Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism

by Sarah Wynn-Williams

for the time I was attacked by a shark. I was thirteen when this happened. We were on vacation at a beach where my family camped every year. I’m standing in the water with a friend. I don’t see it. I feel it. A force so powerful and unexpected. A shark attack is like being hit by a knife attached to a freight train. I’ve never been on the receiving end of such searing pain as its teeth go deeper and deeper.

My parents arrive and lift me into the back of our family car. The beach is in a remote part of New Zealand and there’s no hospital nearby. We set off to the closest town, a twenty-minute drive away. There’s no hospital in the town, so we have to call the local doctor to open up his medical office, which is a small, single-story building. Once we get there everyone seems relieved, like the crisis has passed. It’s almost jovial as my dad and the doctor discuss the cricket and plans for the weekend. My dad cheerfully explains that yesterday we’d tried to refloat whales that had stranded on a beach nearby, that I had been in charge of two small whales we’d nicknamed Moby and Maybe, not knowing if the smaller one would make it. No one is in a hurry. No one asks me what happened. The doctor cleans the wound, pulls the skin around the jaw marks together, and stitches it up so there’s no longer a chunk missing. He gives me a tetanus shot and warns my parents that I might be a little dramatic that night because I might be in shock but I’d be fine. I obviously was a fighter. Everyone laughs.

Very quickly I realize this pain is not mild. It’s searing. I start vomiting up blood and these thick, dark, sticky clots that look like coffee grounds, which I assume is stomach lining but I know nothing about the human body. I pull out a large red plastic cup to collect it so I don’t get the camper dirty. Everyone else goes to bed but I can’t sleep. It keeps getting worse and worse. I feel like I’m on fire. I wait, quiet as possible so I don’t wake anyone. After a while, the red cup is full and I’m onto another. The pain is excruciating. Eventually I wake my parents. “I’m on fire. I’m burning up inside.” “Go back to sleep. You’ll be fine.” This continues throughout the night: I wake my parents, they tell me that the doctor said I’d be fine. We’ll all learn later what actually is happening. The shark had bitten through my bowel in several places, so it’s like I’ve been stabbed multiple times. The blood and the contents of my bowel are leaking into my gut, basically poisoning me. I have sepsis, acute peritonitis. Eventually there is so much of this toxic blood liquid that it floods through my body and flows into my lungs, making it increasingly difficult to breathe. Like I’m suffocating. I wake my parents again. “I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t get the air in.” My mother—tired of being woken—responds in an authoritative voice, “Mind over matter. Stop that hyperventilating.” This has become a family joke. Now anytime one of us mentions anything, a cold or a cut or...

He and two other doctors crowd around to examine me, poking me this way and that, and then they leave abruptly to talk to my parents off in the corner. I hear one of them say something that I can’t quite make out but sounds like “she’s dying” or “she’s dead.” My dad howls, “She was my favorite daughter.” I enjoy that for a moment. I have two sisters. I can’t wait to tell them. I’d always suspected it. Then my mother wails, “Just like the cat!” Because our cat Winkels had recently met an untimely end. Just like the cat. Brutal. After this my dad gets very angry, yelling at the doctors to do something, to find out what had gone wrong. Next thing I know, the doctor comes back. Gets out a very large blade like a mini ax and starts thwacking it down, carving into my left arm. Then my right arm. It’s like I’m a piece of meat being hacked open. No anesthesia. No warning. And I’m beyond the point where I have any control over my own body. I can’t move or speak. I can’t raise any alarm. I’d thought the shark attack was more pain than a person can bear, the worst that could happen. I was wrong. The doctor repositions himself near my ankle and brings the blade down with force, splitting the skin and plunging the blade to the bone. Why is the doctor hacking open my ankles? The only explanation I can muster is that he thinks I’m already dead. I’m experiencing my own autopsy. The mortal terror I felt during the shark attack returns, that feeling like, I could die right this second. Pain...

Days later I wake up from a coma in an intensive care unit. I can hear a nurse calling my mother as I slowly take in my surroundings. My mother leans over me, looks into my eyes, and says, “Aren’t you lucky the doctors saved you?” I can’t talk because I’m on life support and a ventilator is helping me breathe. So I gesture for a pen and paper. I make eye contact with her to be sure she’s watching, and write slowly and deliberately, drawing a thick black line under each word for emphasis: I SAVED MYSELF I’m not sure I can name all the ways this experience changed me, but I think at the very least it probably made me bolder. Any time I glimpse a possible adventure and have to decide, do I go for this? I do.

The team starts to map out specifics around what an initiative to support the military would consist of, and how much it would cost. “Errrr—this is a US-only initiative, right?” I ask tentatively. I’m the only non-American in the DC policy team and it feels lonely. So many of Facebook’s day-to-day policy decisions are underpinned by a subterranean value system that I’m still learning. “Nope—global,” Marne responds. “Well, um—it’s just people and governments are still trying to figure out what Facebook is about, and I don’t think we want to immediately align with the military.” “Wrong,” Joel responds. “Military and veteran issues are sure winners. Here and everywhere.” “The first political action Facebook takes globally is military? State force? Maybe that makes sense in America, but there are countries that have a more complex relationship with state force. Countries where there have been military dictatorships, for example.…” “Don’t you love our troops, Sarah?” Joel interrupts.

We won’t build our own organ or patient registries or gather detailed health information. In fact, we’ll try to limit the information Facebook collects and holds. Sheryl seems baffled by this and fixates on why we haven’t designed the initiative in a way that would allow Facebook to play a bigger role in the collection of data, marketplace of organs, and more. I start to explain the legal, cultural, and religious complexity around organ donation globally, and the sensitivity of the information that organ registries hold. She looks at me as if I am a complete idiot and have missed the obvious, which I suppose I have. I wasn’t looking at this as a business opportunity, a way to start collecting health data from users. Sensing danger, I pivot to the risk of organ trafficking. I explain that countries have put a lot of thought into safeguarding organ donation information and guarding against cross-border transportation of organs. She turns to me, indignant. The edge in her voice is unmistakable. “Do you mean to tell me that if my four-year-old was dying and the only thing that would save her was a new kidney, that I couldn’t fly to Mexico and get one and put it in my handbag?” I look around the meeting

Days later I’m heading toward the center of the capital Nay Pyi Taw, on a desolate twenty-lane highway that’s completely empty of cars. There’s no way the average citizen in Myanmar can afford one, and there’s speculation that the highway can double as a runway if junta leaders ever need to escape. Like an ornate castle from a fairy tale, the Presidential Palace in Nay Pyi Taw shimmers in the heat of the day, looming above the deserted road.

It’s not like I didn’t know about Sheryl’s temper before the Japan trip. I’d seen her blow up many times, at lots of people, berating them, humiliating them, including Marne, one of her best friends. But after Japan, what hits me, over and over, is how arbitrary it is. I never can predict what will trigger an outburst, which makes it especially unnerving.

By now I know there’s probably no specific reason for this outburst. Debbie’s not in the habit of being late. I’d be shocked if she had been underperforming in the days or weeks before this. It’s just Sheryl, in an arbitrary flex of power. That seems to be how she operates, unpredictable, keeping us all on edge. Never quite knowing when she’ll strike, so we’re never tempted to push any boundaries, even the simplest ones. Strict rules, selectively enforced and the baseline of ever-present fear. It ensures we obey in advance. Why does someone need to be so mean to the people helping her? I’ve

With everyone safe and accounted for, we eventually forget about it, until my next performance review when Marne raises it: “You shouldn’t tell stories like that, about your baby and nanny.” My heart sinks. She wasn’t even in Mexico. “It wasn’t a story. My baby was trapped by herself and the fire department was called. We didn’t know if something terrible had happened.” “That’s not the point. These are personal issues. I’m trying to help. To give you honest feedback. When you’re with the most senior members on the team, Mark, Elliot, Javi, you need to be professional and focused on them.” Seriously? My baby’s alone in an apartment with emergency services breaking in through the roof and I’m not supposed to mention it because it’s personal? And they all discussed this situation afterward and found me lacking? The expectation at Facebook is that mothering is invisible, and the more skilled you are, the more invisible it is. Months later when the baby’s rushed to the hospital in an ambulance, I don’t mention it at the office for days. Then I only mention it in passing, assuring Marne that it won’t affect my work in any way.

It honestly had not occurred to me that I could say no. I have this thing, which sometimes I think is related to being an eldest daughter, that someone has to take responsibility and do the hard thing and I guess that’s going to be me. Also, I had survived a near-deadly shark attack once. So how bad could it be? Somehow,

Finally, the thing that clinches it appears to be that they need me to be at work, not in jail, in order to make Mark’s Asia trip a success. That’s what gets them. Not concern for me and my family. I take this in. This is the first time I’ve refused to do something they’ve asked, and it’s a clarifying lesson. I can see my bosses a little more clearly. And now I understand more about how they see me. It’s an uncomfortable realization of how little they care, these people I’m with for sixty, seventy, eighty hours a week. Facebook’s leaders aren’t the people I hoped they were. And in retrospect, I should have thought a lot harder about this fact than I did. But for the first time, I think maybe this place shouldn’t be my home, not forever. Of course, I talk myself out of any drastic action like quitting and finding a job somewhere else. The logistics of doing that with a new baby seem daunting.

When he eventually joins Facebook, he makes clear that he’ll only consider the job if he doesn’t have to interview for it. His first position is running US policy. Because Facebook is so heavily aligned with the Democrats, it needs someone who can handle Republicans. Now in his newest role, as vice president of public policy, Joel’s a very different boss from Marne. Where Marne had been deliberative, thorough, ever questioning, Joel’s her opposite, impetuous and dogmatic. Joel sees everything through the lens of US power. Facebook, like the US, is a superpower. When something goes wrong outside the US, he reflexively turns to the State Department to task them to solve it. Almost like he considers them an arm of Facebook. When the island nation of Nauru blocks Facebook out of the blue, Joel contacts the State Department to have the US government publicly condemn the block. Which they do. It changes nothing. I urge him, in this case and others, to reach out ourselves. Figure out why the government blocked us and contact them directly to resolve it. Joel is surprised to learn Taiwan is an island. Often when we start to talk about pressing issues in some country in Latin America or Asia, he stops and asks me to explain where the country is. This happens so frequently that a few weeks into his tenure, I offer to buy him a world map. He turns that down, but days later, a large framed map shows up in his office.

does AT&T. “We were so late in establishing Facebook’s PAC in the US; I don’t want to make that mistake in other countries,” Joel says insistently. “We need to get moving to establish PACs outside the US. We should have done this a long time—” “So, this is awkward,” I cut in. Joel looks puzzled. “That’s illegal. Only US citizens can contribute to elections here. That’s true everywhere. Nobody wants foreigners bankrolling their elections.” “Really?” Joel looks shocked. “Definitely. That’s why even though you regularly invite me to contribute to the Facebook PAC you founded, for me to do so would be illegal as I’m not a citizen.” “Well, I was actually meaning the other way,” he says defensively. “Contributions to politicians in other countries. We need to get moving on channeling money to our key allies offshore, you know, our most influential politicians in other countries.” “Ah, that would be considered bribery and corruption in most of the countries I’m responsible for,” I say, careful to strike a neutral tone. Joel looks crestfallen. “Except the dictatorships,” I offer. “They’ll probably take your money.” For a minute I worry that he’s seriously considering it.

These are the very people most at risk from this decision. It’s them, not Mark, who are most likely to be jailed if push comes to shove. Joel’s response? He’s frustrated and can’t understand their confusion, seething at what he sees as insolence and ignorance. The audacity of questioning authority. Basically, management issues the orders and employees outside the US are expected to comply. He lectures the team that Mark’s been clear on the two principles. Everything stays up unless Facebook is going to be blocked or someone is arrested and sitting in a jail cell with no way out. How many times does he have to say it? Everyone seems shocked that there’s no discussion or input—just an edict from Mark, enforced by Joel. They struggle to understand why Mark’s getting involved, why instead of the set of rules we tout to governments, decisions are made on his whim.

Once we’re airborne on the flight back from Davos, Sadie and I start to churn through meeting notes, thank-yous, follow-ups, and a first draft of the “lessons from Davos” email Sheryl will circulate to leadership. There’s a separate room with a large bed in it, next to the main cabin, which is very much Sheryl’s domain. Sheryl emerges from this room and announces that she’s going to sleep and that we should all sleep now so we adjust to the California time zone. Sadie and I exchange a look because we both know that even if we work hard for the twelve hours it’ll take to get back to California, it’ll be tough to complete all the work we have to do before we land, and Tom and Sasha are not going to be happy if I arrive back from this trip and then try to work throughout the weekend. We politely decline. Sheryl seems miffed that we’re not taking her advice but returns to her room, and we return to our work.

We’re an hour out of Zurich when Sheryl emerges back into the cabin in her pajamas. “What are you doing? I’m going to bed.” As if it isn’t obvious that we’re preparing all the emails that’ll go out under her name. “Lots to do,” I say cheerily. “But it’s better if you rest now so you can get back on California time,” she insists. “I’m okay,” I respond. There is only one bed in the jet and Sheryl is obviously using it. “Sarah, come to bed.” Her tone hardens.

look around at the others to check if they heard what I did. I shake my head and she repeats her instruction. “Sarah, come to bed.” We’re at a stalemate. I look around desperately for support from the others but everyone’s looking away. On the long drive from Davos to Zurich for the flight, Sheryl and Sadie had taken turns sleeping in each other’s laps, occasionally stroking each other’s hair, while I tried to make myself as small and invisible as possible, feeling uncomfortable with what I was seeing. I hoped my enormous bump made it clear that my lap was not available for my coworker or boss. Regardless of motivation, it was not a position I felt I...

“Sadie’s slept over lots of times and I’m not asking Sadie. I’m asking you.” I don’t want to do this for all the obvious reasons—it wouldn’t be right for a male COO to ask for this and it’s not right for a female one to—but one thing that popped into my head, I’ll confess, is that I’m scared of something that happened on a flight a few weeks before this, from Tokyo to San Francisco. So exhausted by work and pregnancy, I fell asleep before the flight even took off, and woke up with a start. Everything around me was white. I couldn’t get my eyes to focus and I couldn’t see a thing. Just white. It reminded me of what I saw during my father’s leisurely drive to the doctor after the shark attack when I really thought I wasn’t going to make it. I go into a complete panic. Maybe I’d pushed myself to my limit and had a medical emergency, maybe it was a pregnancy side effect, or maybe I was having a breakdown. Maybe I shouldn’t be flying so heavily pregnant. I tear at whatever my white confines are and as they fall and the interior of the aircraft reappears, a flight attendant rushes over. In the most exquisitely polite terms, she explains that ...

Sheryl is insisting that I get into the bed with her, I’m worried about many things, including that I’m so exhausted after working around the clock for Davos that there’s a reasonable chance I would horrify Sheryl by falling asleep and snoring at antisocial levels. I look at Sadie for guidance. Her face is completely blank, as if she has vacated her body. I’m on my own here. No; it is simply impossible for me to get into bed with Sheryl. I’m resolute. I tell her no, I can’t. But people say no to Sheryl so rarely, she doesn’t know what to do with this. She retreats to her bed, making no ...

she tells me things will be fine, but there are unspoken rules with Sheryl about obedience and closeness. Those closest to Sheryl are rewarded. Marne and Sadie often appear in her unwanted designer clothes; both assumed plum seats on boards that Sheryl had been asked to serve on. There are courtside basketball tickets and introductions to celebrities. Sheryl lends them the keys to her vacation homes. Sadie is very conscious of the benefits of being Sheryl’s “little doll,” as she ...

twenty-six-year-old in the world.” Sheryl responds by asking her twenty-six-year-old assistant to come to her house to try on the underwear and have dinner. Later the invite becomes one to stay over. Lean in and lie back. At times Sadie shares with me how stressed out she is about her relationship with Sheryl. I urge her to find a new job somewhere else, where her life would be less enmeshed with Sheryl’s. She says she’s shared her concerns with Elliot and another senior manager, and they’ve also counseled her to escape from Sheryl.

plane lands in California, it’s pouring rain. We stand scattered around the jet with Sheryl’s black car idling nearby and the rest of us scanning the Uber app and juggling umbrellas while waiting for our luggage to be returned by the overworked staff. Sheryl walks purposefully toward me. I think she’ll make a conciliatory gesture or extend a thank-you for what was a challenging but successful week at Davos. I raise my umbrella politely and she leans in close. “You should have got into bed.” Then she turns her back and stalks off toward the waiting car. I

Oh, I think to myself. I’m probably going to have to leave this job. Almost all policy at Facebook runs through Sheryl. If she writes me off, I won’t be able to get anything done. Problem is, I really can’t quit right now. I’m weeks away from giving birth. At this moment, it doesn’t seem like much of a choice. Alert to the new danger Sheryl poses, when she sends me an email thanking me for my work at Davos on Monday and Joel echoes it, I decide it’s best to tell him what happened in the plane. After I do, he simply instructs me not to tell that story to anyone. So I tell his boss, Elliot, who laughs nervously and then gives me essentially the same advice. I decide to confide in Debbie, who is underwhelmed by my fears, telling me that “half the department” has been in Sheryl’s bed by now. She is joking, like, hey, this is less of a big deal than you think (and you’re less of a big deal than you think—classic Debbie) and trying to reassure me. But it doesn’t help. I start to notice Sheryl icing me out.

protected behind thick glass windowpanes. It feels like a cross between the visitor’s room in a prison and an airport departure lounge, with a list of case numbers on an electronic screen, enforced silence, bureaucratic posters, and overtly heavy security presence. For a variety of complicated reasons, I urgently need to secure American citizenship. Facebook’s legal team have helped me with the process, but now I need to ace the exams. While I genuinely enjoyed learning about the aspirational foundational documents of the United States of America, I’m worried about the civics portion of the test. Ten questions that could be on anything from American history of the 1800s to American holidays, constitutional rights, or national symbols. The practice questions include things like, “What is one promise you make when you become an American citizen?” the correct answer being to “give up loyalty to any other country.” I’ve told Joel I’m taking off the day for the test and that I’m worried about getting the questions wrong. While I sit there, I get an email from him. I’d responded to an administrative request from Joel’s assistant, reminding her and Joel that I had taken time off for my Americanness test but would respond as soon as that was done. Joel removes his assistant from the email chain, replying: Did you get the dirty sanchez question? I hear that is on the test like 10 percent of the time. I don’t know what “dirty sanchez” means and I make the mistake of googling it. I i...

I manage to answer all the other questions correctly, and at the end the officer seems genuinely happy for me. Nice guy. He leaves to print out something to get me to the next step of this process, and then returns to the room looking like someone has died. “There’s a big problem,” he says. “When did you arrive in California?” Turns out the State of California requires me to be a resident for ninety days before I can become a citizen, and I’m seventeen days short. This is something Facebook’s lawyers should’ve noticed. I should’ve just waited to apply. Now I’ll have to start the entire process over again. We only have five months before Tom’s visa runs out and he has to leave the country. That’s way less time than the citizenship process usually takes, so Facebook’s lawyers will have to apply for some sort of special rush petition with Citizenship and Immigration Services. Whether we get to stay in America depends on them. Just one more reason I can’t quit my job right now.

The board meeting is held in a conference room at headquarters that we use all the time. It looks out over the parking lot and scrubby marsh. A decidedly unglamorous setting for some of the most powerful people in Silicon Valley. It’s way more casual than I expected, almost disturbingly so. I’d pictured it more like a Wall Street boardroom, or maybe the jury room in Twelve Angry Men, people in suits earnestly and thoroughly sifting through reports, spreadsheets, and data. Instead it’s more like a coffee break at a college campus. Sheryl is perched cross-legged on her chair in yoga pants, and Mark wanders the room in his standard jeans and T-shirt, occasionally pausing to scroll through his phone. There’s no fear in the room. No uncomfortable power dynamics. No tension. Probably because the structure of the company gives Mark complete and utter control, dual class shares, and a voting majority, making him basically untouchable. Mark and Sheryl speak to the board the same way they speak to me. They’re the ones in charge here.

Before they get to my item on the agenda, I watch them, fascinated by the roles that each of the board members carves out. PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel, who is more all-American clean-cut than I expected, plays the role of provocateur. Former White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles takes a scholarly approach, weighing his sparse words and interventions. Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings is the sober businessman. Gates Foundation CEO Sue Desmond-Hellmann—who looks like she just finished a hike—is like a commonsense schoolteacher speaking up to get the discussion back on track. Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen acts as if he found his way into the room by accident and spends most of the meeting playing with his phone. Physically bigger than anyone else, he has a boyish air that seems out of context in a board meeting. Joel, Elliot, and I don’t even stand to give our presentation. We lay out our case that things are bad and about to get much worse, especially outside America. Politicians and governments see a borderless internet as a threat. Facebook is seen as competing against homegrown industries like publishers, telecom operators, and local tech companies. And they’ll use everything from antitrust regulation to privacy regulation to crush Facebook. Our goal is to frighten the board into dramatic action, but they don’t seem very frightened. Their response is “deals.” What do these different players want? Especially the decision makers, the regulators, and politicians. And...

Times piece, she’s been inundated with middle-class mommies who’ve been to Florida or Mexico on vacation who are worried they now have a Zika baby. “But I was in João Pessoa earlier in my pregnancy.” She’s unmoved. “It’s the epicenter of the outbreak.” “Did you even have a mosquito bite?” she says, still skeptical. I pull up a photo of my body covered in them that I’d sent to Tom during the trip, worried that I’d been bitten by bedbugs. Still unimpressed, she grudgingly books me in for an ultrasound. She cautions that they still don’t really know much about the disease and that means both diagnosis and treatment are difficult. The day of the ultrasound, as I lie prone on the chair, feet in stirrups, the technician peppers me with questions about why I traveled somewhere so dangerous. I bristle and tell her I didn’t know about the risk, and we fall into an awkward silence. “How do you diagnose it?” I ask. “We haven’t diagnosed any here. I don’t think there’s been a Zika baby born in the US yet.…” That “yet” hangs in the air. “What are you looking for?” “Calcification around the eyes, head size, anything abnormal. You heading back into work?” Why was she trying to change the subject? What was she seeing on that screen? In the end, they don’t spot anything, but they also tell me that they probably wouldn’t be able to diagnose it while the baby’s still inside me. As one of the doctors put it, “We don’t really know exactly what we’re looking for anyway.”

here? “Lauren—is the baby okay?” She strolls over to perform a cursory check on the sleeping newborn. “She’s beautiful and she’s okay.” She returns to tidying. I feel so broken that I can’t even remove my feet from the stirrups they were in during the delivery. I sink into an exhausted silence. Eventually, under questioning from Tom, Lauren admits that she’s worried about the amount of blood I’m continuing to lose. She starts to weigh the towels that have been placed around me to collect the blood that continues to flow and calls for the doctor on duty. After that doctor, others arrive. My shaking evolves into convulsions. By now I know it’s serious; Lauren keeps cleaning up the blood but it’s flowing thick and fast. I feel drained and hollow, beyond exhaustion. The basics of existing—breathing, listening, and feeling—are thick, heavy, almost insurmountable tasks. The room fills with various doctors and nurses who barely acknowledge me as they plunge needles and attach me to machines. A new nurse pushes Lauren to the side when she arrives, but I manage to grab Lauren’s hand and beg her with my eyes not to leave the room. I periodically remove my oxygen mask to ask Tom and Lauren to check on the baby, who remains peacefully in the corner. Time slows down as pain expands. It radiates from my swollen belly but I can see that all of me is swelling up. The new nurse attached a blood pressure cuff to my arm when she arrived; it feels like it’s burning through my swollen skin. Ev...

medical team keep pushing Tom back into the corner but he fights his way forward. I manage to nod toward my arm, and Tom immediately grasps what’s going on when he sees the cuff like a rubber band depressed between red swollen skin that looks and feels as if it is about to burst. The nurse also dismisses him when he tries to call her attention to it. He hauls the lead doctor into the corridor and insists that this nurse is removed and Lauren is returned to my side. I keep thinking how awful it must be for him to sit watching all of this unfold. Eventually one of the medical staff remembers the baby and asks to have her removed. I try to protest, removing the oxygen mask to object, my body still craving to hold her, feed her, see her. But I’m silenced, the mask replaced, and the baby removed. I feel like I’m starting to succumb. It’s hard to breathe, even with the oxygen mask. I motion for Tom to come and remove my mask. “Get Debbie, get Sadie, get them to come here, for you, for the baby.” As I start to consider how bad this might get, I want someone here to look after Tom. I don’t want Tom to be alone for what I suspect is about to happen. I’m dying.

herself if it doesn’t arrive faster. I fight to stay conscious. What no one tells you about those final moments as you battle to hold on is how seductive unconsciousness is. How, when you’ve reached the end of exhaustion, there’s something so wonderfully inviting in succumbing to the sleepy comfort of numb unconsciousness. The respite. How each time you fight to pull yourself out of the calm nothingness, you’re plunged back not just into consciousness but physical torment. Bright lights, frantic voices, the struggle for each breath, and complete searing pain. I fight with everything I have to try to stay awake. The idea of never holding my new baby is too awful. Of never seeing Sasha again. To say nothing of leaving Tom alone. I reopen my eyes in an operating room. “I think she’s back with us,” I hear someone say, and I start to look

My doctor comes into view and welcomes me back, saying something about how an anesthesiologist was about to knock me out so it’s lucky timing that I joined them now. As if I’d just arrived at a neighborhood barbeque. I ask repeatedly for Tom, I need him, and wheeze, “No anesthetic.” My doctor looks confused, then explains that I’m in an operating room undergoing emergency surgery and it’s very serious. I summon all my energy to say, “If you have general anesthetic … you can’t breastfeed … for three days.” This urgent need to breastfeed; funny how raw and powerful these basic maternal instincts are. Even when I am incapable of anything else. “Sarah, I don’t think you understand the situation.” My doctor pauses—maybe not wanting to tell me I’m dying? She then explains that Tom has already consented on my behalf. “I have to feed my baby. You need consent. My consent. Not his.” I’m desperate to stay conscious and see and hold and feed my baby. “Not his,” I insist. “Sarah, you’re very, very sick.…” I can tell my very capable doctor is both bemused and frustrated, arriving at an impasse that will rob her of precious time. She tries a different approach. “Someone give her a pen,” she says. And before I know it a pen comes into my line of vision. I reach for it but realize I can’t control my body. My hands won’t connect with the pen. When I get close to it my fingers can’t grasp it. “Sarah, are you able to get that pen and sign those forms?” I’m frozen, my voice is stuck, and I fe...

“You’re awake!” she exclaims excitedly. “Where’s Tom? Where’s the baby?” I gasp frantically. She strains to hear me. “The baby, where’s the baby?” Sadie shakes her head. Then, very slowly, as if talking to an elderly relative, she says, “I can’t hear you. You have a machine in your throat helping you breathe. You’re in intensive care. You’re on life support. You’re very sick.” I try to say “baby” loud enough to break through the pipe in my throat, but she continues to shake her head. “Tom,” I try. “Where’s Tom? Tom.” Sadie shakes her head again. It doesn’t make sense. Tom should be here. The only reason he wouldn’t be here is if there was something seriously wrong with him … or the baby. Panic spurs a burst of adrenaline and I hoarsely yell “baby, baby, baby” into the void of the ventilator. Sadie tries to placate me by putting together words in sentences that make no sense. She says nothing about the key point of where Tom and the baby are. Maybe our baby’s dead? The very thought of it makes me claw at the machines, trying to remove the ventilator from my throat so I can leave and find my baby. Before

Soon Tom walks in. I’m so relieved to see him I can feel tears in my eyes, but the ventilator makes it difficult to actually do the other parts of crying; sobbing makes me choke against the tube in my throat. When Tom looks at me he starts to cry. I’ve rarely seen Tom cry. “I’m sorry; I don’t know why I’m crying. I haven’t throughout everything,” he reassures me, as if I would somehow think less of him. “It’s just they told me to be prepared because you might not…” He breaks off as his tears well up. “But you made it. And Xanthe’s okay.” I’m confused. “Xanthe?” I write. Tom looks down, a hint of shame in his face. “You named the baby?” I write, incredulous. I can feel Debbie shift silently on her chair, suddenly uncomfortable. “Um, Xanthe Juliet, middle name for my mother, but … we can change the name,” he says hurriedly. At that moment, his phone buzzes and I can see a notification saying, “Xanthe is due for her next feed.” And I know, in that instant, that her name will never be changed. Tom fills me in on some of what I missed while I was in the coma. Apparently, I’m in an intensive care unit at a completely different hospital from where I was when I was last conscious in the operating room after giving birth. From what I piece together, at some point before, during, or after labor I suffered an amniotic fluid embolism. He explains that means something entered my bloodstream—either amniotic fluid or some part of the baby like fetal cells or hair—and stopped the blood fr...

It’s still only a few weeks after Diego’s arrest and I know I should be looking for another job. Coming so close to death only reinforces my feeling that I have to leave Facebook. I think about it constantly. But it’s hard to move that forward when I need to give all I have to this sweet baby. When I’m physically wrecked. How do I do it? After less than a week at home, I hemorrhage while putting Sasha to bed. Tom finds me in the bathroom in a small pool of blood and calls an ambulance. After two days, I check myself out of the hospital, but I continue to lose blood every day. I hide the extent of it from Tom because I can tell he’s already at the breaking point, but each time I use the bathroom there’s so much blood I feel like I need to roll out crime scene tape. Lacking that, I just carefully wipe everything in the bathroom clean, to hide the evidence that something is very wrong.

I’m not well. I continue to lose significant amounts of blood for months and struggle to do basic activities. I get to the supermarket with the baby and toddler and realize I don’t have the strength to walk through the aisles, so I head home, stopping on benches to rest along the way. There’s a quiet desperation to everyday life. None of this seems to matter to Joel. He knows full well that I’m still on maternity leave, sick and on strong pain medication, and yet messages and emails from him and his assistant pile up daily. Less than two weeks after I’ve discharged myself from the hospital, they set up a weekly meeting with me. Because I’m in California and he’s in Washington, DC, they’re videoconferences, but he starts to take them sprawled across his bed rather than in his office. He’s in a T-shirt and who knows what else. I tell myself the family photos surrounding his bed are proof he’s a family man and I shouldn’t feel weird about it. “Does me being in bed when we chat make you feel uncomfortable?” he asks repeatedly, and it’s hard not to feel that’s the point. One day he pushes further. On one of our regular video calls during my maternity leave, he asks me how my health is. I keep my answer brisk and professional: I’m still very sick, I’m going to need more surgery. “But where are you bleeding from?” he asks. My mind races. There is no way he doesn’t know. “Seriously? Um, well, it’s the same place I’ve been losing blood from all along.” “What place?” he presses, ins...

It’s a twenty-hour flight. I’m afraid of hemorrhaging again, and the medical advice is that I should not wean the baby, whom I don’t want to leave, until I’m fully healthy. Raising this with Joel is excruciating. “On India,” I start nervously. “I know you want me to, so I’m planning to go, if I can figure out a way not to wean my daughter. Although if you don’t need me, I’d prefer to stay.” “You mean breastfeeding?” he asks. “Yes,” I say. “Explain breastfeeding to me.” He looks expectantly at me. “What?” “Explain breastfeeding to me.” Ugh. This, again. “I need to keep up my supply in order to continue breastfeeding,” I say as neutrally as possible, trying to keep things professional. But this doesn’t satisfy him. He continues to push. Eventually, I shut the conversation down by telling him I’ll explain my concerns directly to his assistant. I tell her how badly it went with the breast pump in Turkey and my worries for India. This persuades no one. I’m sent a breast pump and booked for India. I return to work in August 2016. My first day back, Joel decides to do a performance review, as he says “it’s performance review season.” A quick Google search confirms my suspicion that you are not supposed to be given a performance review of your maternity leave. In fact, I understand that pushing someone to work during their maternity leave is against the law. Nevertheless. “You weren’t responsive enough,” he says. “In my defense, I was in a coma for some of it.” “It’s not just me, ...

successful, of course others will imitate it. We’ve been cozying up to these candidates and happily making money off of them, and we really need to rethink. By this time Brexit has already happened and the leadership at Facebook are steadfastly avoiding acknowledging any role Facebook may have played in that. There are some important elections coming up, including the US election next month. That’s the moment I lose the room. It’s blank looks everywhere. Joel listens, eyes darkening. “Thanks, Sarah, I think we’ve got a few more immediate things to worry about. We’ll let the US team handle the US election.” I know that the way he sees it, US politics is outside my expertise and very different from whatever I’m seeing in what he calls “tin pot” countries like the Philippines, Myanmar, and Thailand. Also, and maybe more importantly: everyone in this room understands we’re making record amounts of money off the Trump campaign, with all its misinformation and trolling. As far as Joel’s concerned, Facebook doesn’t need to worry about outsider candidates like Trump. In fact, they’re great for Facebook because of how much money they bring in, and Joel cares about that. If they’re peddling outrage and stretching the truth, well, Joel understands that outrage and stretching the truth are just part of the game, part of politics. Joel was at the Brooks Brothers riot, after all. Outrage is a lucrative business for Facebook right now, a month before the election, and Joel’s determined t...

Joel’s wrong. Everyone’s wrong. So I’m curious to walk into Facebook headquarters a month later, the morning after Trump’s victory. There’s a hastily called meeting for the policy and communications teams to discuss how everyone feels about the outcome. I’m surprised that Joel and Elliot have thought to do that. It shows a sensitivity to people’s emotions that is normally notable by its absence. Joel later confides that they set it up because there was an ugly situation in the London office after the Brexit vote a few months before. Most of the policy team was openly devastated and it wasn’t handled well. The few who wanted Britain to leave the EU felt personally attacked by the rest of the team, and it spiraled, leaving bad blood between the two groups. Joel wants to avoid a repeat now with Trump, between the Republicans who dominate his office and the rest of Facebook, which is mostly Democrats and a lot of libertarians. All the policy and communications teams in Silicon Valley are crammed into a meeting room that’s too small, with the DC office projected on the large white wall at the end of the room. Elliot struggles to find the right tone for the political operatives assembled, some of whom have been embedded with Trump’s election campaign, and settles on some vague opening monologue about the importance of democracy and tolerance. Joel is upbeat—visibly happy about Trump—and struggles to contain his disdain for the collective outpouring of grief in the Silicon Valley...

“You’re looking at the election all wrong.” Joel’s tone is mildly patronizing. “If you look at Trump’s agenda it’s the Republican agenda. It’s the things we want. The things I want. It’s tax cuts. It’s less government. He’ll get it done. Trump’s got the Senate. He’s got the House. It’s a decisive victory. He can do things. Great things. Not only that, it’s going to be great for tech and for business. Hands off, all systems go.” He pauses, as if to check that I understand that this is good. “Sure, there are some things on the margin thrown in that I’m not wild about,” he concedes. “But the bulk of it is what the party wants, what I want.” I nod. Which he takes as acceptance of his point.

whole, it’s a great outcome.” In contrast to Joel, some of the senior distraught Democrats who address the assembled group talk about their grief, pain, and fear of the future following Trump’s win. It’s hard to ignore the eyerolls exchanged by some of the Republicans on the DC team who forget that their faces are being magnified and projected on the wall. One of the younger employees in California raises her hand and says timidly, “I worry for my friends who are Black and Hispanic.” She doesn’t mention how “All Lives Matter,” a slogan created as a negative rejoinder to “Black Lives Matter,” keeps popping up on the Facebook graffiti walls all across campus (or that Mark and Sheryl’s response was that “we have to assume positive intent”), or the TRUMP SUPPORTERS WELCOME posters that materialized everywhere. Most

Another question comes from a young woman who probably has a different idea from Joel about what’s best for America: “I’m worried about what’s going to happen to immigration. What do we do about people who don’t have immigration status?” Elliot praises the question and makes a few bland statements. I’m lost in thought about how many men there seem to be in the DC office projected on the wall and whether they would also describe themselves as “good guys” and how they’re still struggling to contain their shocked delight at the outcome of the election when I tune in to hear, “Sarah will have some thoughts on this, as she’s had difficult immigration challenges.” There’s a moment of silence and everyone turns to me. I don’t respond because I assume he must mean some other Sarah who would be qualified to address the question in some way. Then I realize he means me. He’s throwing the ball to me so he doesn’t have to talk any more about Trump’s immigration plans. “I don’t think the issue is New Zealand immigration,” I say. “But I do know—” Joel jumps in, alert to the fact I’m going off script, and assures everyone that Facebook will look into this. From the crush of people in the back corner of the room in headquarters, someone asks, “Is it our fault? 2016’s ‘the Facebook election.’” It’s a relief to hear someone give voice to what I had been thinking. In the lead-up to the election, this was the constant message inside the company. We called it “the Facebook election” internally,...

chance of getting. So I was shocked—after months of negotiations—to get what I’d asked for. As we prepare to take off for Peru, I still can’t believe it’s actually going to happen, Mark running a meeting of presidents and prime ministers exactly as I saw in my original vision. Although we’re actually not about to take off because Mark didn’t bring his passport.

Irrespective, he blames other people for all of those things, including forgetting the passport. I guess that’s what it’s like to live in a bubble, like Mark does. But a bubble implies flimsy transparency, a diaphanous space where you can see a normal life just beyond your grasp. And what Mark inhabits is more like a thick opaque dome, a murky fortress that separates him from the rest of the world. When you have so many other people doing things for you professionally and personally, you stop taking responsibility for any of it. Max Weber said that dealing with unintended consequences of your actions is what political responsibility is. This guy can’t even take responsibility for leaving his passport at home, let alone influencing the US election. Andrea throws herself on the grenade, declaring that it’s all her fault the passport isn’t here and that she should be supervising “Mark’s home staff” more closely. Notable by its absence is any suggestion that it could have occurred to Mark that a passport might be helpful to visit South America. Elliot suggests, “Sarah, could you contact the president of Peru to see whether we can get Mark in the country without his passport?” “Yes,” Mark agrees quickly, “that would be good.” “Even Mark Zuckerberg still needs a passport,” I gently tease Mark. It doesn’t go over well. Fortunately, before I’m peer-pressured into making the call to the president of Peru, Mark realizes he doesn’t have some medication he needs. The decision is made ...

gravely. “Mark and Priscilla are trying to conceive,” he shares in a whisper, never mind the fact we’re on a phone call and no one can overhear us. This immediately feels too intimate. Like we’re courtiers of conception admitted into the royal bedroom. “Riiiight,” I say warily. “Well, you can guess the problem,” he says conspiratorially. I’m guessing the dates of the summit don’t work out with the dates of ovulation, but that is way too much information for me. CEO conception plans are definitely not part of my job description. I let his statement hang there unanswered. “Zika,” he says. There’s no way that Mark can expose himself to Zika or push back his plans for a second child. Mark had once told me that he wanted a “tribe” of kids, so I understand his reluctance to delay. Elliot had been talking to Mark and the current guidance was to wait three months after travel to a Zika-infected area before trying to conceive, so either the trip should be canceled or we should look at serious measures to protect him from exposure. At this time, Lima barely had any Zika. Neither Elliot nor I mention that Facebook sent me to ground zero of the Zika outbreak while I was pregnant, but it hangs in the air. Elliot asks me to see what the Peruvian president’s office can do to stop Mark from getting Zika. Confidentially, of course. I assure him I’ll do everything I can. In reality, I don’t even know how one broaches the idea of asking a presidential office to safeguard your CEO’s sperm. Pa...

mattered. Mark quietly takes it all in. At first, he’s skeptical and pushing back, but that gradually turns into curiosity. He starts to ask questions, trying to understand the mechanics of it all. He doesn’t seem upset that the platform would be used this way, not in the slightest. If anything, there’s admiration for the ingenuity of it. Like, these tools were there all the time for anyone to use this way. How smart that they figured it out. I’m horrified to hear it laid out like this. I’d heard it before, a few days after the election, at Sheryl’s business operations meeting, and had the same reaction, a sense of sticky personal revulsion, knowing I work at the company that did this. I can’t imagine how I would feel if I had created the company. I honestly think I’d have a nervous breakdown right there on the private jet, trigger an emergency landing somewhere over Mexico. It’s so ugly. What a thing to be responsible for. When all this was explained to Sheryl at that business operations meeting, once she grasped what Trump’s campaign did, her immediate response was not horror but that it was brilliant and innovative and do you think we might have a shot at hiring Trump’s guy Brad Parscale to come work at Facebook? No one said anything. After an awkward moment, chastened, she shifted gears: “Of course that’s silly. He can have his pick of jobs right now.” A pause. “But maybe there are others from the Trump campaign we could bring inside Facebook?”

Mark broods for much of the flight. When he suggests a board game, I agree to play explicitly on the condition that I don’t have to let him win. He thinks I’m joking. When I trounce him at Ticket to Ride, he accuses me of cheating. This irks me. I mean, I understand that he’s used to everyone going easy on him, so it’s logical to him that anyone who beats him must be cheating, but does he really think I wouldn’t be able to beat him fair and square? He challenges me to Settlers of Catan. A couple of other staffers join. I win. He does it again. “You definitely cheated that time,” he says loudly. I see members of the team who are pretending to sleep covertly tune into what is happening. I know he’s competitive and not used to losing, and he’s working out his anger over Obama and being blamed for throwing the election results for an entire country. But still. “I didn’t cheat,” I hear myself say before I can stop myself. “And actually, right up until that last move, you were going to win. You had multiple ways to win.” I pause to demonstrate on the board the moves I thought he was going to take or, more accurately, the moves I would have taken in his position. I see him sit back, for the second time that day getting some unexpected pushback (or the third, if you include Xi avoiding him), as he takes in the different strategies I lay out.

Instead, talk returns to legacy. It’s a familiar topic. Mark has become increasingly obsessed by his own legacy in recent years. Things he can be remembered for besides Facebook. This is what’s occupying him so much of the time I’m around him, and fills his conversations, not new products he wants to launch or new places he wants to drive Facebook. His foundation, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, launched less than a year ago.