After getting kicked off Facebook, I decided to finally sit down this week and read Careless People, the memoir from Facebook (now Meta)’s former Director of Global Public Policy, Sarah Wynn-Williams.

Holy. F*cking. Shit.

I devoured this 400-page doorstopper in 2 sittings, and as I type this, the scandalous energy is still pulsing through my heightened nervous system.

There are hundreds of horrific decisions and behaviors woven into the stories Sarah shares about the time she spent at Facebook from 2011-2017, some of which caused death and destruction all over the world. For instance — according to a U.N. investigation, Facebook is responsible for enabling genocide in Myanmar, killing over 10,000 people, and subjecting thousands more to torture and sexual violence.

(Not exactly what comes to mind when you think of the app grandmas use to share cat photos.)

But instead of the big global policy stories, which you can read about in pretty much any major newspaper, I’m going to focus on some of the more intimate stories which speak to a nefarious culture that proliferates your mom’s favorite social media platform.

👉 It’s simple this week — go read the damn book.

And now — the story behind why this advice matters. 👇

Sheryl Sandberg has always kinda rubbed me the wrong way. Her persona seemed fake, and weirdly, the only people who ever recommended her famous feminist book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead were… 

Male colleagues. (I still, to this day, haven’t read it.)

If you’re wondering who TF I’m talking about, Sheryl Sandberg is the former COO of Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg’s right-hand woman. The supposed “adult” in the room, guiding little Zucky from 2008 to 2022.

And according to Sarah Wynn-Williams, she’s a monster.

When I think about Mark Zuckerberg (which I try not to do very often), I imagine a cockroach. You can certainly hate a cockroach, but you also can’t really blame a cockroach for… being a cockroach. It’s just what they are. And that’s Zuck. He’s a snarly brat who was born believing he would always be the smartest person in the room, and his life experience thus far has only validated this in his eyes.

(More on him later.)

Sheryl is different. She’s worse. Because, like all enablers, she actually knows better, and she’s choosing her behavior.

Sheryl’s not a cockroach. She simply prefers to prioritize her own power, and not give a f*ck about anything –or anyone– else.

Perhaps the most poignant illustration of this point occurred in 2013, when Sheryl and her team, including Sarah Wynn-Williams, were returning from a business trip in Seoul. On the same day, Asiana Airlines Flight 214 crash-landed at San Francisco International Airport, killing three people and injuring 200 others.

It was a horrific scene.

Shortly before the crash, Sheryl had landed safely back in San Francisco on a United flight, and Sarah, who was based at Facebook’s Washington D.C. office, had flown home on a different Asiana Airlines flight.

Upon learning of the crash, Sheryl immediately posted this on Facebook:

Here’s the thing — according to Sarah, Sheryl was never supposed to be on the doomed Asiana Airlines flight. She was always booked on United. It was the airline she had “status” with, and when she wasn’t on her private jet, she always flew United.

In fact, Sheryl’s team was playfully poking fun at Sarah for flying Asiana back to D.C., because they saw it as an inferior airline — an airline Sheryl would never even consider.

So you see what I’m getting at here. 

Sheryl Sandberg pretended that she was almost in a plane crash just to get attention.

She saw an opportunity to gain sympathy from her adoring public, and fabricated a story. But for me, the most egregious detail is that she was fully aware that her team would know that her story was a big fat lie — and this didn’t give her pause. 

According to Sarah, Debbie Frost, a senior communications executive who was on Sheryl’s United flight, was tagged in the phony Facebook post, and had to deal with the flood of media requests that followed, told Sarah:

“I don’t know why she posted it. I don’t know why she tagged all of us.”

This is one tiny anecdote about Sheryl Sandberg floating in a sea of other (more serious) accusations, which include her obliterating boundaries and abusing her staff, converting human catastrophe to strategic advantages for Facebook, and creating a culture of fear and humiliation. 

But the reason it stuck out to me is because when the rest of us lie, we do it hoping no one will ever find out. We would be morbidly embarrassed to get caught in a lie that we told to gain sympathy.

Sheryl simply didn’t give a shit.

That’s diabolical.

Joel Kaplan was Sarah Wynn-Williams’s boss for the second half of her 7-year tenure at Facebook. He sexually harassed her. She reported him to his boss, and to HR. She was then retaliated against, and eventually fired.

It’s a horrific, yet not uncommon, story.

(And yes. Joel Kaplan is still at Facebook/Meta. He got promoted to the C-Suite.)

After reading Sarah’s account, I realize that I’ve misunderstood sexual harassment my entire life. Because I always assumed the motivation was pretty straightforward: sexual attraction. 👇

While under Joel’s purview, Sarah nearly died in childbirth. She badly hemorrhaged, lost half the blood in her body, and slipped into a coma. 

And upon returning to work, Joel repeatedly asked her where she was bleeding from, in an attempt to force her to use the word “vagina”.

He asked relentless questions about her breastfeeding/pumping routine.

And he sent her an email quizzing her on her knowledge of the “Dirty Sanchez” (for the love of god don’t google it).

F*cking sicko.

And maybe I’m naive, but none of this sounds like a man executing a particularly effective plan to get laid. Which made me realize that getting laid wasn’t the point. 

Humiliating Sarah was the point. 

Demonstrating his power over her was the point.

Joel could ask questions that would earn almost any other human an immediate “go f*ck yourself”, but he knew Sarah had to calculate the professional consequences of telling him to get bent, and the evidence would indicate he got a sick little thrill in seeing how far he could push her.

Until he finally pushed too hard, she complained, and it was time to fire her.

Reading about Sarah’s saga with Joel was a stomach-churning reminder of the time I got fired by an abusive boss.

Sarah and I both tried to handle the situation diplomatically. We didn’t want to be squeaky wheels. We didn’t want to be labeled as “difficult”. And we both had the same plan—

Get transferred to another department, and get away from the asshole who was abusing us.

In both cases, our transfers were denied, and we were fired.

This brings us to Mark Zuckerberg. Careless People does a beautiful job of illustrating Zuck’s transformation from hostile nerd to power-obsessed narcissist.

And like I mentioned before, as critical as I am of his behavior, I don’t shame him as harshly as Sheryl Sandberg and Joel Kaplan. Zuck’s a cockroach, but they’re the slumlords knowingly renting out cockroach-infested apartments to the unwitting world.

There’s a reason I feel this way—

Zuck can’t learn right from wrong when he’s surrounded by people who constantly kiss his ass.

According to Sarah, Zuck loved playing board games with his executive team. It was a way to pass time on long flights, which sounds innocently charming. But there was an unwritten rule:

You don’t beat Zuck.

Sarah describes her colleagues intentionally letting him win because he was a painfully sore loser. These are grown-ass adults, presumably among the smartest and most accomplished people in Silicon Valley, throwing a game of Settlers of Catan so their billionaire boss wouldn’t throw… a temper tantrum.

It seems like a trite anecdote, but if your employees are afraid to tell you that you lost a board game, how the hell are they supposed to tell you that you lost an argument?

That your new product is dangerous?

That your strategy is wrong?

That entering a country without understanding its politics might get people killed?

Every leader has blindspots, an ego, and an occasional dogshit idea. The protection against those things is supposed to be other people. People who aren’t afraid to disagree with that leader.

But the more powerful Zuck became, the fewer of those people remained around him, and eventually Facebook ended up with a CEO who has controlling shares in the company, and a completely distorted view of reality.

So yes, Zuck is a cockroach. But cockroaches only become a problem when somebody lets the f*cking infestation spread.

When Careless People was released last year, Meta immediately went after Sarah Wynn-Williams through private arbitration, arguing that publishing the memoir violated the non-disparagement agreement she signed when Facebook fired her. Sarah claims that document was signed under financial duress.

So while they work that shit out, an emergency arbitrator ordered Sarah to stop promoting the book and stop publicly discussing Facebook/Meta.

What this means is that Meta can publicly attack Sarah and her book, but she’s legally gagged. She can’t respond. That is, until the arbitration is resolved, which if Zuck has anything to do with it, will be never.

This sounds… typical.

Here’s why I personally believe Sarah’s account of her years at Facebook:

Many of her claims have already been proven through U.N. investigations, congressional hearings, and corroborated accounts. And if she wasn’t lying about Facebook targeting vulnerable teenage girls, its Chinese censorship program, or its role in Burmese genocide, it’s unlikely she’s lying about Zuck throwing a hissy fit when he loses a game of Monopoly. 

Also, I felt an uncanny kinship with Sarah while reading Careless People. In smaller and less dramatic ways, I’ve been in her shoes.

Go read it, and let me know what you think.

Cheers! 🍻

-Kristin :-)

P.S. — I don’t just write Drunk Business Advice — I bring it to life on stage. And I’d love to speak at your next event. Hit reply or click here to learn more.