Started on: Mar 26th, 2025
Finished on: Apr 8th, 2025
Memoirs are by definition biased, which means you have to always put things in perspective and exercise caution while forming judgement. However, it is seldom that you get an insider look into the dirty underbelly of Big Tech, partly because it can be a career suicide and partly because the lawsuits make the rest of your life miserable. Which is why this book was an illuminating ride.
I belong to that community which is more commonly referred to as “nerds”. I enjoy tinkering with stuff, going into obscure rabbit holes, live and breathe technology, get into heated and passionate debates about the hacker spirit, and someone who used to deeply admire Mark Zuckerberg. I grew up with Facebook, got inspired by Mark’s yearly challenges, watched the engineering culture at Facebook with envy and aspired to build something great like Facebook.
Things started taking a turn for the worse in my early twenties. I started feeling more isolated the more time I spent on Facebook and started seeing the hypocrisies of Mark - how he would fiercely protect his privacy while violating his users’, how he viewed this entire thing as more of a power game than building cool stuff and having fun. All of this is abundantly clear when you read this book.
There is nothing earth shattering here, nothing that you have probably not read about in online columns. The author keeps making the point that she could not leave the job because she thought she could do more change from the inside than outside (haven’t we all heard that before). But it still feels impactful to hear how power corrupts from within. How cool engineering without moral values is just a façade.
I’ll recommend this not on literary merit, but on having the courage to speak truth to power.