Like many folks, I recently read the explosive memoir Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams. Her title is borrowed from a line in The Great Gatsby where Tom and Daisy are called careless people who let others clean up the messes they’ve made.
The author’s memoir is a detailed account of her time at Facebook, tracing her beginning as an optimistic true believer about the new technology to her utter disgust at the company and its leaders.
Jennifer Brown
Honestly, I knew nothing about this person or book until news articles began popping up about Meta, Facebook’s parent company, suing to prevent its release. Then Washington Post critic Ron Charles said he’d been contacted multiple times by Meta about both the book and how he was going to cover it. Charles stated, “In my 27 years of reviewing and editing newspaper books sections, no company has ever done this with me.”
This raised red flags and made me curious enough to read it myself.
Actually, I listened to Careless People as an audiobook. Wynn-Williams reads it herself, which is made even more fun by her delightful New Zealand accent. The book does provide fascinating insight into the culture and leaders at Facebook. It tells the all-too-common experience of sexual harassment and toxic power dynamics.
She finally helped me figure out why I’ve always disliked former Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s 2013 book Lean In. Wynn-Williams highlights the hypocrisy of Sandberg’s championing female empowerment while privately chastising Wynn-Williams for her newborn being heard on Zoom calls. Sandberg’s advice is not to make Facebook a better company for new mothers, but rather she should hire a Filipino nanny because they are “the most service oriented.” Sandberg’s entire book is about individual effort while ignoring all systemic issues.
“What has captured me the most, however, is Meta’s attempt to block the book.”
What has captured me the most, however, is Meta’s attempt to block the book. The company has warned this book is nothing more than the thoughts of a disgruntled employee who was fired due to “insubordination” and “poor performance.” The company successfully filed a court injunction to prevent Wynn-Williams from promoting the book and declared it is a violation of the “non-disparagement clause” in her severance agreement from Facebook.
Reading between the lines, it’s clear Wynn-Williams was required to sign some sort of NDA in order to receive any financial compensation upon her termination. Companies usually don’t pay severance to employees who were terminated for above-board reasons like “poor performance.” Instead, severance packages with a required NDA are offered when mistakes and misconduct have occurred on the employer’s part. The financial support is tied to employees’ silence. This practice is egregious and everywhere.
A 2018 study published in Harvard Business Review found one in three workers have signed an NDA, which is an insanely high number. Ironically, NDAs originally were created in Silicon Valley to help companies protect new technology. In practice, they function to protect the toxic institutions and mostly male misbehavior from consequences.
Not telling the truth about abusive workplaces or people solves nothing. It simply ensures the abuse will continue. I expect this kind of behavior from the secular business world, even though I believe it’s deeply wrong. What I find abhorrent is when Christian organizations and churches do the same.
I believe NDAs are antithetical to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus tells us he is truth and truth will set us free. There is no deception in God. The role of half-truths and slander belongs to the devil. As Christ followers, we are called to be truth tellers. Naming both good and bad in our lives and world. Truth can be painful, but any trauma therapist will inform you that telling the truth it is what heals.
You may assume only conservative evangelical organizations Kanakuk camps employ NDAs. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. I personally know of three women just last year in moderate/progressive Baptist life whose severance was dependent on NDAs. The most documented case is the termination of Brittany Caldwell, who served as co-coordinator of the Great Rivers Fellowship region of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. My congregation ultimately left the region over the mishandling of the situation.
The number of female church members and clergy who have been harmed by the weaponization of NDAs is unknown, but a single woman is worth protecting from this completely preventive situation.
I encourage everyone to check out the resources on the #NDAfree website. Explore what policies, if any, your faith community has around NDAs. Finally, advocate to your denomination to pledge not to use NDAs. The time to commit to such a policy is now, before a crisis arises.
Together, we can become more honest, faithful truth-tellers in our world.
Jennifer Brown serves as senior pastor of University Baptist Church in Hattiesburg, Miss. She is a proud graduate of Duke Divinity School and Belmont University.
