Five years. that is how long Sheryl Sandberg thought she would spend at Facebook, now called Meta, when she took the job as Chief Operating Officer and Mark Zuckerberg’s acclaimed partner in 2008. Enough time to modulate the company’s boastful culture into something sustainable, a wildly successful ad business, and set up a policy operation in DC. And to establish itself as an international standards setter for female executives. Then she’d be free—perhaps to go to the office or run a giant corporation like Disney.
But it wasn’t until today, 14 years later, that Sheryl Sandberg announced she was leaving the company. For an ambitious corporate superstar like Sandberg, 14 years in the same position – and not the best – is an eternity. Most observers thought she had left some time ago, either forced by the collapse of the company’s reputation in the wake of relentless privacy and content management scandals, or simply tired of having to defend it constantly. But she stuck around for so long that even the name of the company changed.
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So who can deprive her of the florid prose of her 1,529-word farewell message — fit for a Medium “I have personal news” essay but loyally posted on the blue Facebook app Feed — where she profusely thanked her colleagues and bragged about all good things her company did for its users and small business owners. She even mentioned a random woman in Poland who sells stuffed animals on the platform. Like any other public communication that came out of her, it was carefully crafted, to the point that you could barely tell the company is one of the world’s most castigated. The devastating part of the news came not in her cheerful resignation letter, but in Zuckerberg’s farewell to her.
Sandberg’s tenure would always be overshadowed by the deal she struck with Zuckerberg when she joined. While reporting to Zuckerberg, the then 23-year-old CEO gave her tremendous autonomy over certain areas of the company — the non-product domains that interested him least. It made sense for Sandberg to take charge of advertising sales. But according to The Deal, her world also encompassed communications, lobbying, policy and other non-technical areas. At one point, the chief security officer reported to the general counsel, who reported to Sandberg. When things collapsed after the 2016 election, the problems in Sandberg’s world slowly found their way to Zuckerberg. The consequences were disastrous. Zuckerberg later explained to me that he didn’t see The Deal as a mistake, but as a necessity. “It would have been impossible, without the life experience in all of these areas, to internalize all the different parts of what running a business could be,” he told me.
In his post today, Zuckerberg expressed due gratitude and praise for his outgoing COO. But while Sandberg’s essay painted her tenure in the rosiest hues, Zuckerberg’s statement was a massive correction on the company’s course. He proclaimed that Sandberg’s departure marked the end of an era—then he ordered changes to Meta’s organization to ensure that nothing like that era would ever happen again. Sandberg’s alleged successor, Javier Olivan, will “take on a more traditional COO role,” he wrote. Olivan, who has gotten his teeth into the company’s runaway growth organization, won’t be running parts of the company on his own like Sheryl originally did.
Some of it was already moving. The first big change came last year when Zuckerberg entrusted responsibility for policy and communications to senior vice president Nick Clegg, who previously reported to Sandberg. The chief legal officer, Jennifer Newstead, was also transferred to a direct subordinate of Zuckerberg. But today, even as Zuckerberg celebrated Sandberg, he tore up her organization and put it more directly under his control. The head of HR, Lori Goler, will also report to him. That also puts Maxine Williams, the chief diversity officer, in Zuckerberg’s domain.
