. This episode was produced
Speaker 1: by Pierre get Curry and Lindsay Cratterwell. Our story editor
Speaker 1: was Aki Eater. Thank you also to Ann vander May
Speaker 1: and Emily Abusa. Francesco Leavie is head of Bloomberg Podcast.
Speaker 1: We'll see you next week.