Dear Writers: IT Doesn't Want You
Even though writers/academics are excellent communicators, researchers, copyeditors, & natural leaders, IT is too close-minded to see your value
While IT prides itself on constantly thinking outside the box and claims to appreciate all the different ways that a problem can be solved and all the different skills that specialists can bring from their respective backgrounds, for some reason, this ethos doesn’t apply to creative writers, former scholars, and/or interdisciplinary subject matter experts. IT HR departments are absolutely following a rigid and contradictory set of criteria that no one will be able to crack—not even a cryptologist—for the simple reason that they don’t make any damn sense, even for those who understand them. And I certainly don’t.
I’ve applied to numerous Google positions and the job requirements have been either incredibly vague or incredibly generic (e.g., “Must have at least 2 years of marketing/advertising experience,” “Must have 2 years of sales experience,” “Must have at least 1 year of work experience”). Now, I realize that I might be overqualified—at least academically—for some of these positions, but it seems crazy to me that companies like Microsoft and Amazon and Google and Tesla and Netflix, all of whom see themselves as industry-leading, culturally-essential, & professionally-iconoclastic companies can see absolutely no value in academic and/or creative professional resumes. Not including UX writers of course.
I’m all for a company like Google hiring someone who’s never worked in IT before, but for the life of me, I cannot understand how Google, which hires very much like a university with its hiring committees and identical interview questions and campus visits and implicit bias workshops, could ignore both the academic and creative spaces as much as it does considering how many transferable skills both artists and academics have in spades.
A few months ago, I reached my tipping point applying to IT jobs, which I realize, sounds a lot like breaking up with an ex who already dropped you, but the reality is, they have never valued me or my unique skillset and I simply got tired of trying to work for a company that didn’t see the immense value that I brought to my job. IT companies didn’t understand and certainly didn’t appreciate my skill set as an interdisciplinary scholar, former professor, & published author.
The last straw for me was when I applied for a job at Google called Social Brand Creative, Brand Studio. The requirements asked for at least five years of experience in a bunch of different artistic disciplines, one of which was writing. Considering I have a huge portfolio of published work in a variety of genres that goes back to 2006, not to mention three books in three different prose genres, I was excited to have perfect credentials for a Google job for once. It’s such a rarity! Two days later as if to confirm my anticipation, I received an email from Google telling me to take a Google hiring assessment. I took it the next day but didn’t receive a response back about whether I’d passed. Growing impatient, I logged into my Google Careers Applications page where I saw that I’d passed the assessment. Hurrah! It would have been nice if I’d been informed through email, but still, after worrying for two days, it was nice to see that I’d passed. Then two days later, I checked my Google Careers Applications page and I couldn’t fucking believe it:
”Not proceeding.” Are you fucking kidding me? Google asked me to take the Google Hiring Assessment, which I passed, they never emailed me telling me I’d passed, but I’d passed, and then two days after I passed, they . . . rejected me and didn’t even have the decency to send me a form rejection? This whole process is just absurd. What a complete waste of time and energy. But getting quietly rejected after passing an assessment is a special kind of mind-fuck that only the IT sector could have imagined.
Sadly, this recent experience is just a microcosm of literally every job I’ve applied to at Google and the Magnificent 7 at large. At this point they can kindly fuck off and hire new HR employees while they’re at it.
Just so we’re clear, I’m not delusional: I have three advanced degrees. I speak Spanish and French fluently or almost fluently and I speak intermediate Japanese. I have a body of published work. My books have blurbs from Tommy Orange, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Aimee Bender, TC Boyle, Carole Maso, John D’Agata, & Regina Motherfucking King. I’ve published a series of LPs on Apple Music. My photography is quite good. I’ve worked in sales. I’ve worked in consulting. I’ve worked in academia. I created my own marketing/PR campaign during my 2-year book tour. I’ve lived abroad. I’ve volunteered in West Africa and Central Asia. I should have had an interview with Google or Tesla or Nvidia or Microsoft or Amazon at some point. I don’t care whether I have a PhD or not. IT, of all sectors, should see a doctorate as a plus, not a hindrance, for their non-technical positions but their HR departments seem to consistently dock me for my degrees and my age and after a certain point I just got tired of the rejection. Foolishly, I thought getting my Google Career Certificate in Project Management might help me land a job either at Google or as an early-career project manager. It did not. I thought having a dual, interdisciplinary doctorate in literature and creative writing would help me. It did not.
Thank god I’ve found the right space for my next career (more on that in a second). I say that for the simple reason that IT has never appreciated me or my background, skills, education, or outsider perspective despite its so-called openness to new solutions, new perspectives, & new methodologies of reimagining the world. What IT companies claim to be and how their HR departments actually operate are vastly different things. At some point, IT companies should realize that their HR departments are sabotaging their own mission statements.
It took me a while to realize the spaces that saw the most value in my background and the spaces where I saw the most potential to get paid what I deserve for once in my life. Much to my surprise after getting an initial wave of rejections from Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, UBS, Bank of America, & Fidelity, a number of financial firms have been showing a genuine interest in my interdisciplinary background, education, language, analytical, & communication skills, sales and marketing experience, indefatigable work ethic, & volunteer service. In the following months and years, I will be documenting my transition from the academic, consulting, & creative spaces to the financial space, which, believe it or not, has embraced my CV & saw my unique value as a hypercreative artist, multimodal scholar, & Gen-X writer who likes helping people and connecting with people and writing about people. The time has come to turn the page in my professional career but don’t worry, dearest readers, this newsletter will continue to focus on the same things: writing, travel, culture, books, ideas, & money. My night job (as an artist) will never change. It’s just my day job that is finally changing for the better. As it turns out, I’m too bougie and ambitious to be an academic anymore. But the author in me will live forever and I’ll be publishing new books in the future.
