Careless People
I mostly read Careless People because I knew the author, Sarah Wynn-Williams, very briefly when she was a maternity cover at Oxfam. This was many years go. I worked with her a bit and liked her, thought she was smart and a good addition to our team.
But, then she abandoned Oxfam for Facebook before her contract was up. And that was that.
At the time, Oxfam was plum. So we weren’t used to people ditching us and, if we’re honest, it hurt our feelings a bit. Oxfam imagined ourselves to be the best-in-class and a great place to work. So Sarah ditching us with little notice was a surprise and made her seem… ambitious? Careless? Flighty? Selfish?
I think I was Facebook friends with Sarah, but quickly lost touch, so I was interested to see her reappear some 15 years later with this book telling the story of her time at Facebook.
I didn’t expect it to be a tale of dashed idealism and discovered malevolence. Sarah as the hero, launching a career to save the world with this wonderful new website, Facebook. Only to find that the principals, whom she admired from a distance and at first, slowly revealed as negligent and selfish. Or worse. Sarah remains idealistic, but over time devotes herself less to improving the world and more to doing damage control on behalf of Facebook.
Sarah is a great writer and book moves at a brisk pace. She’s likable, although her inner life is missing. There’s a kind of resume of her career, but not a reflection on her own motives or philosophy. She’s from New Zealand and seems to have had a middle class upbringing. Then law school and a career in the foreign service. She gets to the UN and the NZ delegation in Washington. It’s all pretty breezy.
The one anecdote she spends time on is a harrowing shark attack in her youth, which nearly kills her. The attack understandably features prominently in her life and is a reference point. She also uses it as a device to show her resilience, bravery, and learned skepticism of authorities including her parents who downplayed her injuries and nearly caused her death.
She admits to some self-doubt, imposter syndrome, but only in the most casual “lean-in” sort of corporate story-telling. In the course of her time at Facebook, she marries and has two children. We know this, but only as a vague background and as relevant to her work challenges.
So, we don’t really know Sarah. Which means, ultimately, that it’s a bit hard to sympathize too deeply. She’s young, ambitions, enthralled with Facebook. She pursues Facebook and eventually makes her way in.
It’s notable that her time at Oxfam does not appear in the book. Admitedly, it was short — maybe only a few months. But, I’m pretty sure it was her last place of work before Facebook, and she had to fink out on a contract, so you might think she’d mention it.
But discussing Oxfam might also undermine one of her main pretenses: that she joined Facebook to change the world. She thinks Facebook is transformative and wants to be part of it. Which is fair enough and more or less correct. But, on the other hand, someone with high ideals who wanted to help the world might also stay at Oxfam to do that. Oxfam’s actually a pretty legit place to try to do that; and she abandoned Oxfam for Facebook. So…. what does that say?
She’s never very specific about how Facebook will change the world — or rather how she thinks Facebook will improve the world. She seems to repeat the corporate talking points about making a more open and connected world. But, beyond that, there’s little reflection or detail in the book.
Not that there isn’t a case for Facebook. I was a big fan of it for years, even while I recognized some of the downsides. But I soured on the company and quit in 2018. I still miss things about it, but have only been confirmed in disliking Meta since then.
During her early time there, Facebook rolls out the emergency “safety check” functions where you can declare yourself “safe” to reassure others. These are an example of a good role for Facebook and where innovation could improve things. Sarah doesn’t really claim ownership of that, but one can see that as the kind of thing that she thinks is the dream of Facebook.
But really, Sarah is interested and involved in the public policy and government relations dimension of Facebook. Which is understandable, but, at best, adjacent to the technology-facilitated transformation that Facebook promises. She is involved in Facebook — and Mark Zuckerberg’s — very early forays into international relations and summits and diplomacy. She tells good stories about these events, the funny details and absurdity of Davos life. It’s a bit of a whirlwind, but entertaining. And she introduces the main characters of Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandburg.
Her profiles of Zuckerberg, Sandburg, and to a lesser extent Joel Kaplan are really the centerpiece of the book and its main, gossipy appeal. She introduces them through her work with them. It’s partial, but insightful and personal.
Over the course of the book, and her time there, these figures each follow a trajectory from being subjects of interest and admiration, and wonder to being, more or less, villains.
This is obviously personal for her, and she has the personal experience to validate it. But it’s also of great interest to readers. And to Facebook lawyers, so she must write this all very carefully.
To her credit, she isn’t too careful, which means she tells the story with gusto and maybe a bit impolitely. She quotes internal documents and emails. She’s quite searing on Zuckerberg and Sandburg and Kaplan — partly in their treatment of her, but mainly for how they conduct themselves and Facebook.
I won’t recount her stories of perfidy and greed. But, I’ll say that I found it pretty compelling and convincing. She attacks Sandburg for being a feminist hypocrite and self-consumed. Zuckerberg for being weird and increasingly grandiose. Kaplan is a right-wing jerk and a lech .I didn’t start sympathetic to Facebook, but reading her clarified some things and I feel even more strongly negative about Facebook, Meta, and it’s leadership.
And Facebook’s extreme surveillance, data gathering, and sinister uses for social control, preying on the vulnerable, and promoting vile political movements and leaders is all laid out well, if not in detail. There’s a lot of that missing — we see things through her perspective, which is very privileged and insider, but only partial. How all Facebook uses all your data, who it is selling it to, how they are using it — there’s a lot of mystery to all to this and Sarah doesn’t illuminate it too much. But she is very clear that Facebook does not have its users’ interests at heart and, really, is a more craven place than I had realized. Facebook has never penetrated the Chinese market. But Facebook was desperate to get in and was preparing to accommodate the extensive censorship an surveillance demands that China would impose. Facebook was eager for it, and willing to compromise any principle for the opportunity of the massive Chinese market. Awful stuff.
In the latter third of the book, Sarah tells us that she knew she had to leave Facebook for both personal and ethical reasons. But she also tells us that she felt trapped — financially, needing health insurance, being isolated on the West Coast, wanting another job before jumping. Sarah had reasons — or excuses. I don’t criticize her for staying — it was her choice and she thought she was doing something good for the world, first in supporting Facebook, later in trying to mitigate the harm of Facebook. But her arguments for why she didn’t leave: financial, health, health insurance, lack of alternatives — they aren’t credible. It might be more honest and interesting to explore and own her feelings more. Was the money and glamour important? The travel and intensity? Why wasn’t her husband’s career and money enough?
In the process of staying, she crossed the powers that be. Eventually, according to Sarah, Zuckerberg, Sandburg, and Kaplan all turned on her. She was fired, although the specific and proximate cause of her firing isn’t totally clear. But the writing was on the wall.
Having been fired, rather than leaving on her own, she loses some moral standing. And her critique can be seen as sour grapes or revenge. And that’s a shame, because it blunts the impact of her book. Also, it’s a bit surprising because didn’t get get a severance and an NDA? Or maybe Facebook was too dumb? Or maybe she did and that’s why Facebook is trying to gag her?
Overall, the book is probably less interesting or important as a personal journey, or a tale of what it was like in Facebook as an insider during its explosive growth. Neither is related in any exceptional way, and Sarah’s insight on those is a bit disappointing. I don’t feel I learned that much about her or what it was like to be inside one of the FAANGs. But what book is interesting for is a personal account of Zuckerberg, Sandburg, and Kaplan, even if that account is partial and biased. And the book is important as an insider’s account of Facebook’s amorality, hypocrisy, and greed.
ENDS//
