Careless Peopleis a very enjoyable book , and , depending on who you talk to ( and presumptively based on how much Meta origin they still own ) , people with knowledge of the event in the Christian Bible either strongly harmonise with generator Sarah Wynn - Williams orthey say she ’s full of tinker’s damn . But in the course of her scathing assessment of building one of the most dangerous and hefty political tools in history , she also did something magical : She made me like Sheryl Sandberg .
As a charwoman , I know it is offensive to say I never much cared for Sheryl Sandberg , the former COO of Meta and the individual everyone agrees made the company a monstrous succeeder . I was there in the early 2010s when “ I go to a live reading ofLean In ” was a bragging right amongst professional char who were all eager to prove that they too had the stuff to work up something ambitious while never to the full fall in the boy ’s club . Like a sight out of 1980s Hollywood , Sandberg was a function womanhood , decked out in stylish power suits , with a platoon of assistants and a loving menage , too , and she sell this promise to a lot of other women with much little paychecks and far fewer help .
I always think Sandberg ’s act was too much . Her victory lap as a supreme Girl Boss feel baldly like a putz to market her book instead of a philosophy she lived by . She seemed to externalise an image where every flaw was carefully chosen to further the story of womanhood she was selling . It palpate like just another loop on the deep pesky and violative saw “ a char can have it all . ”
Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg testifies during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Sept. 5, 2018 in Washington, DC.© Drew Angerer (Getty Images)
And then I show about her desperate attempts to get poke online by arrogate to have nearly been a passenger on a flight of stairs that clank shore , or using a work trip as an chance to promote her book and take the family on holiday , and she felt scandalously human . Through revealing anecdotes about her desperation and greed , she finally felt like one of us , instead of some kind of totem for working womanhood .
Wynn - Williams ’ Sandberg is a fragile animate being who can be genial and acute and capricious and cruel . Like this extract from the day she met then Nipponese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe :
I may have already been looking for grounds to corroborate my sense of foreboding but when I come at Sheryl ’s suite at the Ritz - Carlton the morning of the meeting , I see a stunningly beautiful Nipponese woman , utterly made up and stylishly dress , quietly crying outside it . “Are you okay ? ” I ask tentatively . She nods . The weeping streaming down her cheeks somehow make her even more impossibly adorable . At that moment Debbie make out bunch out of Sheryl ’s retinue and pulls me tight . “I would n’t go in there . ”“Why?”“You were going to go in there , were n’t you?”“Um , yeah — what ’s happening?”“Major consequence with the makeup and fuzz . ”“Is that who ’s crying outside the door ? The make-up artist?”“Ah , yeah . The composition was a calamity and allow ’s not name the hair . I think of , I think it was basically fine , but Sheryl hat it and some of her teaching were lost in translation and it ’s all come to a head . ”“Or on her head ? ” I seek to pun . Debbie ignores it . “Oh god . Is it a cultural thing ? ” I ask . “ Like was the makeup creative person doing what she remember westerly woman require ? Quite eighty ? It ’s still really former . Can you get someone else?”“Ah , that was the someone else . She already fired the first makeup creative person . ”“Ouch . She made her call too ? Okay , so I ’m guessing a third make-up creative person is n’t going to bump . ”“No , I think she ’s going to do it herself , but this does not bode well for the day forwards . ”This is a side of Sheryl I have not seen before .
In this exchange , we do n’t even see Sandberg , but we can already see she ’s uneasy — as anyone would be meet a head of DoS . And when she ’s neural , she ’s have in mind . The residue of the chapter retells the meeting , as well as Sandberg ’s desperation to get a photo of the Prime Minister holding her book . It reads like a farce of muscular women in job , and I ’ll admit to thinking Wynn - Williams was hyperbolise .
But here ’s that photo of Sandberg and Shinzo Abe . you may see her hilarity . you may see his amused confusion . you’re able to see she posted this effigy after he was assassinated as proof that she once met him .
And all of that , while not the ikon Sandberg seeks to fetch , progress to her so much more likable . The book gets darker and darker as it goes on and Wynn - Williams realizes just how amazing the ramifications of Facebook ’s growth - at - all - costs mentality are . But having lived through it all and watch over just how terrible Meta ’s impact would be on democracy , I found something charming in Sandberg ’s humanity .
Sure , she might have help oneself sic up the fall of more than one nation , but she really was just a char trying to do her best .
FacebookMETASheryl Sandberg
Daily Newsletter
Get the best tech , science , and culture news in your inbox daily .
News from the future tense , delivered to your present .
You May Also Like
