Bad bosses

Facebook is rotten, we knew that, but did you hear about the advertising industry?

Housekeeping: I had a shout out today on the utterly brilliant Older & Wider podcast which means quite a few people reading may be new. I just want to reassure you I don’t often write about books I’ve read/Facebook/bad bosses.

I used one of my precious Audible tokens to buy the Facebook expose ‘Careless People: A Story of Where I Used to Work’ by Sarah Wynn-Williams.

(Finding the link to this book through google was just further confirmation that Facebook is a hilariously controlling PR machine. They’ve gamed google search terms so that positive Facebook content pings up, rather than this book detailing all their bad behaviour. I mean, it’s not a surprise is it, but also, have a day off Facebook).

I had to listen to Careless People in small bursts. It was too much like the 15ish years I spent working for multiple, quite frankly, bonkers men. Not at Facebook, in the UK advertising industry.

Now, I need to be utterly honest with you here and explain that Careless People, despite sounding like a George Michael track, is in no way as engaging. It’s drawn out, long-winded and a bit whiny. And I give you that short and mean review whilst also being glad Sarah wrote this, pleased that the dastardly folk of Facebook have been exposed, happy that Sarah got out. I’m no victim blamer, but (ha!) I found myself at various points wanting to shake Sarah firmly by her shoulders. GET OUT SARAH. NO GOOD CAN COME OF THIS SARAH. THEY WON’T CHANGE SARAH.

But I have also been Sarah, so I get it. We are the same age, Sarah and I, but I felt like I was listening to a tale told by a much younger woman. Perhaps I am an old witch at heart, perhaps Sarah has a whipper snapper spirit. I came to the sad understanding that some work places (and people) are rotten to the core back in my early thirties and the only way to handle them is to avoid. In my youth I wanted to change the world from the inside, in my middle age I just want to save myself. The young aren’t the selfish ones, that’s for sure.

Okay, enough of this navel gazing. I’m going to give you the low down on the very worst of Sarah’s Facebook alleged behaviour and then follow up with some of my own adland memories.

NB: Before we begin, it’s worth remembering one thing about Facebook, something I have definitely been guilty of ignoring - it’s not a nice woolly fuzzy thing to share pictures of your pets on or to update Auntie on little Charlie’s first words. Facebook profits by users staying on the platform for as long as possible, by selling targeted advertising. And what keeps people online for longer? The grubby, nasty stuff. Just because you or I aren’t interested in Facebook’s crackpot posts by the conspiracy theorists, the racists, the homophobes, the woman haters (etc etc), doesn’t mean others aren’t. The display of inflammatory content is extremely effective in keeping people on Facebook for longer. In short, the more abhorrent the content, the more money they make. Scary stuff.

Okay, no more asides, here’s what Sarah spills:

1. Mark Zuckerberg comes across as a spoilt toddler in way deeper than he realises or can cope with. For example, he doesn’t seem to understand that by allowing a Facebook delegation to work with Trump’s team to “shitpost its way to the White House” he was in part responsible for his election success. Once he finally accepts his culpability, Zuckerberg, like a little boy left out of the big boy’s more exciting game, copies Trump and considers running for President himself. He even begins to organise a tour of swing states.

2. Zuckerberg is so babyish and fragile that his team let him win at board games. I mean, I have to ask why a group of adults working in a corporate environment are playing board games together, but hey, I bloody hate the things, so let’s park that. On one occasion, Sarah gets fed up of this and tells Zuckerberg she’ll only join in if she’s allowed to play for real. Zuckerberg is incredulous when she wins twice in a row and accuses her of cheating. He doesn’t stomp his feet but I think he wanted to.

3. Sheryl Sandberg (of ‘Lean In’ fame, Mark Zuckerberg’s second in command), seems to have taken her catch phrase a little too literally. She was in the habit of inviting female subordinates to join her in the only bed on the Facebook private jet. This does not appear to have been an invite one should say no to. She once extended this invite to a pregnant Sarah, who declined. Sandberg later told her "You should have got into the bed". Sarah noted a decline in her relationship with Sandberg after this bed mate rejection.

4. Joel Kaplan (senior staff and boss of Sarah) repeatedly behaved in a sexually suggestive way to Sarah and other subordinates. Examples include grinding against Sarah at a work event, asking if she’d revised the meaning of ‘dirty sanchez’ (please don’t google this if you have a weak constitution) for a citizenship exam, expecting her to work throughout her maternity leave and then giving negative feedback for her not being responsive enough when she was in a coma. Also, asking her post birth where she was bleeding from and to explain breast feeding to him. Oh and he liked to take work video calls from his bed.

5. Senior Facebook staff do not allow their children access to social media, in fact many of their offspring attend Steiner schools where screens are rejected. Fine. So what? Well, whilst their kids are learning via storytelling and wooden counters, the parents are hatching plans to launch a version of Facebook for kids. Social media addiction is good enough for everyone else’s offspring, but not theirs.

6. Facebook courted advertisers with the option of targeting “thirteen-to-seventeen-year-olds across its platforms, including Instagram, during moments of psychological vulnerability when they feel ‘worthless,’ ‘insecure,’ ‘stressed,’ ‘defeated,’ ‘anxious,’ ‘stupid, ‘useless,’ and ‘like a failure,’”. How did they know these CHILDREN were feeling so miserable? Because they were tracking their deletion of selfies. Facebook took this as an ‘opportunity’ to suggest beauty brands serve up an ad at this very moment of self hatred. Do remember that this collusion in making CHILDREN feel crap about themselves is okay for my kids and your kids, but not theirs.

7. Being allowed to operate in China was such a focus to Facebook they dangled the possibility of giving the Chinese government special access to Chinese and Hong Kongese users’ data. Zuckerberg also asked Xi Jinping, the President of China, to name his first born child, who he wasn’t sure he’d even be at the birth of as “something more important might come up'“. Jinping declined.

8. Facebook went to great lengths to restore access in Myanmar (previously named Burma) after a government block. What they didn’t do is appreciate the extremely fragile political situation. Zero Burmese language support, ignoring hate speech and relying on just one local contractor to moderate content allowed anti-Rohingya hate speech and misinformation to spread. The result? Riots and the military-led genocide of between 25 - 43,000 people in a two year period, with over 700,000 people displaced as refugees. In one instance, a hate-filled video remained online for over seven hours because the only Burmese-speaking moderator was at a restaurant and chose to review the content only after dinner. Ultimately, Facebook steam rolling into a country without adequate understanding and support made them a key tool in inciting ethnic cleansing.

9. Facebook executives have outstanding arrest warrants in South Korea because of the company’s disregard for local regulations. In a meeting the senior team decide to send a "body", a sacrificial lamb if you will, to be arrested in order to assess the seriousness of the Korean authorities. Sarah initially considers taking one for them team, but decided it was too risky what with her being a mother. Another female colleague was sent instead. Luckily she wasn't arrested. A similar situation arose in Brazil when an employee was arrested due to Facebook refusing to hand over messages to the police regarding the threat of a judge being assassinated by a drug cartel. The blind allegiance of this employee to Facebook, of happily feeding himself to the lions, is discussed by Zuckerberg as a positive tale. So much so he wants to post about it on Facebook as ‘heart-warming’. The employee is released and so the story is never posted, however when Zuckerberg does meet the loyal team member he doesn’t remember his name. Time and again the worker bees are happily offered to authorities for sacrifice whilst the Queen’s remain cosseted.

10. After the Bataclan theatre attack in Paris where 131 people died, Sandberg emailed the leadership team to say “Terrorism means the conversation on privacy is ‘basically dead’ as policymakers are more concerned about intelligence/security.” Essentially an email spinning a terrorist attack as a positive for Facebook, given privacy concerns were threatening growth in many countries.

11. Sarah receives criticism for her baby being audible on work calls she receives at home and is later advised not to talk about family at work. Sandberg tells her to “Be smart and hire a Filipina nanny.” Why? Because “They’re English-speaking, sunny disposition and service oriented.” Sandberg also insisted Sarah prepare her a crib sheet of talking points when she was in active labour. The obstetrician intervened.

12. After traveling to Brazil for work, Sarah endures months of fear that she may have contracted Zika virus while pregnant (responsible for babies being born with severe birth defects). Her fears are dismissed by Facebook HR. Later she is asked to organise a trip for Zuckerberg to a Zika infected area. Sarah is responsible for creating a sealed environment and sourcing anti-contamination kit for Zuckerberg. The health of his future family is of paramount importance.

13. The sense of Facebook being an unforgiving place is probably most clear when Sarah describes witnessing a freelancer convulsing on the floor, foaming at the mouth and bleeding from her head. But nobody at the desks nearby helped her, instead remaining focused on their screens. As Sarah frantically asks the woman’s line manager if she knows her name and details for the emergency services, the reply is “But I’m very busy” and that “her contract’s coming to an end soon”. When the lack of care extends downwards in an organisation you know the rot has really set in.

There were many more examples of the recklessness, but I think these cover the lowlights. They’re in no particular order, as evidenced by Myanmar only featuring at number 8.

Before I carry on, don’t forget you can subscribe for free or for the price of a monthly coffee. Paid subscriptions mean I am safe from ever returning to the pits of hell (advertising):

I spent around 15 years working in advertising on and off. Sarah’s stories didn’t shock me. They just confirmed what I know to be true; that the desire to succeed can lead people and organisations down a morally suspect path.

I began my career in advertising at the end of the very hot 2002 summer. It feels like 5 minutes ago and yet it was a different era; we could smoke at our desks, there was a 5pm drinks trolley and drugs were left on your keyboard before 8am in white, named envelopes. Advertising felt like an extremely exciting, party focused industry, though I wasn’t entirely sure I was a part of the right group. I definitely heard about the fun, was sometimes included, but mainly I was an observer. Some of the stuff I saw wasn’t very nice. Ready?

1. Post recruitment to the graduate trainee scheme, one of the first documents we were required to sign waived the European law limits on working hours. Staff were advised in their first weeks to keep a toothbrush, toothpaste and a change of clothes at the office because all nighters may be required without notice. The remuneration for this level of commitment was 18.5k. Around £1300 a month take home, in a city where most rooms in a shared house were £600 at the time.

2. The year I joined, the male graduate was paid more on entry than the female graduates. When this was uncovered and we queried it, we were told he’d asked.

3. Senior male bosses took the new graduates out for dinner in their first week. Later, when comparing notes, it became clear that one boss had been touching the two female graduates legs under the table. In turn.

4. A yearly charity boxing night funded by the ad industry was a big opportunity to entertain important clients. The prettiest and thinnest female secretaries and PA’s were chosen to serve drinks to the clients. The female graduates were seated next to important male clients, usually aged 50+. One such client, the marketing director of a major bank, sat with his hand down the back of my dress. I was 22 years old. I mentioned it to the head of department and asked what I should do. He laughed.

5. It was common to give junior employees grunt work tasks late in the evening, especially on a Friday, thus scuppering their social plans. For example, being given non urgent photocopying and binding to do at 8pm that must be completed by Saturday morning.

6. Culturally, the most junior member of the team was expected to pick up the bill when entertaining clients, then to reclaim the costs through monthly paid expenses. This meant that a 21/22 year old needed to have at least £1000 in their personal bank account as a buffer. Expenses could only be paid monthly, not weekly. Senior staff rarely offered to pick up the bill.

7. Senior male employees would expense taking their clients to strip clubs when on a shoot (TV shoot, not game hunting). These expenses sometimes included services from sex workers. This was an open secret and laughed about. Boys will be boys huh?

8. Senior male employees were known to ply younger female staff with alcohol and drugs. One employee and I reconnected over 20 years later. She explained to me that she’d woken up in her own bed after being drugged, to find a board member masturbating over her face whilst another mid level male employee watched on. She had complex trauma from working in advertising and had been in therapy for years.

9. The poor behaviour of some male employees was tolerated and even treated as a joke. One was nicknamed the ‘mouth rapist’ because he waited until female colleagues were very drunk before kissing them.

10. Dedication to the business was expected. Working weekends was often required, as well as very late nights (past 11pm). It was normal to cancel holidays, with the company paying for the cost of the cancelled flights etc, no other recompense was offered. If you did make it on holiday you were still expected to check your emails, respond if required and take calls. I once took a call on the beach in India, the poor client had no idea, all they wanted was to discuss weed killer. Another time on holiday in the UK I had to go to hospital so turned my phone off. Upon leaving I had messages from my boss saying that he didn’t pay me the amount he did for me to turn my phone off on annual leave. I texted back and explained where I’d been (NB: I was pregnant at the time too). He replied demanding a photo of the hospital to prove my claim.

11. Clients were king, to the degree they could be abusive without consequence. Late one Friday night, on a 6 week secondment working from the client’s offices, some 200 miles from home, the Marketing Director called me a c*nt, about 2cm from my face, just me and him left at work. Why? Because the London office had sent him a mocked up ad with a typo. I called the agency back home to explain the situation and was told to stay put until the typo was amended. Now, look, back in those days I was a workaholic. There’s no way I’d have let a little C bomb stop me from fulfilling my purpose. BUT there was no concern for a 25 year old woman being alone with a very angry 50 year old man. The retention of the business was more important that any risk to an employee.

12. The safety of the staff was second to the productivity of the business. When three employees were pregnant (me included) the head of the agency instructed one of his team to come into the office despite being warned he had hand, foot and mouth disease and despite knowing that this put all those who were pregnant at risk. (Contracting hand, foot and mouth in late pregnancy increases the risk of stillbirth). I did catch it; luckily my son was fine.

13. There was a culture of proving oneself through showing zero regard for emotional well being. For example, when I emailed my boss to explain an employee (poorly performing, still in their probation period) wouldn’t be in for a few days due to his father dying, I was instructed to sack him. When I expressed concern that this may tip the guy over the edge given the shock of his bereavement I was told to do it, or there would be questions over my suitability to manage a department.

Mad, bad and dangerous. All a bit Bryon-esque though without the romance. What about you? Got a bad boss story? Come on, better out than in… do share.