Marvin ChowVP, Global Marketing at Google
7d
social media is who we pretend to be but search is who we actually are. it's an uplifting must-read for anyone trying to understand what people actually care about when no one's watching.
View on LinkedInWhat FAANG execs read this week — May 8–15, 2026
Three LinkedIn posts from current and former FAANG executives surfaced for May 8–15, 2026: Google VP Marvin Chow recommends What We Ask Google; an Amazon executive lists 8 books on emotional intelligence and leadership; and former Amazon VP Ethan Evans references Cal Newport as a rhetorical foil for his argument on the compounding returns of likability.
This week's sweep of LinkedIn turned up two genuine reading recommendations from FAANG-tier executives — one from a sitting Google VP, one from an Amazon executive in transition — plus a revealing incidental book reference from a former Amazon VP that ended up being more interesting than a straight recommendation. No cross-endorsements appeared; each exec pointed in a distinct direction. Here's what they flagged.
Marvin Chow, Google VP — What We Ask Google by Simon Rogers
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Marvin Chow (VP of Global Marketing at Google, 42,000+ LinkedIn followers) recommended What We Ask Google 1 after attending a book talk by its author, Simon Rogers — a data journalist at Google — at Book Passage in San Francisco.
The book mines decades of anonymized Google Search queries to build what Rogers calls a "database of intentions": a record of what people actually want when no one is curating their public image. The core argument is that the questions people type into a private search bar — "what is love?", "do penguins have knees?", "how do I help my kid?" — reveal a human nature that is more curious, more generous, and more decent than the cynicism dominating public discourse would suggest.
Chow's framing cuts right to the professional relevance:
"social media is who we pretend to be but search is who we actually are."
For anyone working in product, marketing, or strategy at a tech company, that line is more than a tagline. It implies that the signal you get from social media engagement is noise about performance, while search data is signal about genuine need. Chow called the book "an uplifting must-read for anyone trying to understand what people actually care about when no one's watching." 1
The post drew 306 reactions and 28 comments — the highest engagement of any reading recommendation surfaced this week. Rogers is a Google colleague, which means this isn't Chow discovering an outsider's take; it's an insider endorsing a framework his own team built. Worth noting when you calibrate how "objective" the framing is — though the thesis stands independently of who's selling it.
Richard Hua, Amazon (transitioning to founder) — 8 books on emotional intelligence and leadership
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Richard Hua, who describes himself as an "Amazon executive transitioning to founder" (his exact title was not publicly visible), published a list of 8 books that shaped his thinking — framed as a gratitude post to the authors and ideas that helped him grow. 2 The post received 46 reactions and 12 comments.
His opening premise:
"I used to believe a seductive myth: Success is about being the smartest person in the room. Then I realized the smartest people surround themselves with people who are smarter than they are."
The books cluster around two overlapping themes: emotional intelligence and leadership through relationships rather than rank. All 8 with Hua's framing:
| Title | Author(s) | Hua's framing |
|---|---|---|
| Little Book of Happiness | Paul J. Zak | The biological forces of trust and connection — measurable, not abstract |
| Dealing With Feeling | Marc Brackett (Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence) | Moving from suppressing emotions to understanding and directing them |
| Permission to Feel | Marc Brackett | Companion to the above; emotions as information, not obstacles |
| Hope for Cynics | Jamil Zaki (Stanford psychology professor) | Cynicism masquerades as wisdom; trust and hope produce better outcomes |
| Wild Courage | Jenny Wood (ex-Google executive) | Stop waiting to feel ready; take bold action before confidence arrives |
| The Emotionally Intelligent Team | Vanessa Druskat | Team EQ matters more than individual brilliance |
| The Octopus Organization | Phil Le-Brun & Jana Werner (AWS colleagues) | Less hierarchy, more adaptability in how teams organize |
| Unforgettable Presence | Lorraine K. Lee | Communicate with clarity and confidence; be someone who lands in a room |
He also flagged the Level Up Newsletter by Ethan Evans and Jason P. Yoong as a practical career-acceleration resource (not a book, but included in his list).
A few of these are worth flagging separately for signal quality. Hope for Cynics by Stanford's Jamil Zaki uses behavioral research to argue that cynical defaults — assuming colleagues are self-interested, that trust is naive — actively harm performance and relationships. That's a directly applicable frame for anyone navigating org politics. Wild Courage by Jenny Wood (who ran a team at Google) is less research-heavy but more immediately prescriptive for anyone stuck in the "I'll go for it when I'm ready" loop.
The Brackett pair (Dealing With Feeling + Permission to Feel) covers similar ground from slightly different angles. If you're only reading one, Permission to Feel tends to be cited more widely.
Ethan Evans, former Amazon VP — So Good They Can't Ignore You (referenced, not recommended)
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Ethan Evans (former VP at Amazon, now a career coach and LinkedIn creator) posted on May 11 about workplace behavior — not as a book recommendation, but as a rhetorical move. 3 He invoked Cal Newport's 2012 book So Good They Can't Ignore You specifically to argue against the worldview its title implies.
"Cal Newport has written a book with a great title, 'So Good They Can't Ignore You.' This title contains a truth... if you really are just amazing, people will put up with a difficult interaction to benefit from your expertise. Nonetheless, I think taking this path is a mistake."
The counter-thesis: "Even if you are 'so good they can't ignore you,' you will do much better if you are 'so nice they don't want to avoid you.'"
Evans got fired twice early in his career before changing how he showed up interpersonally. His argument isn't that technical skills don't matter — it's that most people aren't, in fact, so irreplaceable that they can consistently offset the friction cost of difficult interactions. And even those who are lose out on the compounding returns of being someone colleagues actively want to work with.
So Good They Can't Ignore You itself argues, separately, that passion follows skill rather than preceding it — that deliberate practice builds the "career capital" that eventually translates into autonomy and purpose. Evans doesn't engage with that thesis at all; he picks up the title and puts it down. Worth reading Newport's book on its own terms regardless of Evans' framing.
The post drew 214 reactions and 54 comments — second-highest engagement this week, which suggests the underlying tension ("be excellent" vs. "be liked") resonates widely.
At a glance
| Recommender | Company | Books flagged | Signal |
|---|---|---|---|
| Marvin Chow | Google (VP, Global Marketing) | What We Ask Google (Rogers) | 306 reactions; attended author's book talk |
| Richard Hua | Amazon (transitioning to founder; title unconfirmed) | 8 books on EQ and leadership | 46 reactions; personal framing for each |
| Ethan Evans | Former Amazon VP (now career coach) | So Good They Can't Ignore You (Newport) — referenced, not endorsed | 214 reactions; used as rhetorical contrast |
No title appeared on multiple lists this week. The closest thematic overlap: both Chow's pick and several of Hua's selections push back against cynical or performance-first framings of human nature — Rogers through search data, Zaki through psychology research, Brackett through emotional science. Different angles, same underlying skepticism about the idea that people are fundamentally self-interested and need to be managed accordingly.
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