Careless People
2025
- facebook (electronic resource)
- facebook (web site)
- facebook (firm)
- social media
- corporations, corrupt practices
- nonfiction
- memoir
- business
- politics
- biography
The story
From trips on private jets and encounters with world leaders to shocking accounts of misogyny and double standards behind the scenes, this searing memoir exposes both the personal and the political fallout when unfettered power and a rotten company culture take hold. In a gripping and often absurd narrative where a few people carelessly hold the world in their hands, this eye-opening memoir reveals what really goes on among the global elite. Sarah Wynn-Williams tells the wrenching but fun story of Facebook, mapping its rise from stumbling encounters with juntas to Mark Zuckerberg’s reaction when he learned of Facebook’s role in Trump’s election. She experiences the challenges and humiliations of working motherhood within a pressure cooker of a workplace, all while Sheryl Sandberg urges her and others to “lean in.” Careless People is a deeply personal account of why and how things have gone so horribly wrong in the past decade—told in a sharp, candid, and utterly disarming voice. A deep, unflinching look at the role that social media has assumed in our lives, Careless People reveals the truth about the leaders of Facebook: how the more power they grasp, the less responsible they become and the consequences this has for all of us.
What it’s like
Brisk, conversational first-person prose that reads like someone talking across a table: wry, exasperated, and quick to undercut its own grand moments with a dry aside. The sensory world is corporate and jet-lagged, a sequence of hotel suites, glass-walled Menlo Park offices, and cabins at altitude, with the particular flatness of airport lounges and conference-room fluorescence. Chapters move fast and the tone shifts often between anecdote and indignation, so it rewards reading in short stretches. The emotional register is anger held in check by humour, and the arc follows one woman's growing disillusion as she works her way up inside a company and watches its leaders grow less accountable, while she also navigates the strain of new motherhood in a demanding environment. Some passages are unsparing about sexism and workplace humiliation, and the account of corporate and political power is sharp and often damning, though it is not graphic in violence. It suits a long-haul flight, a weekend when you want to feel righteously outraged, or a curious reader after the inside story of big tech. It is for readers who enjoy candid, opinionated memoir and don't mind their comfort reading being a little bruising.
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