"voluntarily" is doing a lot of work there. I don't disagree with the facts here, but I do with this particular qualifier which implies a level of willingness to sign away rights was something that she (or anyone in that position) wanted. She was likely very strongly pressured to sign it with various threats and consequences if she didn't. So she did sign it, but lets not pretend her choices at that moment were many and/or equal when faced with the law team of a trillion dollar company.
It's doing even more work when you're aware that, at one point, the NLRB had banned non-disparagement clauses in severances and employment agreements outright, stating that even offering these terms amounted to coercive behavior that prevented people from discussing their working conditions. [1]
it has a lot of work to do yes, but is still slacking off at its job when she signs it voluntarily, takes the consideration, then violates it and pays no consideration in return.
The book talks about the conditions when she was fired. She was suffering from life threatening medical problems from complications from a pregnancy. Not hard to see these terms as coerced given the medical and financial problems she was facing at the time.
Can you elaborate on the financial problems she was facing? She seems to have been a highly paid Facebook exec who would have had great health insurance. And if her employment was in the US she could keep that insurance through COBRA for between 18 and 36 months.
Life threatening medical problems are obviously horrific and she has my full sympathies. But I'm having a tough time drawing a from that to "coercion" for someone who was a director at Facebook.
She reported not being particularly high paid compared to her peers. When she was hired Facebook didn't care at all about her area (government relations).
As that became more important her role grew but she was never really promoted.
She also was not well informed about how tech compensation works and negotiated poorly (no stock) she came from an NGO background in New Zealand.
Her salary was probably quite a bit more than the average American but she was living in expensive areas (DC and SV) and interacting with extremely wealthy people. At one point Sheryl Sandburg got annoyed that she was leaving work for childcare and told her to hire a live-in nanny. She was living paycheck-to-paycheck on a high income with no wealth accumulation (many such cases).
OK, then honestly it's hard for me to have any sympathy for the idea that she was "coerced". She was being paid lots... but wasn't getting paid even more?
If you're an executive at Facebook, you should know how to research negotiation and compensation, and figure out a living situation where you're saving money. You're in the big leagues. If Sheryl expected her to be able to hire a full time nanny, then that's an excellent time to renegotiate a salary than can afford that.
If you're an entry-level worker who can't make ends meet in San Fran then of course I sympathize greatly! But if you're an executive at Facebook making enough money that you can even consider a full time nanny... you're not facing any level of "hardship" by which an offer of even more money in exchange for non-disparagement could be considered "coercion". Nobody is in poverty here. Nobody is going to wind up hungry or on the street.
That's what I don't understand. How can a high-up executive at Facebook be living paycheck-to-paycheck?
If I made, say, $300K/yr and was living paycheck-to-paycheck with zero savings after many years with the company, I'd say I was making highly irresponsible spending choices.
And she had a husband too, who sounds like he was working.
So something's just not adding up. It doesn't make any sense that a director-level executive at Facebook is 1-3 months away from "poverty".
COBRA means you pay the full cost of the insurance. So suddenly instead of paying $150 you are now seeing a $500 or more bill, especially if your employer is a major company that pays for all sorts of benefits. COBRA is a joke when you consider you just lost all source of income.
> The point is, you're not suddenly facing ruinous bankrupting medical expenses.
This is a powerful assumption given how expensive medicine is in the US - even with insurance - and how often people in their adulthood need medical treatment.
> The point is, you're not suddenly facing ruinous bankrupting medical expenses.
COBRA is going to cost her in the range of $3k-6k/mo. Then on top of that she's still going to have to pay all the co-pays and other out of pocket expenses. So probably going to need to hit like $10k in out of pocket expenses before she starts to be fully covered, at least for the things that are covered and in network.
I'm not sure what issue she ha{s,d} but I'll say that when my mom had cancer my dad was a top salesman for a major insurance company, we had the best plan you could get, and despite that they paid well over a hundred grand in medical expenses. This was 2 decades ago, he was making over a quarter million a year, and we were living on a very tight budget. Even if we had a lot in the bank I'm certain my family would have been completely financially ruined had we added the expenses of COBRA and removed the loss of income.
I do not think you're looking at the reality of the situation clearly. Maybe you're right, but none of us know the full details. My point is that the explanation is far from an unreasonable one, so it cannot be dismissed so easily. We'll need to know more to determine if your intuition is correct. But as of now, it is certainly too hasty
IIRC, part of the reason that so many countries have specific "here's money specifically for retirement" things (pensions, 401k here in the US) is that many people just don't plan far ahead very well.
If entry-level and lower-paid workers aren't saving money then that's understandable. That's why these government programs exist.
If you're an executive at Facebook, I think you have the ability to plan things well. If you still can't save any money, at that point it's hard to see how it's not just your fault.
She wasn't an executive in the sense you're thinking and certainly wasn't hired as one. She was hired to work in an area Zuckerberg never cared about and never gave anywhere near sufficient resources to.
She's described as an executive and as a director in articles.
I don't know what other sense there is? And what possible relevance is there of the relationship between her role and what Zuck thought? I'm sure Zuck doesn't care much about accounting or HR either. Lots of well paid executives work in areas of corporations that aren't the founder's main focus. That's the kind of problem most people would love to have.
Directing an area is very different from the title (or compensation) of Director, and it's certainly not equivalent to Director in a tech organization. SWW was hired as "Manager of Global Public Policy" but the book never indicates that she ever has reports or is a manager in that sense, which is generally a requirement to be understood or perceived as a "Director".
If you're surprised media articles don't ask questions and get basic facts wrong, go read any article about a topic you have direct experience with.
The articles don't seem to have gotten any basic facts wrong.
She had director in her title and reported directly to a vice president, Joel Kaplan, who is now a C-level officer. She managed staff.
That's seriously high up in the corporate hierarchy at Facebook. Feel free to read more:
"She managed a growing staff and oversaw government relations for entire continents, including Asia and South America. She reported to corporate vice presidents and had direct contact with Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, then the chief operating officer."
So again, I don't what you mean by "wasn't an executive in the sense you're thinking". She's seems to be exactly an executive in the sense that everyone thinks.
> She's described as an executive and as a director in articles.
I once met with a person who used to be a vice president in a major US bank. I was impressed, until much later when I discovered that there were three thousand “vice presidents” in that bank.
VP is a low rank at a bank but a high rank at Meta. I would be very surprised if anyone at Meta with VP in their title made less than $1M total compensation. "Director" at Meta is also a high rank.
...while rejecting all meaningful suggestions and actions. It's very obvious throughout the story he doesn't care about the impact Facebook has on the world.
Zuck cares about growing into China. He cares about powerful people pretending they like him. He couldn't give less of a care about people dying, about his platforms being used to spread misinformation, about that misinformation corrupting elections and descending the world into authoritarianism, about the spread of hate speech, or anything else.
Ask your local nurse or schoolteacher how they feel about being "thanked" while everyone keeps voting against any meaningful change that would actually help them.
Not to mention that sometimes you'll need to be reimbursed rather than have them cover costs directly. They too are a profit maximization company, you can bet they want to pay out all little as possible and delay payments as long as possible.
Just a few months ago a close friend was denied her diabetes medication because her bloodwork showed her levels (of whatever they were testing) were nominal. The problem is, those tests showing normal is the exact thing you'd measure if the medication is working (if she was somehow no longer diabetic and taking medication then the levels also wouldn't her nominal). Her and her husband both have medical degrees too, and it took weeks to get the insurance to agree to cover the costs. All because someone only knew how to look at some spreadsheet but not how to interpret that data... (a common occurrence, even in our (HN's userbase) own field)
I'm not sure why this is shocking to anyone. Did we forget Luigi Mangione so quickly? His actions speak to the level of frustration Americans have with this system. You do not need to condone his actions (which I do not) to recognize the plight he represents.
$500? Ours was $2800/mo for a family of three and this was 2018 (Not FANG, big pharma)
Yes the original plan was great. No, we didn't need a plan that great. No we couldn't "downgrade". With the bigger income suddenly gone, coming up with $2800/mo in cash was a huge problem. COBRA is useless for many/most, unless your coverage is shite and the cost to the employer low.
when you are fired, you are free to disparage your former employer. she was not free to do that because she signed away that right, and you can only sign away something in exchange for something, which she obviously took.
when you don't mention or acknowledge this aspect, you are not making a convincing argument. perhaps they gave her a very attractive severance package, and you don't know that they didn't, so how can you draw a conclusion?
life threatening health problems is not a free pass to "i get whatever i want", not for me, not for you, and not for her, although we know that in the world of Karens it is an entitlement.
What’s likely is that she was offered more generous compensation in return for things this. This is pretty standard stuff. What “threats and consequences” are you suggesting?
In all likelihood the “voluntary” part was an exchange for accelerated stock vesting or similar. Could have walked away without that financial gain, signed the non-disparagement agreement to walk with the stock vested.
I don't think that's true in most situations. I think most companies would still pay a severance out of a general effort to smooth things over, and some sense of social loyalties.
And some aspects of the agreement would be fine. No spilling actual business relevant secrets, nothing that would count as libel or slander, etc.
Nope, they'd have security show you the door and maybe threaten to sue you into the ground if you talk. They choose mkney because money is easier, but if you take this option away, you just get the stick and no carrot.
True but not the ones who will be firing you. At least not in big corp, it would be some HR worker who doesn't know you from Adam and couldn't care less about you.
But then Facebook would have had no incentive to offer the agreement to her. And she must have been very happy with what she got in the deal, given she gave up the option of talking about all the apparently horrible misdeeds she witnessed while they were still fresh, rather than a decade later.
Plenty of companies have nonenforcable clauses in their contracts. Either by momentum or stupidity. That's despite the inclusion of such conditions can often void a contract in its entirety.
Is there an incentive to have unenforceable clauses? Yes, of course. The same way one might be incentivized to say they will harm you if you do not do what they want even if they have no intention of harming you.
It's called "a bluff". Play some poker, you'll see how effective this strategy really is.
A company can craft whatever document they want. That doesn't make them legal. The laws of the jurisdiction they're in always beat whatever you're signing.
Best example in software are non competes.
A company can make you sign something that doesn't allow you to do any software development when you're a developer.
You can sign that today then do the opposite tomorrow because that's just against the law.
How it's not voluntary? She didn't face prison if she didn't sign, she faced having less money. She chose more money. What other threat coukd facebook apply beyond not paying severance?
> She was likely very strongly pressured to sign it with various threats and consequences if she didn't.
Like what? If it's something you sign when you leave, it generally comes down to whether you want some level of severance payments/accelerated vesting or not, even when you're fired (when you're at the executive level).
Basically, the company says: if you agree not to sue us or disparage us, here's a bunch of money.
There are no threats. The consequence is, if you don't sign, you don't get the extra money. It's completely and entirely voluntary.
She was a highly paid executive who chose to get even more money in exchange for keeping her mouth shut. Now I think it's great she wrote the book, I love transparency. But nobody can be surprised Facebook is taking legal action when she presumably took their money under an agreement not to disparage. Nobody made her take the extra money.
Remember this next time you have cancer and get fired, and then have the option to “voluntarily” sign something to keep receiving money until hopefully you’re well enough to look for a new job.
I think where most people disagree with you is that this is not the bar. I think you'll find that most people agree with you in some sense but have a drastically different bar. If you can't recognize this then there's no productive conversation to be had
I didn't say that was the bar, I just used it as an example of being clearly below the bar.
All I'm saying is that if a director-level executive who had worked at Facebook for years doesn't meet the bar as someone who can sign financial agreements without being coerced, then essentially nobody can. And then where does that leave us? Nobody is allowed to negotiate and sign contracts because everything is considered coercive?
At some point you have to be considered an adult who is responsible for the agreements you enter into. (Unless there's actual coercion, you know like you're at gunpoint, or if a contract is based on fraud, etc.)
> without being coerced
> you know like you're at gunpoint
I think this is the other part where people are using wildly different bars. It seems like you're in the camp that since no one put a gun to her head that she wasn't coerced.
Legally speaking, coercion doesn't require threats of physical harm, it also covers threats of financial or legal harm as well. So your interpretation is clearly too extreme.
There's a lot of gray area here and these non disparaging agreements are without a doubt in them. If you have an expectation of getting a severance package, like many companies offer as incentive programs (much like they used to offer pensions) and you later learn that you only get it on the condition of a non disparaging agreement, that can be reasonably interpreted as coercion. Is it or is it not is up to the lawyers, but let's not act like a situation like that is not in the gray area.
You keep mentioning her salary. Does anyone have actual numbers? We see people who read her book saying she was living paycheck to paycheck, so what's the argument? She's bad with money? Okay? So what? What difference does that actually make? It anything her lack of good financial planning (a thing most people aren't good at, regardless of income level) makes it easier to strong arm her. Again, is that coercion in the legal sense? Let's let the lawyers figure that out because we're just two idiots talking on the internet who don't have nearly enough information to make good conclusions.
But honestly, I'm more curious why you're so invested in this and quick to vilify her. We've had a lot of conversations over the years and I don't recall you ever being so quick to judge. Why is it that we're talking about her legal authorization to discuss Meta executives and not she claimed they did. Shouldn't that be our main concern? We shouldn't believe her outright but we'll have to make our own judgements on that, but isn't that the real story here? I care more about that than if she changed her mind and is now facing legal troubles. The answers to the truth of what she claims is critical to determining if her non disparaging contract was even legal and if she can be prosecuted for violating it. If she's a true whistleblower then it doesn't matter what she signed because the contract wouldn't legally be able to cover such things.
So at the end of the day, why does it matter. Right or wrong we're concentrating all our efforts on the wrong discussion. We're idiots in the Internet, not lawyers. But we are also Internet users and her claims have implications for all of us. So who fucking cares if she violated her contract or if the contract is invalid, what matters most is the validity of her claims. Why are we all acting like the validity of the contract has any influence on the validity of her claims. We're being fucking insane right now
I don’t really feel bad for the author. Most of these separation agreements - especially at higher levels - are generous golden parachutes with the stipulation that you don’t do damaging things like working for a competitor (while on garden leave) or disparage the company.
I am not aware of their separation agreement being published, but you have to be a special type of stupid to work for Facebook as an exec, get a $500k advance on a book you wrote about Meta, and then go bankrupt. From the limited information I have I can see why Facebook fired her.
You need to feel afraid for the ability for a corporation to so easily get you to surrender your own fundamental rights.
It’s not a coincidence you rarely hear stories like this in Scandinavian or even broader European countries because they have basic safety nets that mean you don’t need to sign away your rights in order to just live peacefully.
They are using the same kind of exit NDA used to coerce OpenAI employees who left that organization. We should all be afraid for ourselves as these organizations turn into black boxes where the only people who could speak out feel they cannot. This thing where you stop working for a company but they can still penalize you financially if they don’t like your annual “post-employee performance” evaluations is Kafka-esque.
Just to clarify, OpenAI did change their agreement (to some degree) after the SEC put pressure on them. In Facebook’s case the SEC has been notably silent despite the calls from US senators (AFAICT).
I am all for safety nets, and I actually live in a country with stronger safety nets than the USA, but I still don’t feel sorry for the author who basically has had every card to be extremely wealthy and squandered it.
Also realize that it isn’t private companies job to fix the broken social system in the USA, usually separation agreements for high paid employees offer severance well above and beyond the legal requirements (I have seen 3 months to a year including accelerated vesting in some cases), and a condition of accepting those benefits above and beyond the laws is you don’t disparage your employer. If you don’t accept the agreement you get the bare minimum according to the laws but you are then not bound to the disparage clauses.
Ok, so the fact that the USA has no laws for severance is the problem, not the fact that companies who pay severance above and beyond what is required of them comes with strings attached. If severance was legally mandated people could tell the company to pound sand when they push an exit contract on you.
It blew my USA colleagues when I told them I can take over a year of legally mandated parental leave and there is nothing the company can do about it.
