Andrew Norman Wilson’s Workers Leaving the Googleplex is an essay film combining personal narrative, critical reflection, and experimental form to explore the hidden labour hierarchies within Google. Through first-person voiceover, Wilson reflects on his own experiences as an employee and his eventual dismissal after attempting to document the yellow-badge workers, which he describes as a “fourth class”.

Issues of class, identity, and labour are visually articulated through the film’s framing of the Google campus: the building on the right, associated with the “extremely confidential” yellow-badge workers, is juxtaposed with the left building, where the red-badge employees, positioned higher in the corporate hierarchy, are located. The essay film follows a non-linear, associative structure, blending corporate video aesthetics, observational footage, and historical references such as the Lumière brothers’ Workers Leaving the Factory (1895).

As an essay film, it adopts a reflective, investigative tone, raising open-ended questions about visibility, labour, and power through a self-reflexive approach that foregrounds the filmmaker’s position and limited access. Rather than offering clear conclusions, it navigates its subject with a sense of critical inquiry, becoming a tool for exploring complex social realities

Workers Leaving the Googleplex is part of a larger block on the politics of labour and visibility in the age of global capitalism and surveillance.