Former Google engineer Manu Cornet describes his time at Google in two phases. He mentions the first as "there were malfunctions in the wonderland" while the second as "disappointment".
These two descriptions are actually the subtitles for the two volumes of comics that Cornet published for his former employer. He calls the comics Goomics.
Although Cornet was an engineer, 11 of his 14 years at Google created comics about employees, quirks, culture and, ultimately, the biggest social and ethical issues facing the company and its employees.
Some of these issues included Google contracts with government agencies such as ICE, or the development of a dedicated search engine for the Chinese government that complies with the country's censorship, and more.
These problems caused Cornet to worry about his position at Google and pushed him to make a change. Cornet recently resigned and took on a new job (on Twitter, a company he says has fewer moral issues). He is the latest employee of a major technology company (including employees on Facebook and Amazon) to resign in protest of the company's overall behavior.
"As the years went by, there were more and more things that caused me to have moral concerns about what the company was doing at a higher level," Cornet said. "I had to look at the bigger picture and think that maybe I would be better off elsewhere."
Cornet posted the comics on the company's message board and employees could sign up to receive the new designs in their inbox. Over the years, about 10 percent of employees had registered, and eventually subscribers reached 13 to 14. At one point, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt had placed a print of one of Cornet's comics on his office door.
Now that Cornet has left Google, it has the Goomics archive available to the public for free online and in two book volumes. It tells the "story of a technology company", or as Cornet puts it: the "evolution from a colorful 'no evil' company, an idealistic view of Google that was not far from reality" to a company like the others . ”
George is still wondering what he is doing here….
