Sarah Wynn-Williams on working at Facebook: “I’d say it started out as a hopeful comedy and ended in darkness and regret.” Photos / supplied
Sarah Wynn-Williams on working at Facebook: “I’d say it started out as a hopeful comedy and ended in darkness and regret.” Photos / supplied
Talk about an own goal. By slapping a gag order on Sarah Wynn-Williams talking about her book, Facebook has supercharged its Kiwi former executive’s rollicking tell-all. Careless People: A Story of Where I Used to Work (Macmillan) currently sits at No 3 on Amazon’s bestseller list and No 1 onthe New York Times bestseller list.
Wynn-Williams, a former UN diplomat who worked at Facebook (now Meta) between 2011 and 2017, eventually became its global public policy director, helping the company deal with governments around the world. “I’d say it started out as a hopeful comedy and ended in darkness and regret.” She had joined the company with the belief it could change the world for the better, but watched “hopelessly” as the company “sucked up to authoritarian regimes such as China’s and casually misled the public”. Most of the time, working on policy at Facebook was less Machiavellian and more like “watching a bunch of 14-year-olds who’ve been given superpowers and an ungodly amount of money, as they jet around the world to figure out what power has bought and brought them”.
For the memoir of a corporate exec, it’s written with wit and pace. It’s also very Kiwi, thanks to Wynn-Williams’ naive chutzpah, dry humour and can-do-ism. The book details a savage shark attack at the age of 13, using the Christchurch quakes to pitch for a job, the company’s early lack of ideology beyond making money, taking her infant to Davos, sexual harassment, her Damascene moment and summary firing. The title is taken from The Great Gatsby, Tom and Daisy being “careless people” who “smashed up things … and let other people clean up the mess they had made”.
Meta says the book includes “defamatory and untrue allegations” and the author is a disgruntled former employee “fired for poor performance and toxic behaviour”.
If the book is even half-true (she has receipts), you might be motivated to log out of the app and delete it with prejudice.
Careless People: A Story of Where I Used to Work by Sarah Wynn-Williams (Macmillan, $40), is out now.
