Yesterday, with very little warning, 2,000 Google and Alphabet employees staged a walk-out at least eight offices across the country protesting President Donald Trump’s executive order banning immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries. The photos and videos that employees were encouraged to post using the hashtag #GooglersUnite clearly show an emotional event. Both Google co-founder Sergey Brin and CEO Sundar Pichai addressed the crowd at the company headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., along with Soufi Esmaeilzadeh, an Iranian-born Canadian citizen and product manager at Google, who was on a plane from San Francisco to Zurich when the company learned of the executive order.
It was one of the strongest responses to President Trump’s executive order to date, and even more remarkable because it offered an unusually public look at the collective spirit of a notoriously private company.
It’s been fascinating to watch Google evolve into a company that expresses its views, and I have no unified leadership theory to explain it. (Sorry.) But I know from reporting that it is making a real difference to employees, particularly when upper management shows up and bears their souls. And this bodes well for the dream of a more inclusive culture at the search giant.
While reporting a recent story about Google’s efforts to diversify, David Drummond, Alphabet’s chief legal officer, told me about an earlier march that struck me as being an important precedent for yesterday’s event. It got no real press, had no hashtag moment. But it made an impression.
From the story:
It was a Thursday in July 2014, the week that a jury found Florida neighborhood-watch volunteer George Zimmerman not guilty of murder and manslaughter in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed, hoodie-wearing teenager. The case inspired a heated national debate on racial profiling and criminal justice—as well as the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter—and the decision left plenty of Googlers of color deeply unsettled, Drummond among them.
There was a spontaneous “hoodie march” around campus, and Drummond joined in. Wearing a Google hoodie, he addressed the crowd of about 100 through a bullhorn before leading them along Mountain View’s Charleston Road and into Google’s weekly all-hands meeting, at which top executives publicly field questions from employees with no topic off limits. Cofounders Page and Sergey Brin were onstage when the group arrived, and Drummond, still holding a bullhorn, asked his two bosses to stand down while he spoke. “It was sort of in an old-school civil rights way,” says Drummond, who has been with the company since 2002. “We felt we needed to come together as a company, and we did.”
It was a Thursday in July 2014, the week that a jury found Florida neighborhood-watch volunteer George Zimmerman not guilty of murder and manslaughter in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed, hoodie-wearing teenager. The case inspired a heated national debate on racial profiling and criminal justice—as well as the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter—and the decision left plenty of Googlers of color deeply unsettled, Drummond among them.
There was a spontaneous “hoodie march” around campus, and Drummond joined in. Wearing a Google hoodie, he addressed the crowd of about 100 through a bullhorn before leading them along Mountain View’s Charleston Road and into Google’s weekly all-hands meeting, at which top executives publicly field questions from employees with no topic off limits. Cofounders Page and Sergey Brin were onstage when the group arrived, and Drummond, still holding a bullhorn, asked his two bosses to stand down while he spoke. “It was sort of in an old-school civil rights way,” says Drummond, who has been with the company since 2002. “We felt we needed to come together as a company, and we did.”
One of the organizers of the hoodie march was a young woman named Rachel Spivey with a crazy-long job title: Internal Community Advocate, Black and Latino Communities for the Global Diversity & Inclusion Lab. I asked her how the march came together and what she thought it meant. Her response, by e-mail:
“In the wake of the Trayvon Martin verdict, I found myself grieved for the loss of his life, frustrated by the failings of the criminal justice system. I leveraged the powerful support of the Black Googler Network to organize a Hoodie March across Google’s campus. The march was led by our executive sponsor, David Drummond, who led protest chants and encouraged us to use our voices to amplify issues that impact the Black community…The march culminated during our weekly global TGIF [all-hands] meeting, where over 100 Googlers flooded the stage wearing their hoodies. Our founders were already presenting, but when they saw what was happening, they donned hoodies in solidarity. It was a moment where Googlers stood up for their convictions and marked the beginning of the company’s efforts to accelerate racial justice.”
“In the wake of the Trayvon Martin verdict, I found myself grieved for the loss of his life, frustrated by the failings of the criminal justice system. I leveraged the powerful support of the Black Googler Network to organize a Hoodie March across Google’s campus. The march was led by our executive sponsor, David Drummond, who led protest chants and encouraged us to use our voices to amplify issues that impact the Black community…The march culminated during our weekly global TGIF [all-hands] meeting, where over 100 Googlers flooded the stage wearing their hoodies. Our founders were already presenting, but when they saw what was happening, they donned hoodies in solidarity. It was a moment where Googlers stood up for their convictions and marked the beginning of the company’s efforts to accelerate racial justice.”
The emphasis at the end is mine, though the donning of the hoodies was a nice touch. Inclusion thrives when people are given a real voice, and it matters when those with position power join in. Issues of race and immigration are complex. Google, like other companies, have a mixed record on both. But to bring yourself to your boss’s attention with a heavy heart and a bullhorn is no small thing. When they listen and respond, it strengthens your voice and amplifies your experience. To build on a thousand small things is a model for change worth studying.