About Erica Joy Baker
Erica Joy Baker is an American software engineer and engineering leader known for her writing and advocacy on diversity, inclusion and pay transparency in the technology industry. Over two decades she has worked at Google, Slack, Patreon and Microsoft, and in 2021 she became chief technology officer of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Baker grew up in a US Air Force family and moved often, living in Germany, New Mexico, Florida and Alaska. She began programming in high school, writing BASIC on graphing calculators and building websites, studied computer science at the University of Miami, and earned an associate degree in information technology from the University of Alaska. She got her start in tech administering Windows domains for the University of Alaska's statewide systems.
She joined Google in 2006 and stayed nine years, finishing as a site reliability engineer. In 2015, after leaving for Slack, she described on Twitter an internal spreadsheet she had started at Google where employees shared their salaries, which several colleagues used to negotiate raises; the episode drew wide attention to pay transparency in tech. At Slack she worked as a build and release engineer, then became a senior engineering manager at Patreon and, in 2019, a principal group engineering manager at Microsoft.
Baker is a founding member of Project Include, the diversity and inclusion initiative launched in 2016 with Ellen Pao, Tracy Chou, Freada Kapor Klein and others, and she has spoken at conferences including Strange Loop and TED. She was named to the BBC's 100 Women list in 2020. Her writing, mostly personal essays published on Medium, mixes career reflection with frank discussion of race, belonging and how companies treat the people who work for them.
What Erica Joy Baker is known for
- Starting Google's employee salary-sharing spreadsheet
- Writing and advocacy on diversity and inclusion in tech
- Founding member of Project Include
- Engineering leadership at Google, Slack, Patreon and Microsoft
- BBC 100 Women (2020)
Works by Erica Joy Baker
1 essay to practice
More notable works
You Are Valued (opens in a new tab)
Essay · 2017
Written after leaving Slack, it argues that workplaces should tell people they are valued while they are still there, not at their going-away party.
Growing Value (opens in a new tab)
Essay · 2017
A reflection on career growth and leadership, told through the interview process that led to a job offer from Kickstarter while she was at Slack.
Moving Fast, Staying Put (opens in a new tab)
Essay · 2017
A candid account of deciding not to move across the country for a new job after the inputs to her decision changed.
Some Days of Blackness (opens in a new tab)
Essay · 2017
A lyrical essay built on the repeated phrase "Some days," moving between Black joy and the fear and grief of being Black in America.
A practical checklist of questions to ask before accepting and preparing for a speaking engagement.
Erica Joy Baker’s writing style
Baker's writing combines technical knowledge with cultural insight. She excels at analyzing tech culture through both technical and social lenses. Her style is direct and solution-focused, often highlighting practical steps for industry improvement.
- Story-led openings
- Essays begin in a concrete scene, such as movers confused to be bringing her boxes back, before reaching the larger point.
- Engineer's framing
- She describes life choices in technical terms, comparing a decision to an equation whose output changes when the inputs change.
- Lists and tallies
- She breaks hard periods into itemized counts, like a three-month review of job offers, a quit job and a dead air mattress, which is both funny and revealing.
- Candid and warm
- She is open about stress, doubt and gratitude, and addresses readers directly with questions like "Have you ever been having a really bad day?"
- Evidence for the argument
- When an essay makes a case about workplaces, she backs it with data, such as American Psychological Association survey figures on feeling valued at work.
How to write like Erica Joy Baker
Write about your working life as it actually happened, including the parts that went sideways. Open on a specific, slightly absurd detail from the moment, then explain how you got there. When you describe a decision, show your reasoning the way an engineer would: name the inputs, say which ones changed, and let the reader see why the output did too.
Keep the tone personal and generous. Thank people by name when they helped, speak directly to readers who may be in the same situation, and use a list when a period of life is easier to count than to narrate. If you are making a point about how companies should behave, ground it in your own experience first and then support it with a piece of outside evidence.
The quickest way to absorb these habits is to retype one of Erica Joy Baker’s essays above, word for word, then write a paragraph of your own in the same voice. New to this? Read what copywork is and how to do it.
Frequently asked questions about Erica Joy Baker
- Who is Erica Joy Baker?
- Erica Joy Baker is a software engineer and engineering leader known for her advocacy on diversity and pay transparency in tech. She has worked at Google, Slack, Patreon and Microsoft, and in 2021 became chief technology officer of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. She is a founding member of Project Include and was named to the BBC's 100 Women in 2020.
- What does Erica Joy Baker write about?
- She writes personal essays about careers in technology, leadership, workplace culture, diversity and inclusion, and race. Many are published on Medium, including "You Are Valued," about recognizing people's work before they leave, and "Moving Fast, Staying Put," about reversing a decision to move for a job. She has also written for Project Include.
- What was the Google salary spreadsheet?
- While at Google, Baker started an internal spreadsheet where employees voluntarily shared their pay. She described it publicly in 2015 after joining Slack, saying several colleagues used the data to negotiate raises. The spreadsheet prompted discussion about pay transparency and possible gender and ethnic pay gaps, and was updated by employees until 2017.
- What is Erica Joy Baker's writing style?
- Her style is conversational, candid and warm. She opens with a concrete scene, frames decisions in an engineer's terms of inputs and outputs, uses itemized lists to sum up hard stretches of life, and speaks directly to readers. When she argues about workplaces, she pairs personal experience with supporting data.