Started on 5.9.25, finished on 5.11.25

Here’s a little tip from me to you—the key to getting new library books right away is checking the app every day starting on the very first day you hear about the book and putting it on hold the very first day it shows up as having been ordered. And that is how I checked Careless People out from the library a mere two months after its publication.

In my mind, this book is tackling two problems that feel very separate but stem from the same place. There are stories of HR-type problems—some that come to mind immediately are Sheryl inviting the author to bed on the private plane, the author’s boss asking where she’s bleeding from after major childbirth complications, and the author being told she wasn’t available enough while she was on a maternity leave during which she almost died. Then there are stories of world-level problems—details of things like Facebook’s truly, truly disastrous rollouts and expansions into various countries, the plans to expand into China, and the 2016 election.

These are very different types of problems, but to me, the author’s argument, which I think she makes very well over the course of the book, seems to be that the way Facebook’s senior leadership makes decisions and thinks about people and the world is leading to and allowing all of these issues. It’s very well-crafted, and while I thought I knew plenty about Facebook’s issues before, the book is full of information and stories presented in a way that really contextualizes the issues.

There were a few things that bothered me. The main one is that it felt like the author was positioning herself as completely helpless, when that sometimes doesn’t seem to be the case—or at least, it’s hard to understand how it would be the case based on the information we’re given. One example is the way she portrayed the reasons she couldn’t leave her job. I understood her argument about how hard it would be, but there is a point where you simply have to do everything in your power to stop doing the work you’re doing, and I think she passed that point and then some, and then some more. The way she talked about money also seemed intentionally opaque—she wants the reader to feel that she was never making a lot of money, but that doesn’t seem realistic at all. Even if you start out at a lower point than some other people because you didn’t know to negotiate, director-level roles at Facebook simply do pay a lot. She was almost definitely making a whole lot of money, and the obfuscation of her financial situation seemed intentional to me—like she wouldn’t want readers to know how much she was making so we couldn’t judge her for not leaving.

A more minor criticism is that there were some stories that struck me as quite exaggerated—the story of when she stood up to Mark while they were playing board games is one example. Another example was when she tried to convince us that Mark was telling her she had to move to San Francisco with an email that … very much did not say that. She insisted it was there between the lines, but we need more evidence than what she presented if we, as outsiders, are going to be on board with her assessment.

Lastly, I really, really hated all the incomplete sentences. They got so grating toward the end, good gracious!

I know that was a lot of complaints, and I’m sorry! I really liked the book overall and I think it’s a great read. I devoured it in a single weekend, and I definitely recommend picking it up.

Click here to buy this book on Bookshop.org

My favorite quotes:

“We run a website that connects people. That’s what we believe in. We want more. We want it to be profitable and to grow. What else is there to say? There is no grand ideology here. No theory of what Facebook should be in the world. The company is just responding to stuff as it happens.”

“‘Do you mean to tell me that if my four-year-old was dying and the only thing that would save her was a new kidney, that I couldn’t fly to Mexico and get one and put it in my handbag?’”

“It’s just Sheryl, in an arbitrary flex of power. That seems to be how she operates, unpredictable, keeping us all on edge. Never quite knowing when she’ll strike, so we’re never tempted to push any boundaries, even the simplest ones. Strict rules, selectively enforced and the baseline of ever-present fear. It ensures we obey in advance.”

“The expectation at Facebook is that mothering is invisible, and the more skilled you are, the more invisible it is.”

“She said matter-of-factly that they would probably follow the cycle of wealth she’d observed at Google and Facebook: exotic travel for a year or more before becoming bored of that, then transitioning to getting very fit or some other personal goal. After achieving that goal, buying a boat or some other extravagant hobby purchase, and then finally getting divorced or going through some other personal crisis. If they come back from that, maybe they attempt their own start-up or fund or, most likely, philanthropy.”

“In fact, when a woman I work with closely expresses surprise upon learning I have a child, she tells me, ‘Good job!’—openly admitting the fact that she’d had no idea—and I feel a flush of pride.”

“We know that many of the global leaders we’ve built relationships with are coming to the end of their terms; some are already gone, and in some cases we’ve already successfully transitioned to their successors. I’m struck by the impermanence of importance. And yet Mark could conceivably continue to hold his place chairing world leaders for another fifty years. He’ll see these leaders off and the generations of leaders that follow them. Like the queen.”

“Internal Facebook groups are starting to see posts from employees asking if they could move to different teams where they could ‘try not to be morally implicated.’”