If one meme could describe my experience as a Google employee, it would be the “how it started vs. how it’s going” meme. For example, when I joined Google in 2014, I was drawn to Google not just by its lavish perks and its prestigious reputation, but also by its commitment to free speech.
There was also the time I started an internal mailing list for Republicans in 2016. Back then, I had two vague intuitions: first, that Google was not the friendliest place for Republican employees, and second, that Google could benefit from learning more about the Republican perspective, especially as it inevitably waded into trick and politically sensitive content moderation decisions. Back then, I had no grand political ambitions. If anything, the lodestar I sought was a simpler world where being the owner of the Republicans mailing list was no different than being the owner of the baseball mailing list.
In hindsight, I was directionally correct with both intuitions, but I grossly underestimated the magnitude of both problems. As a result, my role evolved from a humble mailing list owner to a de facto leader among Republican employees. I frequently found myself as the sounding board, the person who many Republican employees—and also Christians, independents, and even some moderate liberals—would come to with their concerns and stories.
That role also started to become a liability for my career. I will confess, once those liabilities started materializing, it became very tempting to give up that role, hoping that my career would then recover. But with everything I had learned—especially from private conversations with scared employees—I decided that one path was off the table: I would not put my head down and ignore the problem.
And then there was the discovery I made that contradicted my own CEO’s sworn testimony to Congress. After Google CEO Sundar Pichai told Congress, “We don’t manually intervene on any particular search result,” I later found clear proof that YouTube had manually intervened in search results for abortion. How clear was it? I had tracked down the exact change that manually altered search results for abortion mere hours after a pro-choice writer for Slate complained about YouTube’s search results for abortion.
When you unearth a shocking revelation like that, it eventually hits you that no matter how you proceed from here, your career is never going to be the same. There’s no going back to the way things were before. Well, I suppose one path could have preserved a false sense of normalcy: I could put my head down and ignore the problem. But again, that path was off the table.
The stories I could tell from my time at Google are too numerous to list here, and eventually, the path I was on would eventually cost me my job at Google. But if I had proven one thing at Google, it was my courage. When so many others put their heads down and ignored the problem—often because they were (justifiably) afraid to stick their necks out—I overcame those fears, sticking my own neck out. And while I had no desire to be a martyr, the ability to overcome the ultimate fear for many Google employees—the fear of losing that coveted Google job—was perhaps one of my greatest assets.
I’ll confess that after that experience, it was tempting to lay low and try to reclaim a more normal life as a software engineer. Many of the problems I had encountered, however, had reached the halls of Congress, and I understood the value that those experiences of mine would bring if I ever worked for Congress. Considering all of that, it’s hardly surprising that I joined TechCongress. I did not come here with some grand political ambition, nor do I have my path fully laid out, but I did make one important decision about my path: once again, I would not put my head down and ignore the problem.
Mike is currently serving with Rep. Gus Bilirakis (R-FL) and working on tech issues relating to the Consumer Protection and Commerce subcommittee.