Meta’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, announced in a lengthy message that she will be leaving the company after 14 years.
Sandberg joined Facebook in 2008 as number two alongside CEO Mark Zuckerberg, helping turn the social media platform into a $ 1 billion advertising giant. The US sun reports.
He shared the news in a Facebook post on Wednesday, and wrote: “Today, I share the news that after 14 years, I will leave Meta.
“Sitting next to Mark for 14 years has been the honor and privilege of a lifetime. Mark is a true visionary and a caring leader. Sometimes he says we grew up together, and we did.
“When I accepted this job in 2008, I hoped to be in this position for five years.
“Fourteen years later, it’s time to write the next chapter of my life,” Sandberg wrote. “I’m not entirely sure what the future holds; I’ve learned that no one ever is.”
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Meta announced that Sandberg would remain on the company’s board while Javier Olivan, another executive, will take over as chief operating officer when Sandberg leaves in the fall.
During the early days of Facebook, Sandberg was known as “the adult in the room,” working alongside co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, who ran the company in his 20s.
Sandberg joined Facebook after working for several years as an advertising manager at Google.
During his time in the company, Facebook went from a free social network in a Harvard dorm to one of the world’s most dominant platforms, with nearly three billion users.
“Sheryl always says that the amount of progress we make is directly proportional to the number of tough conversations we’re willing to have,” Zuckerberg said in an episode of Tim Ferriss’s show podcast.
Zuckerberg added that Sandberg pushed his colleagues with constructive criticism at a time when harsh comment was difficult.
So, trying to incorporate it into the cultural operation system, which is, ‘We’ll just really reward and focus on being direct with each other.’ I think that’s a very important thing, “he said.
Sandberg also served as Facebook’s public face during its many controversies over the years, including the Cambridge Analytica scandal when the data mining company breached the personal data of millions of users in 2018.
Outside of Facebook, Sandberg is also a best-selling author who writes Stretch towhich promoted equality in the workplace.
FRIENDSHIP WITH ZUCKERBERG
In 2015, while on vacation in Mexico, Sandberg’s husband, Dave Goldberg, died suddenly after suffering a cardiac arrhythmia while exercising.
In his book, Option B, who co-authored with Adam Grant, Sandberg found ways to deal with pain and tragedy. However, his friendship with Zuckerberg was also an important part of the healing process.
While talking to Insider in 2017, Sandberg described Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, as “remarkable” people, and added that the couple would take her out several times after her husband’s death.
“A lot of what Mark did as a friend was very important. Mark did a lot of work in the office,” he said at the time.
“I hope everyone can have personal friendships, but even if you don’t have the depth of the friendship we had, build someone safe, tell him he made a good point in a meeting, tell someone he has cancer.
“I still believe in you and I think you can contribute here,” anyone can do as a boss or just as a partner.
“I think people have a lot to learn from Mark’s example. To be honest, I don’t know how he knew that.
“I didn’t know that. He did a lot of things that I certainly never thought I’d do for the people I worked with who were in mourning. It’s a pretty amazing story.”
This article originally appeared in The US Sun and was reproduced with permission.