Careless People: A Story of Where I Used to Work, by Sarah Wynn-Williams

The inside story of Facebook from a former employee.

​A former New Zealand diplomat with extensive experience in international affairs, Sarah Wynn-Williams early on saw that as Facebook expanded globally, it would find itself in moral and political trouble. She envisaged a role for herself in helping Facebook navigate these perilous waters and made a pitch to its leadership team. Her ideas and vision didn’t impress at first, but the times would soon suit her, and a position was eventually offered. 

Wynn-Williams started work at Facebook in 2011 and would eventually become the company’s global public policy director. The position would take her around the world to many important summits, hobnobbing with business leaders and prime ministers. Careless People, a memoir of her six years at Facebook, is notable for its coruscating portraits of former chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. She also claims that her supervisor, Joel Kaplan, sexually harassed her over many years. 

In the author’s telling, Facebook had an expand-at-all-costs culture that had little to no regard for the harm it caused, turning a blind eye to the help it indirectly gave authoritarian regimes. A gripping if stomach-turning read on corporate greed and how power deranges.

Careless People: A Story of Where I Used to Work, by Sarah Wynn-Williams. Published by MacMillan. $36.99

July 2025