Review of 'Careless People: A story of where I used to work'
Careless People: A story of where I used to work by Sarah Wynn-Williams
In this memoir, Sarah Wynn-Williams describes landing her dream job at Facebook where she hoped to leverage her past experience as a policy advisor in the diplomatic service of the New Zealand government at their embassy in Washington, DC. She was looking forward to helping Facebook empower the people to become informed and engaged in politics. In a high level position she was able to see that management was not interested in this but, in fact, was working with many governments including the US (in the Trump campaign of 2016) and China (providing service there) to subvert the platform to push political agendas for the sake of money and influence, caring little for human rights or dignity. In “Careless People” Wynn-Williams describes the lack of any real understanding or consideration for how their actions would impact the people of the world, focusing instead on the bottom-line at all cost. Responsible for the Austrasia region she returns again and again to the example of China where CEO Mark Zuckerberg desired so much for Facebook to be present in the country that he was willing to compromise on some of the core principles of the company including taking down posts and users on the platform that the Chinese government did not agree with and building in government monitoring mechanisms all the while flatly denying any such thing in public. On the personal side she tells of how optimistic the company employees were when she joined and how jaded they became over the years as greed and sexism dominated the culture.
This a sobering story of what it was like inside Facebook as it rose to the global dominance it has today. It is not terribly complimentary to much that the company did or is doing now. The author makes it clear that she recognizes that she was hugely naïve in thinking she could help make Facebook a force for good from the inside, realizing quickly that this was never going to be possible with the deeply systemic amoral behaviour of it's leaders - A high level manager using her position to push her own personal business, employees sleeping with their managers to preserve their position (in a bed at the back of a private jet), the CEO lying to congressional hearings, pushing overtly political messages despite suggesting they are politically independent (puppets to corrupt governments), throwing a regional boss under the bus to divert attention from high level management decisions, criticized for not responding quickly enough to management while on maternity leave, etc. It is often quite comical if it was not at the same time chilling to see such a hugely powerful company so morally corrupt. And, no, the restructuring of the company under the company name “Meta” and focusing on VR technology has not changed this in any way as the author notes…
The book is quite easy to read though a bit long and repetitive. Reading along it makes you wonder why Wynn-Williams didn't walk out far earlier than she did despite her explanation of her financial needs though in the end she was pushed out anyway. She was with the company for so long, seeing all of the stuff going on it seems she chose to live with it and concentrate on things she believed she could do some good with…though not altogether successfully. It does seem to be quite repetitive returning to the same themes over and over again, choosing to concentrating on corporate corruption with little positivity to share other than personal. So, don't expect a fun read though the blurb on the cover says “darkly funny” which is very true - You often laugh and want to cry at the same time.
As a long-term but very light user of Facebook I have never taken it too seriously using the platform mostly for small talk with friends and family or to post an update. I think I am probably an exception to this and anyone that uses Facebook might be interested to hear the real story behind the platform they put their trust in.
Rating: “Nearly perfect, but not quite”
Review Date: 2026-01-20
Genre: Autobiography
Publisher: Macmillan
Publication Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035065929