By LinkedIn
Publication Date: 2026-08-17 22:30:00
In 2018, Claire Stapleton helped spearhead a walkout of around 20,000 Google employees. The protest was a response to a New York Times story detailing how the company had paid multimillion-dollar exit packages to executives accused of sexual misconduct.
Now she’s back with a memoir, “Don’t Be Evil,” that pulls back the curtain on her time in the trenches at Google. It comes as the company faces renewed employee activism over its work with the Pentagon and ICE, and departing talent as it reshuffles its AI leadership.
In many ways, Stapleton helped shape Google’s image internally. She talked to Business Insider about those early days at the tech giant, which, while successful in its aims to organize the world’s information, later found its utopian ideals undermined by corporate realities. Google vowed not to become a conventional company, but sticking to that promise proved harder than its founders may have anticipated.
