Why I quit Google
Heading into any job, you sort of embrace that any of a few factors could cause you to leave it: You don’t like the boss, don’t feel you’re rewarded fairly for the work you do, maybe you move, and so on.
You never think, “I bet a YouTube video does it.”
But that’s why I left Google.
When I joined the company in 2008 to work as a “digital media strategist’ (account manager servicing AdWords advertisers), I thought, “Meh, the job sounds okay, but the perks and brand are unbeatable.” Who was I to turn down a job like that, anyway? Twenty-two, economy in the toilet, no newspaper in the country likely to hire me for anything interesting. (I’d previously wanted to be a sports journalist, even interning at ESPN before graduation.)
One day, while working at Google, a friend sent me a YouTube video. To this day, I don’t remember what the video was, even though it’s one of the single-biggest influences in my career. All I remember is what happened next.
I opened the email from my friend. “Watch this,” they said. “It’s worth it, I promise.”
So I watched it.
Then I watched it again.
And again.
And again.
Then I went home, to my three roommates at the time, excited to share the video with them.
“YOU GUYS!” I stammered. “You HAVE TO see this. It’s worth it, I promise.”
I hyped it to them. I placed my laptop onto the table. I cracked it open, praising the video all the while. I navigated to the URL. It loaded. And right at the height of their anticipation, right as they were most eager to see this video, right as I hit play … a pre-roll ad interrupted us.
Ugh.
I felt embarrassed. I felt awkward. I had to buy time.
“Oh, stupid ad… just wait a second. It’ll play soon. It’s worth it, I promise.”
Then I looked at the ad, and a really strange thought popped into my head.
Dammit, Erik!
Yup.
Dammit. Erik. Why?
Because Erik was my coworker at Google who had sold this ad campaign to one of our advertisers. Ah dammit, Erik!
But then I had a second, much more terrible thought, followed by a sensation I’ll never forget in the pit of my gut, like someone had knocked me over and started stepping on me… slowly… pressing down harder and harder.
Wait, I thought. I have the same job at Google that Erik does.
That meant someone, somewhere was cursing the name of the person responsible for a frustrating moment in their day, forced to see an ad play when they really wanted a video, and they didn’t know it, but the person responsible … was me.
And with Google and YouTube’s scale, that wasn’t ONE person. That was thousands of people, hundreds of thousands, or maybe millions of people having a worse moment in their day because of something I did for a living.
That is NOT why I got into the workplace. That’s not what I wanted to use my finite time on Earth to do. I wanted to be the video, not the ad. I wanted to create what delights people and helps them, not interrupts and annoys them.
So I quit.
When you imagine why you might leave a job, you only really picture the obvious stuff: the bad bosses, the lack of recognition, or maybe moving away. They don’t tell you what to do when the things everyone around you just accepts as normal are unbearable to you. You never anticipate the most basic industry practices being the things that unnerve you and rattle you to your bones.
These aren’t obvious reasons to leave a job or make any kind of change. It took three years for me to see that selling ads was not the path I was proud to walk — simply because digital ads frustrate far more people than they delight.
When you can’t accept the very nature of the work, which everyone around you just embraces or ignores, it’s tempting to think you’re the problem. Colleagues won’t understand it. The optics might be easy to question from the outside looking in. The conventional wisdom might cause you to pour cement around your feet and just stay put. But I’m urging you: when something everyone else accepts is something you can’t stand, that’s when it’s time to make a change.
It’s worth it. I promise.
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