Review: Careless People

 Careless People is Sarah Wynn-Williams' memoir of her time at Facebook as Manager of Global Policy, a position she herself created and pitched at Facebook before becoming an employee. In some ways, it's predictable --- anyone joining an American corporation during these times of end stage capitalism as an idealist is bound to be disappointed. Anyone who read Lean In and not realize it was a propaganda piece written from a place of extreme wealth probably deserved to be disappointed.

One of the lobbyists, a woman in her forties, pulls me aside to say, “Don’t take the book seriously. It’s just a way to make you feel bad about yourself. Which is what Sheryl does.” She thinks I have stars in my eyes. I’m embarrassed to admit that maybe I do, so I just nod.  (kindle loc 1262)

They don’t discuss the real secret behind maintaining their work-life balance, mothering as if they don’t have children: it’s undergirded by their multimillion-dollar paychecks.  (kindle loc 1519)

 Of course top corporate bosses are hypocritical. Of course those people have multiple nannies. And of course, Facebook enabled and embetted extremist politicians getting into power in both the USA and elsewhere. None of this should surprise you. There's a huge section in the book about Facebook's willingness to break all rules of decency to get into China (it failed), but that's consistent with all the lying people inside Google did in order to get Google to invest in China. (And it wouldn't surprise you that most such people would justify it by saying if they didn't lie, someone else would lie and get paid the ginormous amounts of money to do so)

Ultimately, one of the worst things about entering into a free trade agreement with China was that rather than introducing democracy and encouraging public dissent in China like the neo-liberals thought, the Chinese seized on the opportunity to corrupt American public institutions and used them to serve their political purposes. It was definitely not a good trade.

The book has a ton of juicy stuff, including Sandberg's attempts to get the author in bed (literally, not metaphorically) on a transatlantic flight. It included all the crazy events leading to the author's poor performance review at the end that justified her firing (though she must have signed a nondisclosure agreement given that there's no mention of a severance package).

On the one hand, you read this and nod, knowing that Facebook had always been awful. On the other hand, you can't help thinking: "You pitched your dream job. You got it, and you probably were paid extremely well. What made you think you got to be a do gooder at the end as well?" In the end, the book fully justifies the statement I made once that Remains of the Day is still the ultimate silicon valley story. Kill yourself to work for a boss, never take a day off, and then find out in the end that you were working for a Nazi all along. Sounds familiar? It should. The difference is that in 2025, the Careless People won and you have no choice.