Wisereads Vol. 156 — Don't Be Evil by Claire Stapleton, Netflix CPTO on AI and the future of product and tech roles, and more
Last week, we shared a preview of DJ DiDonna's debut, Big Time Off, on the case for extended time away from work. This week, it's Claire Stapleton's memoir of her years at Google, Don't Be Evil, tracing her path from in-house bard to walkout organizer.
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Most highlighted Articles of the week
'I hate what AI is doing to the minds and happiness of the young': Katherine Rundell on the view from the classroom
Generative AI is threatening young people's relationship with reading, observes Katherine Rundell, a children’s author and Oxford fellow. "We also need to talk to young people about reading to outrun and outfight injustice. Reading to get faster, swifter and tougher; to develop powers of scrutiny and criticism and huge creative imagination. Reading human work to insist that we are human. Reading for liberation and emancipation; reading for intellectual freedom, and to have the strength to fight in the arenas of the mind, because when we let a computer think for us, we put a gun to the head of civilisation."
The Future is for Everyone
Mark Zuckerberg's pitch for personal superintelligence: the technology should end up in everyone's hands rather than concentrated in a few institutions. "It is surprising that the discourse from many developing AI is so filled with doom. I do not understand why anyone who believes that AI will eliminate most jobs and much of humanity's relevance would rush to build that future."
Why Is Everyone In Tech So Sad?
AI is breaking the spell of Workism, argues Aaron Horwath, director of AI operations at Creative Force. "It is the opiate of commuters in quarter zips. And it works. It keeps talented people showing up at the office to argue over reports and strategy documents and rebrandings with the seriousness of pediatric heart surgery."
Most highlighted YouTube Video of the week
Netflix CPTO on AI and the future of product and tech roles | Elizabeth Stone
Netflix's Elizabeth Stone tells Lenny Rachitsky which skills AI has not commoditized. "There's still something that is not replaceable when I think about the craft and how they think about what good looks like. I still find great engineering to be scarce, great data science to be scarce, great creativity to be scarce."
Most highlighted Twitter Thread of the week
AI Adoption is a Myth
The gap inside companies is skill, not access, says Vas, CEO of AI agent company Varick. "The AI ninjas inside your company have no incentive to fix it either. Their leverage IS the chasm. They're doing their work 70% faster, then get to coast. Or they do the work of 3 people. But the moment everyone's on that wave, they lose their edge."
Most highlighted PDF of the week
The Tragedy of the Cognitive Commons
Nolan Lovett of NATO Special Operations University applies commons theory to the pipelines that produce senior experts. "Each organization that eliminates an entry-level position captures 100% of the efficiency gains while distributing the expertise depletion cost across all organizations that depend on profession-wide expert availability. The rational calculation favors appropriation over contribution."
Hand-picked book of the week
Don't Be Evil: Bad Bosses, Fake Promises, and My Escape from Big Tech
Claire Stapleton joined Google as a true believer and went on to help organize its 2018 walkout over the company's handling of sexual harassment. Don't Be Evil is her newly released memoir, following that turn from the inside.
"It was 9:00 a.m. at YouTube headquarters in San Bruno, California, where my team—YouTube’s social media managers—had been summoned from all around the country for a mandatory day of 'self-care.' This was, by my calculation, the twenty-fifth off-site I’d attended in my eleven-plus years at Google and my third that year alone, thanks to the steadfast commitment of my manager, Marion, to using every dollar of her events budget. 'You don’t get a gold star for coming in under budget' was something of a mantra for Marion, which paired well with a memory I had of her at an off-site we’d once done on Alcatraz, the storied defunct prison-island in San Francisco, forking over her Google credit card at the gift shop to buy the team a round of sweatshirts that no one asked for or wanted. They were roomy crewnecks in a sooty shade of gray and depicted the 'skyline' of Alcatraz, a phallic lighthouse jutting up from the block of cell houses (metaphor for Google?). I thrust it in the Goodwill bag as soon as I got home to New York."
If you enjoy the preview of Claire's writing about Big Tech from the inside, you can pick up a copy wherever you get your books.
Handpicked RSS feed of the week
Granted
Organizational psychologist and Think Again author Adam Grant writes Granted, a newsletter unpacking the science behind work, motivation, and human behavior. From The Truth About People Pleasing: "The root of chronic people pleasing is not concern for others. It’s concern for their acceptance and approval... Saying no is not a display of disrespect. It’s an expression of self-respect."