Sheryl Sandberg, longtime chief operating officer at Facebook, steps down

Sheryl Sandberg, a long-time fixture on the social media big Fb, introduced Wednesday afternoon that she’ll quickly be stepping down from her position as the corporate’s chief working officer.

After fourteen years as COO — the number-two place, second solely to chief govt Mark Zuckerberg, at some of the highly effective tech companies on this planet — Sandberg’s exit comes at a second of flux for guardian firm Meta, which has struggled with current scandals and leaks whereas additionally making an attempt to pivot towards a nebulous new imaginative and prescient of social networking.

“Once I took this job in 2008, I hoped I might be on this position for 5 years,” Sandberg wrote in a prolonged retrospective she posted — the place else — on Fb. “Fourteen years later, it’s time for me to jot down the following chapter of my life.”

“I’m not solely certain what the longer term will carry,” she continued, “however I do know it would embody focusing extra on my basis and philanthropic work.”

A transition course of will happen over the following few months, the outgoing govt added, earlier than she departs within the fall. It received’t be an entire exit, although; Sandberg is slated to stay on Meta’s board of administrators.

Fb undertook a sweeping rebrand in 2021, reorganizing the titular social platform in addition to Instagram, WhatsApp and different subsidiaries below the aegis of a brand new umbrella conglomerate referred to as Meta. The brand new title was a nod to the corporate’s rising curiosity within the “metaverse” — a stylish but nonetheless fairly summary imaginative and prescient of the web’s future which emphasizes digital actuality and interactive digital environments — however was additionally seen by some as an effort to distract from the corporate’s ever-lengthening checklist of scandals.

Though the corporate’s public picture had taken earlier hits due to issues about viral election disinformation and the Cambridge Analytica scandal — which prompted criticism of its information privateness practices — a brand new set of points blossomed late final 12 months when a former worker leaked 1000’s of pages of firm paperwork, revealing the extent to which Meta employees had been internally conscious of the corporate’s varied social harms.

“Sandberg leaves behind a shameful legacy,” wrote the Actual Fb Oversight Board, a watchdog group targeted on the corporate, in a press release Wednesday. “Her failed management enabled Fb and its platforms to develop into the engine of disinformation that it’s at the moment.”

“Nothing will change at Fb,” the group continued, “with out actual, impartial oversight and regulation.”

In February, the corporate reported that its variety of each day customers shrank for the primary time ever.

Sandberg’s public picture has been formed largely by her 2013 e-book “Lean In: Girls, Work, and the Will to Lead,” which put forth a imaginative and prescient of career-centric feminism that’s been in turns heralded as empowering and criticized as overly company. She came visiting to Fb in 2008, 4 years earlier than the social community went public, after having beforehand labored at Google.

In his personal assertion, additionally posted on Fb, Zuckerberg deemed her exit the top of an period.

“When [Sandberg] joined me in 2008, I used to be solely 23 years outdated and I barely knew something about working an organization,” the billionaire founder wrote. “Sheryl architected our advertisements enterprise, employed nice individuals, cast our administration tradition, and taught me how one can run an organization. She created alternatives for hundreds of thousands of individuals around the globe, and she or he deserves the credit score for a lot of what Meta is at the moment.”

Zuckerberg mentioned that he doesn’t plan on straight changing Sandberg’s position — “I’m unsure that may be potential,” he mentioned, including that the corporate is now at a spot the place it makes much less sense to explicitly delineate enterprise operations from product ones — however that Javier Olivan, at present his chief progress officer, will take up the title of COO.

Olivan “will now lead our built-in advertisements and enterprise merchandise along with persevering with to guide our infrastructure, integrity, analytics, advertising and marketing, company improvement and progress groups,” Zuckerberg mentioned. Olivan’s purview at present consists of the corporate’s “progress efforts, integrity, advertisements and enterprise platform, commerce and social influence efforts,” in accordance with his firm bio.

In response to a Meta spokesperson, Sandberg instructed Zuckerberg this weekend about her plans to step apart. Her exit comes on the heels of an identical transfer from former chief know-how officer Mike Schroepfer, who stepped down from that place in April.

The Related Press was utilized in compiling this report.