“I was there for seven years, and if I had to sum it up in a sentence, I’d say that it started as a hopeful comedy and ended in darkness and regret.”
Sarah Wynn-Williams, “Careless People,” 2025
Sarah Wynn-Williams’ memoir is a make-sure-your-seat-backs-and-tray-table-are-in-their-full-upright-and-locked-position ride through her turbulent tenure as Director of Global Public Policy at Facebook, beginning in 2011.
I’ll leave the allegations and tech-policy debates to others; they’re well covered, and I won’t presume to comment. These views are mine alone and don’t represent my employer.
What I can expound on is the kindred spirit I found in Wynn-Williams. How these experiences, as she described them, seem to have remade her.
Like her, I once joined an organization because I was idealistic and wanted to be a force for good in the world. Also like her, that story ended in disillusionment and pain.
I couldn’t help but remember that earlier version of me (nearly twenty-five years ago now!), so naive and trusting, excusing my leaders’ behavior because I so badly wanted to hold on to “the mission,” even as I curdled into the worst version of myself.
Her story had me re-living the hope that I could change the culture from the inside, and the gravity-drop when it hit me that that was impossible. The acid sting of my own complicity. The free-fall of leaving. Realizing those responsible were not sorry, and they would not change.
She reminded me that the worst part of the disillusionment wasn’t the stuff the organization did, it was how careless they were about it when the effects of their actions were so clearly pointed out. How little they empathized with those they damaged and how exceedingly hard they worked to keep things the way they were.
As Wynn-Williams says, at the end, “Instead of fixing these things, this ongoing suffering they caused, they seem indifferent.”
For anyone who has believed in someone’s capacity for goodness more than they believed in it themselves, it’s a hard lesson.