In a new tell-all book, a former senior Facebook employee claims, among other things, that employees used to let founder Mark Zuckerberg win at Settlers of Catan.
As former Facebook executive Sarah Wynn-Williams told NBC News ahead of the release of her new memoir, titled “Careless People,” Zuckerberg insisted that his underlings weren’t losing on purpose.
“You don’t want to win that way?” Wynn-Williams, a former diplomat from New Zealand who worked as Facebook’s director of global public policy from 2011 until 2017, recalled asking the CEO and founder.
“I’m not winning that way,” he insisted.
That insight into what makes Zuck tick, alongside other telling details — including his belief that Andrew Jackson, the architect of the genocidal “Trail of Tears,” was the best American president — paint the portrait of an out-of-touch tech founder who oversaw a toxic work culture that ultimately led to Wynn-Williams’ departure.
The thrust of the book reportedly centers around the sexual harassment she suffered at the hands of Joel Kaplan, who was at the time Facebook’s vice president for global public policy and Wynn-Williams’ boss. In an email exchange about her US citizenship test viewed by NBC, Kaplan asked the NZ native if she would be quizzed on the racist and sexually-charged term “dirty sanchez.” In another instance, the executive asked Wynn-Williams after she’d given birth “where are you bleeding from?” and later told her she looked “sultry” at a work event.
Ultimately, Wynn-Williams was fired in 2017 after filing a workplace harassment claim against Kaplan that she believes was unfairly turned against her. In her interview with NBC, the ex-Facebook executive said she thinks her termination was retaliatory, though Meta insisted when reached by the outlet for comment that she was let go for “poor performance and toxic behavior.”
Along with accusing her direct supervisor of harassment, Wynn-Williams also said in her interview that she was uncomfortable with interactions she had with former chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg when the two were working together.
In 2016, the ex-employee alleges, the “Lean In” author repeatedly asked Wynn-Williams to share a bed with her on a flight from Davos, Switzerland back to California. After refusing, Sandberg reportedly told Wynn-Williams that she “should have got into bed,” and later seemed to marginalize her at work.
On another unsettling occasion, which Wynn-Williams also detailed in a whistleblower complaint she filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Sandberg allegedly instructed another employee to spend $13,000 on lingerie for the COO and staffer. This demand came over email, which NBC reviewed. Through her family foundation, Sandberg declined to comment on the claims.
Though Meta is insisting the former exec’s book is a “mix of out-of-date and previously reported claims about the company and false accusations about our executives,” it also attempted to persuade a judge to hold an emergency hearing ahead of the book’s publication this week as the company sought to halt its publication and make its own edits.
In a statement, Flatiron Books, Wynn-Williams publisher, said that Meta was trying to “institute a gag order to silence our author” and that it has no responsibility to provide the company with “the opportunity to shut down her story.”
This behind-the-scenes look at Facebook’s inner workings are especially fascinating now that the company is essentially operating without content moderation — and looking to get into bed with President Donald Trump while doing so.
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