Careless Folks Made Me Like Sheryl Sandberg

Careless Folks is a really gratifying ebook, and, relying on who you speak to (and presumably based mostly on how a lot Meta inventory they nonetheless personal), folks with data of the occasions within the ebook both strongly agree with creator Sarah Wynn-Williams or they say she’s full of shit. However in the middle of her scathing evaluation of constructing one of the crucial harmful and highly effective political instruments in historical past, she additionally did one thing magical: She made me like Sheryl Sandberg.

As a lady, I do know it’s offensive to say I by no means a lot cared for Sheryl Sandberg, the previous COO of Meta and the particular person everybody agrees made the corporate a monstrous success. I used to be there within the early 2010s when “I went to a dwell studying of Lean In” was a bragging proper amongst skilled ladies who have been all desperate to show that they too had the stuff to construct one thing formidable whereas by no means absolutely becoming a member of the boy’s membership. Like a imaginative and prescient out of Eighties Hollywood, Sandberg was a working lady, decked out in trendy energy fits, with a platoon of assistants and a loving household, too, and she or he bought this promise to a number of different ladies with a lot smaller paychecks and much fewer assistants.

I at all times thought Sandberg’s bit was an excessive amount of. Her victory lap as a supreme Lady Boss felt baldly like a instrument to market her ebook as a substitute of a philosophy she lived by. She appeared to venture a picture the place each flaw was rigorously chosen to additional the story of womanhood she was promoting. It felt like simply one other iteration on the deeply annoying and offensive adage “a lady can have all of it.”

After which I examine her determined makes an attempt to get clout on-line by claiming to have practically been a passenger on a flight that crash landed, or utilizing a piece journey as a chance to advertise her ebook and take the household on trip, and she or he felt scandalously human. By revealing anecdotes about her desperation and greed, she lastly felt like one among us, as a substitute of some form of totem for working ladies.

Wynn-Williams’ Sandberg is a fragile creature who could be form and sharp and capricious and merciless. Like this excerpt from the day she met then Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe:

I could have already been in search of proof to substantiate my sense of foreboding however after I arrive at Sheryl’s suite on the Ritz-Carlton the morning of the assembly, I see a stunningly lovely Japanese lady, completely made up and stylishly dressed, quietly crying outdoors it.
“Are you okay?” I ask tentatively.
She nods. The tears streaming down her cheeks in some way make her much more impossibly pretty.
At that second Debbie comes bundling out of Sheryl’s suite and pulls me shut.
“I wouldn’t go in there.”
“Why?”
“You have been going to go in there, weren’t you?”
“Um, yeah—what’s occurring?”
“Main concern with the make-up and hair.”
“Is that who’s crying outdoors the door? The make-up artist?”
“Ah, yeah. The make-up was a catastrophe and let’s not point out the hair. I imply, I feel it was principally nice, however Sheryl hated it and a few of her directions have been misplaced in translation and it’s all come to a head.”
“Or on her head?” I attempt to pun. Debbie ignores it.
“Oh god. Is it a cultural factor?” I ask. “Like was the make-up artist doing what she thinks Western ladies need? Fairly eighties? It’s nonetheless actually early. Are you able to get another person?”
“Ah, that was the another person. She already fired the primary make-up artist.”
“Ouch. She made her cry too? Okay, so I’m guessing a 3rd make-up artist isn’t going to occur.”
“No, I feel she’s going to do it herself, however this doesn’t bode properly for the day forward.”
This can be a facet of Sheryl I’ve not seen earlier than.

On this alternate, we don’t even see Sandberg, however we are able to already see she’s nervous—as anybody can be assembly a head of state. And when she’s nervous, she’s imply. The remainder of the chapter retells the assembly, in addition to Sandberg’s desperation to get a photograph of the Prime Minister holding her ebook. It reads like a farce of highly effective ladies in enterprise, and I’ll admit to pondering Wynn-Williams was exaggerating.

But here’s that photo of Sandberg and Shinzo Abe. You possibly can see her glee. You possibly can see his amused confusion. You possibly can see she posted this picture after he was assassinated as proof that she as soon as met him.

And all of that, whereas not the picture Sandberg seeks to convey, makes her a lot extra likable. The ebook will get darker and darker because it goes on and Wynn-Williams realizes simply how terrible the ramifications of Fb’s growth-at-all-costs mentality are. However having lived by all of it and watching simply how horrible Meta’s impression can be on democracy, I discovered one thing charming in Sandberg’s humanity.

Certain, she might need helped arrange the autumn of multiple nation, however she actually was only a lady making an attempt to do her greatest.