Sandberg to step down as Meta’s COO after 14 years
Bloomberg
CALIFORNIA: Meta Platforms Inc.’s Sheryl Sandberg, who became one of the most recognized figures in global business after helping Facebook transform from a startup into a multibillion-dollar advertising powerhouse, is stepping down as chief operating officer (COO).
Sandberg, 52, will remain on the board of Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp, according to a post on the social network on Wednesday. Javier Olivan, who has led the company’s growth efforts for years, will take Sandberg’s place as COO when she formally leaves in the fall.
Sandberg joined Facebook in 2008 and was key to turning it into a social media giant that generated almost $120 billion in revenue last year. Along the way, she became an influential author, publishing Lean In in 2013, and served as the highestprofile face of the company next to chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg. Alongside him, she championed Facebook’s business culture of growing quickly and fixing problems later, leading to multiple public scandals over lapses in privacy and content moderation. Sandberg spent years trying to improve Facebook’s relationship with the public and regulators.
In an interview, Sandberg called her time at Meta the “honour and privilege of a lifetime”, but joked that it’s also “not the most manageable job anyone has ever had”.
“It’s a decision I didn’t come to lightly, but it’s been 14 years,” she said on Wednesday. “I want to make more room to do more philanthropically, to do more with my foundation,” she said.
Shares of Meta slipped 2.6% to $188.64 at the close in New York. The stock has declined 44% this year, steeper than the 23% drop in the Nasdaq Composite Index.
Formerly at Google, Sandberg joined the then-fledgling Facebook to oversee all its business functions, including ads, partnerships, business development, and operations, so that Zuckerberg could focus on products. Meta, as the firm became known in a rebranding last year, has four products with more than 1 billion users and its advertising business generated $27 billion in sales in the first quarter.
Sandberg said she’s planning to get married this summer and hopes to spend more time with her kids and soon-to-be stepchildren.