New Delhi: Sheryl Sandberg, the No. 2 executive at Facebook owner Meta, is stepping down as COO. Sandberg helped transform the company from a startup to a digital advertising powerhouse while also assuming responsibility for some of its worst mistakes.
Sandberg has been the social media company’s chief operating officer for 14 years. She joined Facebook from Google in 2008, four years before the company went public.
“When I took this job in 2008, I hoped I would be in this role for five years. Fourteen years later, it is time for me to write the next chapter of my life,” Sandberg wrote on her official Facebook handle.
Sandberg oversaw Facebook’s — now Meta’s — advertising business, growing it from its beginnings to a $100 billion-a-year juggernaut. Sandberg, the company’s second most-recognized face behind CEO Mark Zuckerberg, has also become a contentious figure following disclosures about how some of her business choices for Facebook contributed to the spread of misinformation and hate speech.
Taking to Facebook, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he would miss Sandberg whose one of the “greatest legacies is the incredible team she has built”. He said he doesn’t plan to replace her role in the “existing structure” of the company.
Zuckerberg said Javier Olivan will be the next Chief Operating Officer who will now lead Meta’s “integrated ads and business products in addition to continuing to lead our infrastructure, integrity, analytics, marketing, corporate development and growth teams”. The role, however, will be different from Sandberg’s.
“It will be a more traditional COO role where Javi will be focused internally and operationally, building on his strong track record of making our execution more efficient and rigorous,” Zuckerberg wrote on his official Facebook handle.
Sandberg, now 52, originally assisted Google in creating what rapidly became the internet’s largest – and most profitable – advertising network. But she left that position to take on the challenge of turning Facebook’s freewheeling social network into a profitable corporation while simultaneously mentoring Zuckerberg, who was 23 at the time.