Analysis: As a new book shows, growth and success has turned optimistic tech startups into corporate cesspits of greed, manipulation and contempt

In the early days of Google, the phrase ‘don’t be evil’ was both its motto and part of its Code of Corporate Conduct. By 2018, that phrase was history and so was the sentiment that that inspired it in many peoples’ eyes.

For many tech giants, growth and success has seemed to morph what were once benevolent and optimistic startups into cesspits of greed, manipulation and contempt. Descriptions of the inner workings of companies like Google, Facebook (now Meta), and Twitter (now X) portray dystopian hellscapes in which employees are treated like disposable cogs in an ever-grinding machine and competitors are squeezed out of the market by means fair and foul. It is a world where corporate leaders tell us that the biggest failing of civilization is that we have empathy for one another.

In Careless People, a new exposé of corporate life at Facebook/Meta, Sarah Wynn-Williams describes her seven years in the executive suite of that company. As a former diplomat from New Zealand, she joined Facebook believing that the internet could make the world a better place by fostering connections between people and communities.

But the corporate world she describes is one in which the internet was consciously used to spread hate, fear and division. It’s a book where the behaviour of top executives involving ongoing patterns of sexual harassment, exploitation and fawning worship of power-mad leaders reads like something from The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

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While I agree with many of the points Carolan raises, I believe her analysis misses a major factor in the development of toxic cultures in so many tech giants, namely the lionisation of CEOs and top executives. Leaders like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos have accumulated immense wealth and power, and they are sometimes treated like demi-gods in the business press.