Hi B—,
I appreciate that I made it through your candidate filters, it is a true privilege. I have friends at Google and, from what I've heard, it seems like it can be a great place to work.
Unfortunately I cannot imagine working at Google and I feel a responsibility to pass along my reasoning to you in the hopes that I might (if marginally) make a case for better corporate business practices. I want to make a case that key strategic choices are impacting your capacity to attract talent.
- It doesn't seem like the conditions that motivated the Google Walkout have been fundamentally addressed.
- Project Maven, Dragonfly, and probably other things that haven't yet come to light are extremely troubling.
- A detail from the Dragonfly story that struck me was how the company excluded the privacy review team from its considerations.
- From CNBC: "Google's annual diversity report reveals that the company's workforce is still largely white and male and that it made very little progress in the last year to change the ratios." (Although props for actually publishing the data.)
- I know Google is not Alphabet is not Sidewalk, but the stuff happening in Toronto with "smart cities" seems extremely heavy-handed and, dare I say, dystopian.
- Strategically-speaking the company seems unfocused. Android appears to be getting ditched, a team I collaborated with on censorship circumvention has been reshuffled, priorities changed, and my impression is that priorities are often short-lived and subject to internal politics.
Obviously writing an email like this is somewhat presumptuous at this first contact stage of recruitment, the larger point is that there may be other potential hires like me who wouldn't even consider working at Google. Many of us want our work to have impact, but with an ethical grounding that feels very lacking at BigTech firms.
Thanks for your consideration, and for reading all the way through my polemic email.
Good luck,
Dan
Hi Dan,
This is B— from Google. My job is to bring talented engineers to Google, and it looks like you might be a great fit! If you're free, I’d appreciate the chance to fill you in on potential opportunities at Google and also hear about the technical challenges you love to tackle.
If you’d like to chat, please grab some time on my calendar at this link My Calendar. If you prefer a time not listed, I’m happy to find another time that works for you.
Looking forward to speaking with you!
B—