I finished the book during this run. Interesting book. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that celebrities are not real people with normal emotions and basic needs. Ironically, this book does a good job of humanizing Mark Zuckerberg.

The way her colleagues treated her towards the end of the book was terrible. Despite that, throughout her time at Facebook, she has this unwavering optimism for Facebook to be able to do something good. That part baffles me. What good things was she hoping Facebook would do? Alternatively, maybe she was hoping simply to stop them from doing bad things. In the end, despite her attempts, she was unable to do either.

I would have liked to understand what she would have done with full power over Facebook’s decisions. She wouldn’t have let Facebook operate in China. She would have stopped the explicit targeting of young people. That’s a big step in the right direction, but I would argue the company would still have a net negative effect on the world.

There are federated alternatives to Facebook, open source and not controlled by one company. There are ways to regulate tech companies more stringently. There are ways to regulate how politicians are allowed to interact with tech companies and billionaires to keep them from corrupting politics.

I realize that having your job tied to your equity package is tough, but I don’t feel that bad when you’ve bought a house backed by a multi million dollar equity package from a company that you know so well to be incredibly flawed. Anecdotes about trying to suggest moral decisions to a billionaire fall a bit flat when you step back and realize she’s being paid to drink champagne on a private jet.

All this said, I did find the book educational and I will be recommending it to my friend who works at Facebook 😎

Stats

Route

View on Strava

Photos