The day-to-day decisions of technologists have a profound role in shaping people’s interactions with the world. As many philosophers of technology have argued, every technological decision can also be seen as an ethical one. The shape and affordances of technologies determine what people can do with them, and how social systems evolve around them. Most technologists generally have positive intentions and strive to do good, but the ethical outcomes of their work can be particularly complex and unpredictable. Adverse consequences can often arise not from malice but from failure to appreciate the full implications of technological advancements amidst the delicate interplay between technology, human behavior, and social dynamics.

In our roles at Google, we have heard a strong desire to reshape technology development processes to explicitly incorporate ethical and social considerations.

Chapter 9 explores the impact that dyslexia has had on people in a range of professional settings. As detailed at the start of this book, we asked a number of adults with dyslexia to tell us about their career journeys. Those who responded to our request work in a variety of professions, such as health care, the civil service, management, entertainment, engineering and some are self-employed (entrepreneurs). All have achieved some degree of success in their work. This chapter includes their stories, with as little editing from us as possible to fit the requirements of the book. We told our contributors that the aim of these stories was to gain their perspectives of the impact that dyslexia had on them as individuals as well as on their careers. We asked them to consider what skills supported them in their work-life, and what challenges had influenced their job performance, as well as how they may have overcome these challenges. We also asked them to talk about whether they felt that their current job was right for them. The variety of perspectives are consistent with many of the points made in previous chapters, including self-understanding, positive attitudes and goodness of fit.