Sheryl Sandberg on Wednesday said she’s stepping down from her role as Meta’s chief operating officer after 14 years as CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s deputy. Sandberg will be replaced by chief growth officer Javier Olivan but will retain her seat as a board member of Meta, which has a renewed long-term vision.
Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg says she’s leaving the company after almost a decade and a half of serving as the company’s second in command. The executive posted on Facebook that she’ll serve as the COO until the upcoming fall when the transition of her direct reports is complete.
Sandberg, who expected to be at Facebook as COO for five years when she joined in 2008, leaves after 14 years. “The debate around social media has changed beyond recognition since those early days,†wroteOpens a new window Sandberg. “To say it hasn’t always been easy is an understatement.â€
Sandberg’s task at hand at the time was to extract value out of the then four-year-old startup. She took over advertising on the Facebook platform and helped a young 23-year-old CEO find footing on Wall Street, which eventually led the company to become the profitable social networking behemoth it is today.
“We’d built a great product — the Facebook website — but we didn’t yet have a profitable business and we were struggling to transition from a small startup to a real organization,†Zuckerberg wrote in a separate postOpens a new window . “Sheryl architected our ads business, hired great people, forged our management culture, and taught me how to run a company.â€
Sandberg’s previous experience included developing AdWords, AdSense, and online sales channels at Google. Meta’s 2021 revenue, most of which came from ads, was $117.9 billionOpens a new window with 2.91 billion monthly active users and 1.92 billion daily active users. However, the pace of Meta’s revenue growth has declined ever since Apple introduced App Tracking Transparency last year.
However, Sandberg’s time at Meta, especially the last four or five years, was also marred by a series of PR gaffes. This includes a WSJ report of Sandberg killing a story in the U.K.’s Daily Mail about a temporary restraining order against Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick, her boyfriend at the time.
Sandberg, who is considered a feminist icon, faced internal scrutiny at Meta when the story broke out in April. It is unclear if her decision to leave Meta is related. However, Sandberg’s departure is “non-shocking,†according to Drew Pusateri, Meta’s former strategic communications manager.
I have no real thoughts on Sheryl as a person/leader but this will be an incredibly non-shocking departure to basically everyone inside the company
— Drew Pusateri (@drewpusateri) June 1, 2022Opens a new window
In recent days, Sandberg was also in the thick of a storm over her dismissive attitude towards Facebook’s alleged involvement in the January 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection. Her conduct during the phase when Facebook allegedly helped Cambridge Analytica access data of over 85 million users also earned a great deal of criticism.
Facebook’s alleged involvement with Cambridge Analytica, which influenced the 2016 presidential elections, didn’t work out well for Sandberg, a Democrat who was expecting a cabinet position in the Hillary Clinton administration had she been elected.
See More: Cambridge Analytica Scandal: D.C. Attorney General Sues Mark Zuckerberg
Nevertheless, Facebook’s rebrand to Meta signaled a shift in the company’s disposition away but not detached from social media, to a metaverse company. In recent years, the team Sandberg nurtured has been elevated to leadership positions. This includes Nick Clegg as president of global affairs, Jennifer Newstead as the chief legal officer, and Marne Levine as the chief business officer.
Sandberg’s role in Meta’s metaverse ambitions, come fall, will exist only as of the company’s board member as she will retain her seat. Sandberg told The Verge, “The opportunity and the challenge are the same. This is a company that has to build the next business while it’s running its current one.â€
“If you remember, we went public with no ads. No ads! No ads on mobile at all. And that mobile transition happened very quickly,†she added. “We only had ads on the desktop, so we had to run the desktop business while migrating on to mobile. I think this is going to be an even bigger transition than that, but this is a team that knows how to make transitions like that.â€
Zuckerberg confirmed that Sandberg is being replaced by Javier Olivan, Meta’s current chief growth officer & VP of cross-Meta products and infrastructure. “Javi will become our next Chief Operating Officer since he will now lead our integrated ads and business products in addition to continuing to lead our infrastructure, integrity, analytics, marketing, corporate development and growth teams,†Zuckerberg wrote.
“But this role will be different from what Sheryl has done. It will be a more traditional COO role where Javi will be focused internally and operationally, building on his strong track record of making our execution more efficient and rigorous.â€
“I think Meta has reached the point where it makes sense for our product and business groups to be more closely integrated, rather than having all the business and operations functions organized separately from our products,†Zuckerberg said.
Sandberg said she’ll focus on her foundation Lean In and philanthropic work.
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