Now that I’m writing and publishing my own book, I’m trying to develop a discerning eye for the details of a book’s construction. Debbie Berne’s The Design of Books is where I’m picking up the words of the trade.
Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams
- Planted:
I read Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams.
It’s one of those face-the-music books that I’d recommend to almost anyone, whether you work in tech or not.
One thing I kept wondering: are all the quotations in the book—or any whistleblowing book like it—approximated from Sarah’s memory? Did she take loads of notes, or find recorded meetings (which still wouldn’t cover everything)? When did she know she’d whistle blow? I’d like to know the etiquette and ethics around these kinds of books.
On lying
According to Sarah, Mark Zuckerberg lied point blank in Congressional hearings, like about Facebook in China. Sheryl Sandberg is a liar, too. She lied about almost being in a deadly plane crash, posting on Facebook that she and her team were originally booked on a flight from Seoul to San Francisco that ended up crashing.
You get the sense they have zero moral compass or remorse. About putting their own employees at risk, or even literally in prison, in other countries. About terrorism, which Sandberg described in an internal email as good for Facebook because it tilts governments toward surveillance and away from privacy. About fueling then doing nothing to stop genocide and sexual violence in Myanmar.
Facebook leadership crosses all sort of other lines, beyond honesty. Like Joel Kaplan and Sheryl Sandberg’s sexual harrassment of subordinates. On her private jet, Sheryl would ask/demand that members of her team, including Sarah, come to bed with her and chastise those who did’t obey (also Sarah).
On Internet.org
The book included a bit of coverage on Zuckerberg’s Internet.org project, which wasn’t the internet and wasn’t a nonprofit org. It sounds like he cared about it for a while then stopped caring (a recurring theme), and many developing countries might be worse off than before.
On the “longer than normal handshake”
There were moments of comedic relief. Joel Kaplan didn’t know Taiwan was an island. Zuckerberg cheats at Settlers of Catan (er, sort of—his cronies let him win, and he accuses others of cheating).
In 2015 Mark tried to get Xi Jinping to come to Facebook headquarters for a meeting, but Xi decided to go to Seattle to meet with Microsoft and Amazon instead. So Zuckerberg decides he’ll fly up to Seattle to meet with Xi there. But the meeting gets downgraded to a “pull-aside” then further downgraded to a “longer than normal handshake.” But then Zuck even botched that photo op, accidentally offending Xi by positioning the longer-than-normal handshake such that Xi’s back was to the camera. And finally: during the l-t-s handshake he asked Xi to name his unborn child, and Xi refused.
On “careless people”
Careless people was the right name for the book. Its namesake is this sentence from The Great Gatsby:
They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.
Except that Mark and Sheryl et al prevented other people from cleaning up the mess they made while continuing to make an even bigger mess. I had this sinking feeling while reading the book as it built up to the 2016 election. In a Facebook board meeting, a board member (Thiel or Andreessen, you’d guess) suggested cozying up to far-right European parties because they’d be less likely to regulate Facebook. By now it’s unsurprising to hear that Zuck and other Big Tech leaders are more than willing to embrace the authoritarian turn here and around the world to protect and advance their business interests.
The words
As with any book, I learned some new words and turns of phrase. Maybe partially from Sarah’s New Zealand-based English lexicon. I mostly didn’t record my findings, save for:
- A “naif” is a naive person
- I always heard it as “brass tax,” but it’s “brass tacks” (whoops!)
Everything but the words
Its title and cover caught my eye on the shelf at Bookery well before I’d heard about this book (I came back to buy it many months later). I read the hardcover, taking off the jacket as I always do. Its construction looks pretty standard if not budget, with sewn signatures glued a bit haphazardly to the case/spine and the front case board warping already. No decorative head and tail bands or anything. Paper-colored paper stock and a sensible serif for the body text. Published by Flatiron Books.