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A new memoir that paints Facebook’s parent company and its executives in a negative light is rising on Amazon’s Best Sellers rankings faster than you can ask a Meta AI assistant to define “Streisand effect.” Careless People, written by former Meta employee Sarah Wynn-Williams, was the No. 5 best-selling book on Amazon as of early Thursday afternoon, one day after an arbitrator ordered the author to temporarily stop promoting the book. Meta spokesperson Andy Stone applauded the emergency ruling yesterday on Threads, saying it affirmed that the “false and defamatory book should never have been published.” However, the legal fight appears to have drawn increased attention to Careless People, which was ranked around No. 81 shortly after Stone’s postmeaning it rose more than 75 places since then. Amazon’s sales rankings are based on recent activity around a product and tend to fluctuate frequently, but getting into the top five in the books category on any given day is an enviable position for an author. Additionally, the book is No. 1 in three subcategories: scientist biographies, politics and social sciences, and industries. What is Careless People about? Wynn-Williams worked as the global director of public policy for Meta when it was still called Facebook. She was fired in 2017 for what Meta describes as “poor performance and toxic behavior.” Careless People details her time at the social media giant and apparently contains unflattering portrayals of CEO Mark Zuckerberg and former COO Sheryl Sandberg. One claim in the book that has been making the rounds in media circles involves Zuckerberg’s attempts to enter China, which included supposed anti-censorship tools to appease the Communist government. Meta has said these details were reported years ago. What happens next? The arbitration order essentially prevents Wynn-Williams from saying anything critical about Meta, presumably until the two sides can privately arbitrate the matter. Reached for comment by Fast Company, a Meta spokesperson continued to cast aspersions on the author and pointed to the emergency arbitration ruling as a victory. “This urgent legal action was made necessary by Williams, who more than eight years after being terminated by the company, deliberately concealed the existence of her book project and avoided the industrys standard fact-checking process in order to rush it to shelves after waiting for eight years,” the company said. However, a spokesperson for Flatiron Books, the Macmillan imprint that published Careless People, didn’t seem ready to back down. The arbitration order has no impact on Macmillan,” Flatiron spokesperson Marlena Bittner told Fast Company. “However, we are appalled by Meta’s tactics to silence our author through the use of a non-disparagement clause in a severance agreement . . . The book went through a thorough editing and vetting process, and we remain committed to publishing important books such as this. We will absolutely continue to support and promote it.
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E-Commerce
A California federal judge on Thursday ordered six U.S. agencies to reinstate thousands of recently-hired employees who lost their jobs as part of President Donald Trump’s purge of the federal workforce. The ruling by U.S. District Judge William Alsup during a hearing in San Francisco is the most significant blow yet to the effort by Trump and top adviser Elon Musk to drastically shrink the federal bureaucracy. Government agencies are facing a Thursday deadline to submit plans for a second wave of mass layoffs and to slash their budgets. Alsup’s ruling applies to probationary employees at the U.S. Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy, Department of Interior and the Treasury Department. The judge said the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the human resources department for federal agencies, had improperly ordered those agencies to fire workers en masse even though it lacked the power to do so. It is a sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well thats a lie, said Alsup, an appointee of Democratic President Bill Clinton. Probationary workers typically have less than one year of service in their current roles, though some are longtime federal employees. They have fewer job protections than other government workers but in general can only be fired for performance issues. Alsup ordered the agencies to reinstate workers who were fired over the last few weeks, pending the outcome of a lawsuit by unions, nonprofit groups, and the state of Washington. He did not order the 16 other agencies named in the lawsuit to reinstate workers, but said he would promptly issue a written decision that could expand on Thursday’s ruling. A Veterans Affairs spokesperson declined to comment. A Department of Interior spokeswoman said the agency does not comment on litigation over personnel matters. The White House and the other agencies did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The plaintiffs include the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 800,000 federal workers. The union’s president, Everett Kelley, in a statement said the decision was an important victory against “an administration hellbent on crippling federal agencies and their work on behalf of the American public.” 25,000 workers Alsup last month had temporarily blocked OPM from ordering agencies to fire probationary employees, but declined at the time to require that fired workers get their jobs back. The plaintiffs subsequently amended their lawsuit to include the agencies that fired probationary workers. About 25,000 workers across the U.S. government had been fired as of March 5, according to a Reuters tally, and another 75,000 have taken a buyout. The Trump administration has not released statistics on the firings, and it was not immediately clear how many employees could be affected by Thursday’s decision. In the lawsuit before Alsup, the plaintiffs claim the mass firings were unlawful because they were ordered by OPM rather than left to the discretion of individual agencies. OPM has maintained that it merely asked agencies in a January 20 memo to identify probationary workers and decide which ones were not “mission critical” and could be fired, and did not order them to terminate anyone. The agency on March 4 revised that memo, adding that it was not directing agencies to take any specific actions with respect to probationary employees. OPM has pointed to the updated memo and to press releases by agencies as proof that it had no control over agencies’ decisions. Alsup on Thursday told the U.S. Department of Justice lawyer representing OPM, Kelsey Helland, that he did not believe that was true, and scolded the government for not presenting OPM’s acting director, Charles Ezell, to testify at the hearing. Ive been practicing or serving in this court for over 50 years and I know how we get at the truth, and youre not helping me get at the truth. Youre giving me press releases, sham documents, Alsup said. Helland said it was common for presidential administrations to prevent high-ranking agency officials from testifying in court, and that the information provided by OPM in court filings was enough to prove that it never ordered agencies to terminate workers. Along with the lawsuit in California, several other challenges to the mass firings have been filed, including cases by 20 Democrat-led states and a proposed class action by a group of fired workers. The Merit Systems Protection Board, which reviews federal employees’ appeals when they are fired, earlier this month ordered the Agriculture Department to reinstate nearly 6,000 probationary workers at least temporarily. Daniel Wiessner and Brendan Pierson, Reuters
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E-Commerce
From mass layoffs to a drastic turn away from DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) policies, Trump’s second term has already undoubtedly impacted office culture. A new survey shows how some of the newly implemented shifts are impacting women in the workplace. Resume Builder explored gender biases in hiring and workplace treatment over the past seven weeks, by surveying 864 full-time U.S. hiring managers. According to the results, nearly one in four (24%) of the managers believed women are less respected at work since Trump stepped into the Oval Office once again. It’s hard to believe that the new Trump administration could have such a far-reaching impact already. But Stacie Haller, Resume Builder’s chief career adviser, believes that dwindling DEI is largely to blame. The Trump administrations rollback of DEI initiatives has led to the dismissal of numerous high-profile women in government and the armed forces, often under claims they were hired solely for diversity, Haller said in the report. By assuming women were hired for equity rather than merit, it erases their qualifications and reinforces outdated biases. With fewer women in leadership, this shift is now influencing the private sector, making it even harder for women to compete for top positions against men. According to the survey, around 20% of hiring managers say that they have scaled back DEI initiatives in recent weeks. Of those 1 in 5 companies, 22% say they are less focused on hiring women. Likewise, 26% say promoting women into leadership roles has also taken a backseat. For women who are also mothers, or are planning to be, the results of the survey are more worrisome. Women are already well aware of how the choice to start a family diminishes future earnings (known to women as “the motherhood penalty“). A 2017 study conducted by Census Bureau found that from two years before the birth of a couples first child until one year after, a couple’s earnings gap doubles. The gap narrows as the child grows, but it never fully goes away. But according to the report, having even one child also impacts how hirable managers believe women to be. The report referenced data that showed that while 4% of hiring managers are less likely to hire a man or a woman with children, only 7% are less likely to hire an expecting father, as opposed to 20% who are less likely to hire an expecting mother. Federal laws prohibit hiring discrimination based on pregnancy, but that doesn’t mean that ingrained biasesperhaps that mothers are less committed, capable, or overall worthy of being hireddon’t stick, explained Haller. “This ingrained mindset continues to disadvantage women, despite legal protections. True progress requires a cultural shiftone that values family time and recognizes that supporting working mothers strengthens, not weakens, businesses.” The jarring truths about women’s already-present workplace challenges make a solid argument for keeping firm DEI policies to ensure women have the same opportunities as men. However, this new survey shows an undeniable trend, in just two months’ time, toward overlooking women, both when it comes to hiring and promoting them.
Category:
E-Commerce
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