YouSaid · the spoken record

Erica Baker

lines on the record
86
first
2015-08-26
most recent
2015-08-26
sittings or episodes
1
sources
podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

  1. “I was. I thought it was a joke at first. Like, I had seen the job listing on Craigslist, and I was like, Google doesn't post their. I know. I didn't know that. Yeah, no, it was definitely on Craigslist. And I was like, this is not real. And so I use one of my throwaway email addresses to apply for it. And I was like, yeah, up until the point they flew me to New York for an interview, I was just didn't believe it was real.”

    2015-08-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ex-Googler Erica Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  2. “I went to Home Depot in Atlanta because I wanted to leave Alaska as soon as possible and get somewhere very warm. And I was a network operations engineer there And then I went to this company, lottery company, called Scientific Games. And I did desktop support there. And then I switched to Google in Atlanta”

    2015-08-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ex-Googler Erica Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  3. “After I got my associate's degree, they hired me at the university to be a Windows Domain admin, and that's how I got my start into the tech industry.”

    2015-08-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ex-Googler Erica Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  4. “I left and I went back to Alaska, went to the University of Alaska. Switch my major to microcomputer support, which is what they called IT stuff back then.”

    2015-08-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ex-Googler Erica Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  5. “Growing up, and like I didn't, I was too scared to even say anything to anybody, let alone call my professor on something.”

    2015-08-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ex-Googler Erica Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  6. “And then there's the ignoring by the TAs and the Fred would raise my hand as a professor or something and he'd like be like just why you know that sort of stuff.”

    2015-08-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ex-Googler Erica Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  7. “No, not at all. And there was one other black person in there, one of the football players. I forget his name. I wish I could remember. But it was really like whoa, this is different. And then I got a lot of like. Of skeptical looks like why are you here? A little bit of like treatment in that vein, and so I was like, I just was a naive little kid still then. So I was like, you know what? I'm just going to go home. And so I went home and I switched majors too.”

    2015-08-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ex-Googler Erica Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  8. “University of Miami for a year. I was a CS major there and it was really shocking. Like I said, I grew up in Alaska. My school was tiny. I got to UM and my first CS class was like the size of like a giant auditorium and there were more people in that one class than there were in my entire graduating class. And I was the only black girl there.”

    2015-08-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ex-Googler Erica Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  9. “Which is great There wasn't actually the first computing class they ever had was my senior year. They had a class before school started. They called it a zero-hour class. And that was programming TI83 with Basic. I took that class.”

    2015-08-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ex-Googler Erica Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  10. “I didn't do anything. I was dumb enough to leave all the stuff I messed with on my machine at school. But somebody had hacked into the principal's computer and I thought it was me”

    2015-08-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ex-Googler Erica Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  11. “No, no. When I was about 16, where I got pulled into the office and I went to school in a military base. So I walked into the office and my mom and dad were there. The superintendent of the schools was there. The whole entire school district, the principal, the head of IT for the school district, and the military police.”

    2015-08-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ex-Googler Erica Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  12. “Made new friends? Yeah, a lot of that was back when I was really interested in like the darker side of computing. Which is what? Lots of hacking and freaking.”

    2015-08-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ex-Googler Erica Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  13. “I got to talk to people who were like me. Who are into computers? And it grew up in Alaska, so there weren't a lot of people around who were also into computers to talk to. And so there was this whole world of people.”

    2015-08-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ex-Googler Erica Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  14. “Before that, it's just what they used to call it. Yeah. I used to mess around on Gopher when I was before that, but TPP. Yeah, and chat rooms were there.”

    2015-08-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ex-Googler Erica Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  15. “But it isn't. Well, so after installing CD ROM drive, like I was just, you know, I messed with it. Played Carmen San Diego a lot. Yeah. Oregon Trail”

    2015-08-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ex-Googler Erica Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  16. “Um, no, there weren't as far as I knew. Everybody, as far as I can remember, there's a lot of Lisa Frank involved with the other girls growing up. I don't remember anybody else messing with computers much.”

    2015-08-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ex-Googler Erica Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  17. “What was neat about it? It's just like I could change this computer myself without having an adult to help me And that was fun for me. After a lifetime of tinkering, like tinkering with a thing that everybody in my house used was kind of empowering a little bit, I guess. Right, absolutely.”

    2015-08-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ex-Googler Erica Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  18. “I don't know. I think it might be genetic because I didn't grow up with him, right? Like he and my mom divorced when I was younger. And he was off in Germany or Saudi or whatever, wherever the Air Force in Work on F16. But yeah, I just was really interested in taking things apart and I took apart this computer and I was like, oh, this is neat.”

    2015-08-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ex-Googler Erica Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  19. “About computers? I don't know. I just was always very analytical and I like to take things apart. And so I could take this thing apart and do stuff with it.”

    2015-08-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ex-Googler Erica Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  20. “No Like the old days So I decided I wanted to install a CD-ROM drive on this computer like I'd been messing with computers since I was 10. They sent me to some hypercard camera.”

    2015-08-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ex-Googler Erica Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  21. “Not to my knowledge. Yeah. And so that was like sort of my last straw And I was like, okay, I had already determined that I wasn't happy at Google. And I was like, yeah, it's time to go.”

    2015-08-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ex-Googler Erica Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  22. “It just kept going. And then that was pretty, that situation, like I had not expected to have the peer bonuses rejected. That's not a thing that I'd ever experienced at Google. And it was interesting that a lot of people, especially my friends who are managers, are like, wow, I didn't even know it was possible to reject the peer bonus. Like, it just wasn't done.”

    2015-08-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ex-Googler Erica Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  23. “I don't think it was retaliation. I think it was her reasoning in the rejection. She CC'd me on the rejection was that she didn't know that it would be good for the company, and so she was waiting to see if the result was a net positive.”

    2015-08-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ex-Googler Erica Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  24. “Right, so at Google, if your coworkers like something that you did that's outside of your job scope, they can send you a peer bonus.”

    2015-08-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ex-Googler Erica Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  25. “Yeah, I think so. Well, actually, I know so, yeah, people above her were not fans, but it kept going. I wasn't going to take it down. People reacted very positively to it and started sending me bonuses, appear bonuses. Right.”

    2015-08-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ex-Googler Erica Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  26. “Yeah, it would not make people happy. But the results I saw people were really happy. They're happy to discuss it, happy that the information was out there. I heard maybe one or two people who weren't happy about it, but that was that.”

    2015-08-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ex-Googler Erica Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  27. “Yeah, it wasn't at all personal. It was just like for funsies, right? And then, you know, there was, well, Things could happen because of that. And I was like, well, nothing could happen. It's illegal to retaliate against employees for sharing their salaries. And she says, you know, well. There are things that could happen that aren't necessarily firing, that sort of thing.”

    2015-08-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ex-Googler Erica Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  28. “My manager took me into her office. She's like, why did you do that? And I was like, I was bored on a Sunday. This was the story. And there was a lot of questions about, oh, are you happy with your salary? Are you sure you're not, you didn't do it?”

    2015-08-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ex-Googler Erica Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  29. “You know what I mean? There wasn't a goal really when we first did it. But after it was up and everybody's doing it, I was like, okay, hopefully somebody will be able to see it and be able to negotiate their salary to something that is more equitable.”

    2015-08-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ex-Googler Erica Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  30. “It was important to me. No, but I mean, in general, you don't have to put up a big spreadsheet to do that. Oh, yeah, no. You know what I mean? It's a crazy way to do it. So when you put it up, you get lots of reaction. What were you hoping to accomplish with it? What was your goal?”

    2015-08-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ex-Googler Erica Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  31. “All right, but Oh, my own felt like I knew where I was in my salary. It wasn't a big deal. There was a lot of talk about how I did it because I was dissatisfied with my salary and where I was. And I was like, no.”

    2015-08-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ex-Googler Erica Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  32. “There's just like discrepancies between different groups of people that was really interesting. I don't want to be specific because Google's lawyers are scary.”

    2015-08-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ex-Googler Erica Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  33. “Um I was surprised at how quickly it gained traction. You know, I knew there were people who wanted to share it, but I didn't expect it to just. Get so big so fast. Right.”

    2015-08-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ex-Googler Erica Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  34. “Go to brunch, but It was just interesting to have salaries written down at Google There's no published salary scales. Nobody knew where they were on the scale. Some people knew that there was a scale like their manager wink, wink, nodd tell you, oh, you're at the top. Like, that was me as at the top of my salary scale. But it was just interesting to have that written down in a place.”

    2015-08-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ex-Googler Erica Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  35. “Oh, yeah. Nobody. No, no, they strongly recommend against it. So we were just like, yeah, we can do it. We're not going to, we're not allowed to be retaliated against it. And someone was like, well, this is a bad way to share because we were just typing in this comment in a Google Plus post or some such. And so somebody made a spreadsheet. They made it externally on their personal Gmail and it was like, that's not okay. So I made one internally and then put a form on it and then shared it. And I had a pretty big following internally at Google and so a lot of people saw it and shared it around and it got really popular and things happened.”

    2015-08-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ex-Googler Erica Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  36. “We'll just real quick the why is I was bored on a Sunday, a bunch of us were reading an article, I think, in the Atlantic about salaries and how employees don't share them. And we decided, well, we're just going to share ours. It was just a few of us.”

    2015-08-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ex-Googler Erica Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT