Sheryl Sandberg will step down as COO of Meta Platforms after 14 years as a second-ranking executive, where she helped turn Facebook into the social media giant it is today. Sandberg will step down as the company’s No. 2 leader in the fall after spending the next few months working with founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg for the transition of his direct reporting. He will retain a seat on the Meta board.
Zuckerberg described the change as “the end of an era” and said he did not plan to replace Sandberg’s exact role in the company’s structure. Its current growth director, Javier Olivan, already one of the company’s most powerful but least known executives, will take over as COO in what Zuckerberg says is a “more traditional” COO position. This move, combined with Meta’s chief lawyer and the human resources executive who now reports directly to Zuckerberg, further consolidates power under his control.
More recently, Zuckerberg has renamed the company Facebook to Meta and is investing heavily in bringing its social technology beyond 2D to build metavers through virtual and augmented reality. Sandberg joined the company in 2008 to help Zuckerberg, then 23, navigate the path to an IPO and start an ad business, which he has run ever since. Prior to that, he spent six years at Google creating his own online sales channels for AdWords and AdSense. In Meta, the advertising business has been attacked on all sides in recent years, as Apple and regulators crack down on Facebook’s ability to target ads, contributing to a sharp drop in Meta revenue growth and Meta stock prices. .
Sandberg’s departure is long overdue, according to many people who have worked with her. His departure “will be an incredibly shocking exit, basically for all members of the company,” Drew Pusateri, a member of Meta’s communications department, said in a recent tweet.
According to current and former executives, Sandberg has been less involved in Meta’s ad business in recent years than in previous parts of Facebook’s history, although he has continued to be the public voice of the business in calls. of company profits. In the meantime, he has been steadily elevating his team leaders to higher positions, that is, promoting Marne Levine as business director and, more recently, elevating Chief Policy Officer Nick Clegg to the role of president that informs Zuckerberg.
Sandberg notified Zuckerberg of his intention to resign last weekend, according to someone familiar with the matter. Although she was recently accused of taking advantage of her position to crush negative reports about her ex-boyfriend and CEO of Activision Blizzard, Bobby Kotick, her decision to leave Meta was unrelated to the scandal, the person added. , saying that Facebook’s internal review of the matter and recently closed.