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

by Sarah Wynn-Williams

The vastness of the information Facebook would be collecting was unprecedented. Data about everything. Data that was previously entirely private. Data on the citizens of every country. A historic amount of data and so incredibly valuable. Information is power.

The only problem I run into during this prep is the number of random Facebook employees from New Zealand who simply assume they’ll be participating in the prime minister’s visit in some way. Following the protocol I learned at the embassy, I dissuade them. Heads of state shouldn’t meet with a

haphazard group of people from various departments for no reason. Then I receive a call from Marne, who tells me that all of these people are “friends of Sheryl” and I should be as accommodating as possible. Right, I think. It’s the private sector. Government protocols don’t mean anything. Sheryl’s friends do.

Better to hurry past all the posters that say things like THINK WRONG, MOVE FAST AND BREAK THINGS, and IS THIS A TECHNOLOGY COMPANY?

Years later, after a few wines at Davos, Sheryl tells me that the punishing scale of work is by design. A choice Facebook’s leaders had made. That staffers should be given too much to do because it’s best if no one has spare time. That’s where the trouble and territoriality start. The fewer employees,

the harder they work. The answer to work is more work.

Like many things at Facebook, it didn’t matter what the policy team debated or decided; it mattered what Sheryl thought. In this case she had run into one of her Harvard friends, a surgical director of liver transplantation, at a Harvard reunion and offered to help him source donors.

But things take a turn for the worse. Sheryl really wants the megaphone. Even though she knows Mark doesn’t. And she has a solution. She directs me to send an email to the whole team, including Mark, announcing that we’re moving forward with the megaphone, and explaining Sheryl’s point of view as if it’s my own. I try and fail to convince her that it’s not a good idea. She’s having none of it. This is my job. If I can’t write this email, what use am I to her?

All I know is that I received my very first direct email from Mark Zuckerberg that day, one sent only to me. It was four words long and simply said: “I am overruling you.”

Javi’s street smart in a way that Mark isn’t. He’s the guy who first alerts Mark to a new app called Snapchat. The way Javi tells it, he shows it to Mark and asks him, “You know what people are gonna use this for?” thinking the answer is obvious. Mark has no idea. Javi has to explain it: sexting.

The line between Facebook work and Sheryl’s personal benefit had always been blurry. Like the time I had to help her get tourist visas to Australia for one of her nannies through my embassy connections. But the book blasted this to a new level.

The women in the Washington, DC, office—there aren’t many of us—are expected to help by doing menial tasks that suspiciously resemble the “office housework” (administrative tasks that

help your bosses but don’t pay) that Sheryl rails against in her talks and a New York Times op-ed. Some women grumble about having to give up our evenings to do free labor for her book. It’s not like we’re short of work—in fact quite the opposite. We’re fielding regular crises at all hours, in countries around the world. No one ever explains why we have to help with the book. I guess it’s too crude to tell us it’s because we share a gender.

My job is passing out name tags, a crushing exercise as I have to ask the names of DC types who, mortally offended, look at me with a “don’t you know who I am” face. Which I obviously don’t. When I’m released from that task, I have to shadow Sheryl, holding her business cards so that she can work the room unencumbered. My presence is acknow...

Watching her work is like a study in female success. How she comes to decisions, her relationships with men—both the ones she works for and the ones who work for her—what she wears, how she’s groomed, how she speaks. She can drop into a soft girlish voice, like you’re sharing an intimate secret with her, and yet still command a room. Sheryl’s amazing.

Of course, Facebook claims proudly that it’s instrumental in starting movements and conversations. And she’s the COO. But it seems clear to me that she hates using the platform personally. Like most of Facebook’s senior staff, Sheryl hardly ever posts.

She sits back, taking in the shocked silence around the table. Then she says, “I’ve seen this happen before. We, the company, get too confident, too complacent. We think we know everything, that we have it all figured out. “I worry about this for everyone, even me. I worry about the day when people won’t tell me the truth straight. When they won’t have the hard conversation with me. When I sit in a meeting and everyone will agree with me. They won’t give me the bad news. They won’t challenge me. We are our own greatest risk. All of us.” I hang on every word. This seems like such impressive self-knowledge and insight that I want to bottle it. I write it down thinking that we can add it to her speeches elsewhere. It’s unthinkable that we wouldn’t speak honestly with Sheryl or share bad news. We

say what needs to be said. She’s the champion of these “hard conversations” telling people what they need to hear even if it feels difficult to do so. I underline “it’s all of us” three times.

We land in Tokyo and arrive at the flashiest hotel I’ve ever stayed at. It’s humbling. Sheryl’s room at the Ritz-Carlton Japan is several times larger than my apartment. She’s decided to bring her children and parents on this trip. I’m excited to meet them

until she requests that her parents accompany us to meet Prime Minister Abe. So now I have two delightful retirees looking forward to meeting the prime minister of Japan after they finish their tea ceremony or whatever tourism activities they had planned. In my time in the foreign service, I’d never seen a head of state show up with their mom and dad, and I don’t really know how to handle this ridiculous request. I call up my best friend, Bec, who used to work at the International Court of Justice. Bec assures me she’s seen heads of state take meetings with their families alongside them and I could just sneak Adele and Joel Sandberg in. I ask where she’s seen this, who, and how.

Fortunately, Abe’s office is categorical and says no parents can attend the meeting with the prime minister of Japan. Sheryl begrudgingly accepts this.

This is a side of Sheryl I have not seen before. Debbie lets me know I’d better get used to it.

More than anything, what she really wants is a photo of Prime Minister Abe holding her book. And that’s the one thing that the Japanese prime minister’s office has very politely but firmly insisted could not be done. Sheryl decides she’ll simply hijack the prime minister with a presentation of the book at the end of the meeting. I’m carrying the book. I’ve added an inscription to the prime minister and his wife. It feels like smuggling illicit contraband. I hate myself for being part of this.

We return to our van outside his office, ignoring the questions the media are shouting, and Sheryl asks me to sit beside her. Unexpectedly, she wraps herself around me and gives me a deep, long hug. “That was amazing, Sarah. I don’t know how you pulled it off, but it was phenomenal.” I’m trying not to blush. “It was a team effort. Really, everyone here in this van, it couldn’t have happened without them.” Her tone changes. “Learn how to take a compliment,” she snaps. “This was all you and it was wonderful.” I feel like I’m being told off.

I’m not really listening until I hear Sheryl’s voice change sharply at the mention of her children having had lunch at McDonald’s. She’s furious that her children have eaten at the fast food restaurant; she would never let them eat “that sort of food.”

My mind involuntarily keeps repeating the John Updike quote “Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face.” The glow from the day’s success is now completely gone and I just feel sad. Sad because every person there is trying to do the right thing. Sad because Sheryl can’t see the good intentions of everyone in that van. Sad because it’s so understandable to take a photo at face value. To believe it is real. How was anyone supposed to know those publicity photos were just the mask Sheryl chose? And, finally, I feel a deep sadness for Sheryl, who let the mask eat into her face.

know, it’s so strange. Sheryl always flies United. That’s who she has status with. We never considered Asiana. I don’t know why she posted it. I don’t know why she tagged all of us. Now I’ve got to deal with incoming media queries about it, though apparently she’s just emailing reporters herself.” “I don’t get it,” I said. “I know I’m jet lagged but this doesn’t make any sense.” “I know. It’s fucked up. You should get some rest.” I hang up, but I’m unnerved and the feeling of disquiet never really leaves. A friend who has seen the reports and knows I’m traveling with Sheryl messages to check that everything’s okay. Initially I repeat what is in the press, thinking that’s what I’m supposed to do, before calling her back to tell her the truth. People don’t lie about narrowly missing plane crashes, do they? Why would she? It’s not like she needs attention.

I never see Sheryl the same way after that.

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.

Finally Debbie enters the room in a bluster of apologies. Sheryl looks at her accusingly and says, “You weren’t at the traffic lights.” “Sorry, traffic was a nightmare. I’d just come off the highway…” Sheryl cuts her off and, in front of her colleagues, gives her a dressing down about blaming the traffic rather than accepting responsibility for not anticipating traffic. She asks how many times she’s driven this particular road, why she hadn’t considered the needs of her coworkers in deciding when to leave her house, what time might have been more appropriate to set off from San Francisco to reach Menlo Park. She vents that Debbie has wasted her coworkers’ time (making no mention of her own decision to waste our time with this performance). 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 ens...

And wonder how deep they run. I don’t know if Sheryl’s outbursts are an occasional thing—which I can cope with—or if that’s who she is. And I’m nervous it’s the latter.

When I learn that Angela Merkel—the German chancellor—has declined Sheryl’s request for a meeting, Marne tells me not to tell her. “We never can let her know,” she says. “Just say it’s a scheduling issue.” We both know how angry Sheryl would be if she found out that Merkel doesn’t think Sheryl’s important enough to talk to.

In January 2014, I’m in a meeting with an all-male lineup of Facebook law enforcement experts when my water breaks. I Uber to the hospital and things get underway pretty fast. I get a message. Sheryl’s about to unexpectedly go into a meeting with the president of Brazil at Davos and she wants talking points. I’m in the delivery room, my feet in stirrups, in labor. I put down my phone and reach for my laptop. I start drafting. “What are you doing?” Tom asks. “Just getting Sheryl some talking points.” “Sarah, no.” I continue typing. He appeals to my doctor, a person he knows I deeply respect: “Dr. Veca, make this stop.” “Two more minutes,” I say, between contractions. Trying not to think of Lean In’s direction: don’t leave before you leave. Dr. Veca reaches over and gently closes my laptop. She says, “It’s a very special thing to give birth to your first child. I don’t think you should be working through it. Sheryl will understand.”

“She won’t,” I say. “Please let me push Send.” “You should be pushing,” she says. “But not send.”

I thought I was doing a good job in a difficult situation. But my first performance review after maternity leave is problematic. While it’s positive, the only negative feedback relates to my baby.

The fact that people can hear her in the background on calls—mostly because West Coast time means I’m often taking the calls on the East Coast in the evening, at home, where my baby lives.

“Hire a nanny,” she instructs. “Be smart and hire a Filipina nanny.”

“Sarah, I’m telling you, they’re English speaking, sunny disposition, and service orientated.” Marne echoes this sentiment. Both have at least one Filipina nanny in their retinue of staff.

“I guess this is the real Lean In. The stuff Sheryl really believes about work and womanhood but doesn’t put in the book.”

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.

This “don’t mention the children” ethos is of course the opposite of the cheery slogans at Facebook to “bring your authentic self to work.” All Sheryl’s Lean In stories about leaving work at 5:30 P.M. and telling her coworkers she needed to be home with her children. Because the reality is that there is a big difference between what people at Facebook say and what they do, especially in relation to children. For example, Facebook had planned to launch a Facebook for

Silicon Valley is awash in wooden Montessori toys and shrouded in total screen bans. Parents at work talk about how they don’t allow their teens to have mobile phones, which only underscores how well these executives understand the real damage their product inflicts on young minds.

president America has ever had, that he was ruthless, a populist and an individualist, and that he “got stuff done.” He also spilled a lot of blood expanding the territory of the United States, sent five Native tribes out onto

the Trail of Tears, but Mark doesn’t mention that.

“What about Lincoln or Roosevelt?” I ask, pushing my foreigner credentials. “Wouldn’t you say they got stuff done? Couldn’t one of them be the greatest?” “No,” Mark say...

We’ve always needed to connect China, but there have always been other major projects we could take on to connect large populations instead. Now there are no other major projects left. It’s time to really build these relationships and make this partnership with China work.

What’s not in Mark’s email is more telling than what is. There’s no acknowledgment at all of the moral complexity of working in an authoritarian country that surveils its own citizens and doesn’t allow free speech.

I don’t believe Facebook is going to get into China. The mission of the company—making the world more open and connected—is the exact opposite of what the Chinese Communist Party wants, particularly under President Xi Jinping. I can’t imagine they’d