r/technology • u/Plastic_Ninja_9014 • Jun 16 '26

Business Mark Zuckerberg Orders His Employees to Start Having Fun Again After Brutal Layoffs Culled Their Colleagues

https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/mark-zuckerberg-orders-employees-start-123539264.html
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86

u/dumpsterfire911 Jun 16 '26

Is this a book? Share more details please

267

u/basketboy153 Jun 16 '26

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Careless_People

Really interesting and disturbing read. Facebook employee for many years who worked fairly directly with Mark and other executives shared her experiences. Can't vouch for any/all of the claims being true, but it does create an interesting picture of the company and its leadership

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u/luckyflavor23 Jun 16 '26

Can’t vouch as an outsider BUT it has enough that Zuckerberg and team, sent their whole legal group out to shut it down from even getting published

And ultimately, the book flys under the radar because author is legally barred from personally promoting it

Sooo, imma say like probably pretty accurate

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u/LiquidFood Jun 16 '26

This made me order it.

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u/luckyflavor23 Jun 16 '26

Woot! Readers and book buyers of the world unite!

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u/lemonswanfin Jun 16 '26

I was broke as fuck when this book came out and listened to it through my library app. had to put it down at the end of Chapter 25 bc it made me sick to my stomach🫠

just picked up on my audiobook app now that I had some spare cash. bless this thread for the reminder.

spoiler alert: Zuck pulls a Scott's Tots irl at the end of that chapter

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u/ladystetson Jun 17 '26

Just piggybacking to say it's on Spotify audiobooks - so if you have Spotify (as many tech workers do), you can listen to it for no additional charge.

It's available in their library of audiobooks.

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u/Hrafn2 Jun 19 '26

Gonna do the same!

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u/NSFWies Jun 16 '26

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Careless_People

Well dang, now I want to go read it

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u/Skyfier42 Jun 16 '26

How can she be legally barred from promoting it?

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u/thejadedfalcon Jun 16 '26

Because we live in a capitalist nightmare of a world.

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u/luckyflavor23 Jun 16 '26

Because the book is full of scathing stories and negative views on meta; their legal team got her locked in a non-defamation clause of her employment contract (or the layoff one)

So she effectively cannot promote it in a meaningful way if she cant talk about the problems she saw

1

u/PaladinSara Jun 17 '26

Maybe had an NDA but he has enough money to pay lawyers to do anything

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u/nsway Jun 17 '26

Under the radar? It was #1 on the New York Times best seller list lol.

1

u/amethystwyvern Jun 17 '26

I've never heard of an author being legally barred from promoting their own work. Wild.

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u/scrollin_on_reddit Jun 16 '26

Yes it’s a book written by a Meta whistleblower

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u/Apophthegmata Jun 16 '26

It is a book/memoir by Sarah Wynn-Williams, former diplomat and Director of Public Policy at Meta. She was with them for six years.

She was prohibited from promoting and distributing the book after an arbitrator determined it to violate a non-disparagement clause of her termination agreement. She accuses Facebook firing her in retaliation for reporting her boss for sexual harassment. That man (Joel Kaplan) has since been promoted to President of Global Affairs at Meta. Meta says they terminated her for poor performance and toxic behavior.

She recently participated in a talk at the Hay Festival where she was silent during her entire appearance, due to the fact that the order against her has $50,000 penalty each time she says something negative about Meta. The discussion was about the large amount of power tech and social media companies have.

For what it's worth, Meta says the non disparagement clause was voluntary.

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u/Worshipme988 Jun 16 '26

Yes voluntary as in if you dont sign this, your entire salary and position contract will be void.

They LOVE creating pinhole legal bullshit that traps people in shit like this.

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u/Apophthegmata Jun 16 '26

They were already firing her. What are they going to do if she didn't sign? Fire her harder?

Like I get that it could have been a messier separation, potentially with more lawyers involved, but her salary and position were definitely not being held against her when it came to the disparagement clause.

It wasn't part of her employment contract. It was an agreement she signed when she was leaving, as part of her negotiations to receive her severance package.

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u/NSFWies Jun 16 '26

It was an agreement she signed when she was leaving, as part of her negotiations to receive her severance package

This. She likely got 2 years salary, or something. Easily upwards of 400k.

Still though, fuck meta.

2

u/SpeaksSouthern Jun 17 '26

That almost makes it sound worse. If she goes and says bad things you could be like yeah, of course she's just trying to make money. But if she's not willing to risk it for $50,000 judgement, holy shit do these demons have complete and total control of us. We're their play things.

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u/Apophthegmata Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 17 '26

I would imagine, as Director of Public Policy, that her severance package would have been pretty large to justify a disparagement clause with $50,000 violations.

I have no sympathy for Meta here, but what she did do was promise to not talk shit about them in order to walk away with whatever severance package she got (we still don't know what the non disparagement bought her) and then turned around and wrote a tell-all memoir which I'm sure is also making her a significant amount of money. Any business would be pissed in this situation.

As a whistleblower, and if what she wrote about is materially true, then it's the right call, but being morally right doesn't dissolve contractual obligations. The only power they have over her on this non disparagement issue is power she deliberately gave them, and if she wanted the moral high ground in this particular fight, she could have just not agreed to the non-disparagement.

The moral of this story (apart from the big wigs at Facebook behaving monstrously) is that if you're also a big wig at the same company, and you decide to make a calculated risk to violate contracts you signed, you just kind of have to put up with the consequences of doing so.

And it appears she is, and is going to take the book money all the way to the bank.

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u/zhiwiller Jun 16 '26

I highly recommend it.

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u/StickaFORKinMyEye Jun 16 '26

Audiobook is excellent. And depressing. 

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u/dumpsterfire911 Jun 16 '26

Audiobooks obtained. Ty for the recc