Five years. That’s how lengthy Sheryl Sandberg figured she’d be spending at Facebook, now referred to as Meta, when she took the job as chief working officer and Mark Zuckerberg’s much-ballyhooed companion in 2008. Enough time to modulate the corporate’s swaggering tradition into one thing sustainable, construct a wildly profitable advert enterprise, and arrange a coverage operation in DC. And to determine herself as a world customary setter for feminine executives. Then she’d be off—perhaps to run for workplace or to go a large firm like Disney.
But it wasn’t till immediately, 14 years later, that Sheryl Sandberg has introduced she is leaving the corporate. For an formidable company celebrity like Sandberg, 14 years on the similar submit—and never the highest one—is an eternity. Most observers pegged her as leaving a while in the past, both pressured out by the collapse of the corporate’s repute within the wake of relentless privateness and content material administration scandals or just wearied by having to defend it on a regular basis. But she caught round so lengthy that even the corporate’s identify modified.
So who can deny her the flowery prose of her 1,529-word farewell submit—appropriate for a Medium “I’ve got personal news” essay however loyally posted on the Facebook blue app Feed—the place she profusely thanked her colleagues and boasted of all the great issues her firm did for its customers and small enterprise homeowners. She even cited some random girl in Poland who sells stuffed animals on the platform. Like each different public communication coming from her, it was rigorously crafted, to the purpose that you can hardly inform the corporate is among the many world’s most castigated. The scathing a part of the information got here not in her upbeat resignation letter, however in Zuckerberg’s farewell to her.
Sandberg’s tenure would all the time be shadowed by the deal she made with Zuckerberg when she joined. While she reported to Zuckerberg, the then-23-year-old CEO gave her great autonomy over sure components of the corporate—the non-product domains that him the least. It made sense for Sandberg to take cost of promoting adverts. But in accordance with The Deal, her world additionally included communications, lobbying, coverage, and different non-engineering areas. At one level, the chief safety officer reported to the final counsel, who reported to Sandberg. When issues fell aside after the 2016 election, the troubles in Sandberg’s world have been gradual to seek out their technique to Zuckerberg. The penalties have been disastrous. Zuckerberg later defined to me that he didn’t see The Deal as a mistake, however a necessity. “It would have been impossible, not having the life experience in all these areas, to internalize all the different parts of what running a company could be,” he informed me.
In his submit immediately, Zuckerberg dolloped out applicable gratitude and reward for his departing COO. But whereas Sandberg’s essay painted her tenure within the rosiest tones conceivable, Zuckerberg’s assertion was a large company course correction. He proclaimed that Sandberg’s departure marked the tip of an period—after which he mandated adjustments to Meta’s group to verify nothing like that period will ever occur once more. Sandberg’s putative successor, Javier Olivan, will assume “a more traditional COO role,” he wrote. Olivan, who minimize his enamel on the corporate’s runaway development group, gained’t be working components of the corporate on his personal, as Sheryl initially did.
Some of that had already been in movement. The first huge change got here final yr when Zuckerberg gave the duty for coverage and communications to senior VP Nick Clegg, who previously reported to Sandberg. The chief authorized officer, Jennifer Newstead, was additionally shifted to a Zuckerberg direct report. But immediately, at the same time as Zuckerberg celebrated Sandberg, he ripped up her group and put it extra instantly beneath his management. The head of HR, Lori Goler, will report back to him as effectively. That places Maxine Williams, the chief variety officer, additionally in Zuckerberg’s area.
