Cheryl Sandberg, Meta’s chief operating officer and longtime second in command of its founder Mark Zuckerberg, said on Wednesday that she was stepping down after 14 years as the company continued to face questions about its social media platform and while navigating transition to the so-called metaverse.
Ms. Sandberg, 52, said she was leaving Meta – which owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and other apps – this fall and planned to continue serving on the company’s board of directors. In an interview, she said joining Facebook was “an honor and a privilege of a lifetime” and that she initially expected to do so in about five years, not the 14 she served.
Ms. Sandberg said the work left her no time for many other pursuits and that she now wanted to focus on her personal philanthropy and her Lean In Foundation. She will also marry Tom Bernthal, a television producer, this summer.
“I believe in this company,” Ms. Sandberg said in an interview. “Did we fix everything?” Absolutely not. Have we studied, listened, grown and invested where we should? This team has and will have. ”
Mr Zuckerberg named Javier Olivan, long-time product chief executive, as Meta’s next chief operating officer. Mr Olivan has seen much of Facebook’s growth over the past decade and has managed WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger and Facebook.
Ms. Sandberg is ending her term at Meta, far from the reputation she has reached in the last decade. As Mr. Zuckerberg’s key lieutenant, Ms. Sandberg helped build Facebook’s business in the company’s early years and was considered the room’s senior. Facebook’s advertising business is booming with her, and Ms. Sandberg is using her corporate fame to talk about other issues, such as what women can achieve in the workplace.
But since the 2016 presidential election, Facebook has come under intense scrutiny over how it has been misused to incite divisions and spread misinformation. Ms. Sandberg was responsible for the company’s policy and security team during this election. The social network was also haunted by privacy issues following a scandal involving Cambridge Analytica, a voter profiling company that misuses Facebook data.
Ms. Sandberg, who was one of Facebook’s most prominent executives, was unable to recover from these setbacks. In recent years, Mr Zuckerberg has taken on a higher public profile and a greater role in overseeing various parts of the company, many of which were solely within Mrs Sandberg’s remit.
Leaving her also comes as Facebook moves in a new direction. Last year, Mr. Zuckerberg renamed Meta and announced that it would become a key supplier to the metaverse, an immersive online world. But because the company spends heavily on metaverse products, its advertising business has stumbled, in part because of Apple’s privacy changes that have harmed targeted advertising.
In February, Meta’s market value fell by more than $ 230 billion, its biggest one-day wreck, after financial results showed it was struggling to leap into the metaverse.
In the interview, Ms. Sandberg said Meta faces challenges in the short term, but will withstand the storm, as she did during past challenges. “When we went public, we didn’t have mobile ads,” Ms. Sandberg said, citing the company’s rapid transition from desktops to smartphones over the past decade. “We’ve done this before.”
Ms. Sandberg has flirted with leaving Facebook in the past. In 2016, she told colleagues that if Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential candidate, wins the White House, she will most likely take a job in Washington, said three people who spoke to her about the move at the time. . In 2018, after the revelations about Cambridge Analytica and Russia’s interference in the 2016 US presidential election, she again told colleagues that she was considering leaving, but did not want to do so when in crisis.
In a Facebook post on Wednesday, Mr Zuckerberg praised Ms. Sandberg.
“It is unusual for a business partnership like ours to last that long,” he wrote. “Cheryl is architecting our advertising business, hiring great people, building our management culture and teaching me how to run a company.”
This is an evolving story. Check again for updates.
Add Comment