I’m afraid I’m just not interested

The Future Is Like Pie #5

Author

Lisa Maria Marquis
July 24, 2018

Last Monday, I woke up to a message in my inbox from a Facebook recruiter. And I tell you—maybe it was because I was surprised to see it (I’ve made no secret of my Facebook disdain in the past), or maybe it was because it was a Monday, or maybe it was because it’s 2018—whatever the reason, I was not having it.

It’s not an uncommon occurrence, if you work in the tech industry, to get emails like this from Facebook or Google or Amazon or whatever tech giant has you on their lists. Don’t mistake it as flattery—no one’s been tracking my career, noting my achievements, convincing themselves that I’m the only one who can fill the role. It’s a game of numbers and keyword matches: “UX” shows up somewhere in my LinkedIn profile, so I get periodic emails from overpaid white men named Chad.

But recruiters’ blindly cast lines rely on the tech giants’ reputations as bait—and their reputations do precede them. So it wasn’t enough to simply say “no” to Facebook—I needed them to know why.

After sending my reply to the recruiter, I shared it on Twitter. I admit: initially, I did this because it seemed like the kind of snark that Twitter would appreciate. But, almost immediately, I realized a deeper motive: I wanted others in the tech industry to witness—and to emulate—the rejection.

Sometimes we’re dazzled by the big names—their innovative tools, fancy perks, and big salaries—and why shouldn’t we be? Good jobs are hard to come by; for many, any job at all is a blessing. There’s a massive amount of privilege in being able to say no.

But for those of us who do have that privilege, we need to use it, and we need to use it publicly. It’s important to send a message to the companies that “lead” our industry, to tell them we won’t be party to their unethical practices. But it’s even more important to send a message to our peers.

That message is one of integrity and risk-taking and the responsibilities of working in tech. Mat said something similar last month, when he canceled his contract with Microsoft after news broke that they were working with ICE. He wrote:

My name, in some small way, is on this now. I didn’t put it there; I didn’t, in my worst nightmares, imagine it there. But there it is, tiny but indelible, in a company’s handwriting. Now the work is in finding a way to right this, as best I can, with my tiny name.

Both of us find ourselves without work now. We’ll be okay, but this is the point: there are risks to standing up like this. If nothing were at stake, it wouldn’t be notable. It wouldn’t be a real fight. 

But, I hope, by speaking up publicly, we’ve made it a little easier for others to join that fight. 

Last week, designer Erika Hall wrote “Thinking in Triplicate,” a compelling essay about design ethics, working under capitalism, and the unseen flaws of user-centered thinking:

Designers are laboring under defective job descriptions and a limiting framing of the field. As a result, the outcomes we claim to be able to accomplish through design—business success by way of understanding and serving real human needs—aren’t happening as much as they should or could.

If good design entailed good business, women’s clothes would come in a wide range of sizes with usable pockets and our social media feeds would unfurl in reverse chronological order with an unremarkable absence of Nazis.

Instead we have too few pockets, too many trolls, and beloved products that fail to make enough money to survive.

Her bottom line: Design needs to consider not just the costs to the user and the costs to the business, but the costs to the whole—the community, the society, the planet. We can’t afford not to. This is an important read for everyone working on the web right now. 

A lot of folks have seen Hannah Gadsby’s Netflix show, Nanette, but if you haven’t yet: do. Do now. I can’t begin to describe it: it’s a standup set, but it’s also the most perfect and honest presentation of righteous fury I’ve ever seen on a stage. She’s not just hilarious; she’s also very good at her job, and that job is to control—with expert surgical precision—the emotional experience of the audience. I laughed; I gasped; I bawled my eyes out. It was unlike anything I have ever, ever seen. Please watch it.

Water is a human right, so the Human Utility is working to pay water bills for families in cities like Baltimore and Detroit. I like organizations that alleviate roadblocks in people’s day-to-day lives—challenges like unpaid rent, broken transportation, and missing utilities can snowball into much larger, systemic problems. So let’s turn some water back on. Join The Tap with a monthly donation, or just send what you can—every drop helps.

❤️