Careless People

In October 2012, more than 1 billion people were using Facebook. This milestone caused management to panic, as the company needed growth to keep its stock rising. They were “running out of road” (69). As a result, the search was focused on increasing usage in foreign countries, and Wynn-Williams became relevant. Myanmar, run by a military junta, blocked Facebook, and Wynn-Williams was told to go there to sort out the problem. Wynn-Williams was reluctant to go. She describes the capital of Nay Pyi Taw as empty of cars and her hotel as basic without electricity, hot water, cell service, or food.

At a meeting of the World Economic Forum there, Wynn-Williams encountered a member of the junta and identified herself as a representative of Facebook. She was then informed at her hotel to attend a meeting at the Ministry of Communications the next morning. After overcoming travel difficulties, Wynn-Williams arrived and had her passport confiscated. She was terrified as she was led into something like a “dimly lit feudal court” (78), with men approaching her and shining a light in her eyes. However, the men were astonished to see a live person from Facebook, which was equivalent to the Internet in their view.

She asked the junta why they blocked Facebook. She then offended the military leaders by holding up her phone, noting that it was useless. The meeting ended at that point, but they agreed to unblock Facebook and talk before they blocked it again. After returning to her hotel, her partner, Tom, fearing for her safety, contacted her and was angry over her lack of communication with him. Wynn-Williams was pregnant, and Tom did not think that this trip was a good idea.

In March 2013, Sandberg published her book, Lean In, and became a celebrity. The book argues that women can succeed both at home and at work by having self-confidence, being committed to work before having children, speaking the truth, and talking about barriers faced by women in the workplace.

Wynn-Williams had to help with promotional events for the book. She was required to accompany Sandberg to Japan and asked to set up a meeting with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Facebook was not popular in Japan, but Wynn-Williams got the meeting by noting that it would help Abe’s agenda to keep Japanese women in the workforce. The meeting was successful, as Abe was interested in Facebook’s disaster response tool since Japan had experienced tsunamis. Wynn-Williams then gave Abe a copy of Lean In and quickly snapped a picture. Abe was not happy, as he had insisted that he did not want to promote the book.

Sandberg was thrilled and complimented Wynn-Williams on their successful meeting. Wynn-Williams gave credit to the team, but Sandberg chastised her for doing so. When they flew out the next day, an Asiana plane leaving at a similar time crash-landed in San Francisco. Sandberg posted that she changed flights and narrowly missed being on that plane, which was not true.

While Sandberg could be charming, she also had a temper and would sometimes arbitrarily “blow up” at her employees (96). She was incredibly demanding, requiring Wynn-Williams to provide her talking points for a meeting when Wynn-Williams was about to give birth to her first child, Sasha. Sandberg then told Wynn-Williams to hire a Filipina nanny, which the author did.

When on a trip with Zuckerberg to Mexico, Tom called Wynn-Williams to report that a firefighter was inside their apartment and that there was no sign of the nanny. Wynn-Williams mentioned the incident to the others present. Everything ended up resolved: The nanny was locked out accidentally and had contacted emergency services.

At Wynn-Williams’s performance review, she was told not to mention such stories about her child. Mothering, Wynn-Williams concludes, had to be “invisible” (103). She says that there was a “big difference between what people at Facebook sa[id] and what they d[id]” (103). In reality, management’s work/life balance was made possible by extraordinary wealth.

In 2014, Wynn-Williams was ordered to go to Colombia with Olivan to a tech conference. Zuckerberg was working on a plan to provide limited Internet services to places without them, a project that would become “Internet.org.” In May 2014, however, Chile’s government made it illegal to give such free Internet services, “effectively banning the venture before it [was] even launched” (108).

Hoping to win over other Latin American countries, Olivan and Wynn-Williams were in Colombia to obtain its partnership on the venture. To demonstrate the challenges of connectivity in the jungle to the Facebook representatives, the Colombians took Olivan and Wynn-Williams deep into the jungle, where there was no electricity or privacy. Wynn-Williams, who was breastfeeding and had to pump, had no option to do so and was in “excruciating pain” (109). She ran into a similar problem on a Turkish airlines flight that September.

Later, there were plans to travel to South Korea, which had an open arrest warrant for Zuckerberg. The government of South Korea requires that games get rated and approved, and Facebook had failed to acknowledge that law. The company refused to accept that any governments, besides the US and Ireland, had power over them.

Since growth in Asia was important to Facebook, Zuckerberg planned to take the top managers of the company with him on the trip. The goal was partly to build ties with Samsung, perhaps getting the company to preload Facebook onto its phones. Fearing that Facebook representatives might be arrested upon arrival, management decided to send Wynn-Williams ahead of the management. She was shocked at the willingness of the company to get one of its employees jailed.

Tom was outraged at this proposal to send Wynn-Williams to South Korea to see if she was arrested. He reminded her that she had a seven-month-old baby at home. Wynn-Williams says it never occurred to her that she could refuse Facebook’s directive. Tom suggested that she had Stockholm syndrome, as she regarded her employers with “trust and affection they d[id]n’t deserve” (117).

Wynn-Williams was only able to convince Facebook not to send her by noting that they needed her at work to make the trip successful for Zuckerberg. Management did not care about her personal safety. Another person was sent and was not arrested.

Traveling on a private jet with Zuckerberg’s inner circle was uncomfortable for Wynn-Williams. En route to South Korea, they stopped at a luxurious resort in Indonesia. Wynn-Williams was invited to swim with the management team. She hurried to buy a one-piece bathing suit to cover her scars from the shark attack. After dinner, they played board games. It became obvious to Wynn-Williams that the others were letting Zuckerberg win, and she said so. At that point, “the dynamics in the room shift[ed] and not in a good way” (126).