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Research Notes: The Friction Artists

Behind the Research on Tech Worker Ethics and Resistance

A Z Mackay's avatar
A Z Mackay
Dec 16, 2025
∙ Paid

Started with a question: twelve engineers quit Google over Project Maven in 2018, and the project died. How does that math work? A company with over 100,000 employees doesn’t typically alter course because twelve people resigned. Yet that’s what happened. Something about that arithmetic felt important.

The Research Trail

The trail started with trying to n…

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