Facebook top woman stops after fourteen years

Operations Director Sheryl Sandberg quits Meta, formerly Facebook. Sandberg has been the number two at the company since 2008, behind founder Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg uses the departure to allow more departments of the company to report directly to him.

Sandberg writes that she thought she would stay with Facebook for five years, but she’s been there for a total of fourteen years. She won’t actually be leaving until this fall and will use the coming months to hand over her duties. Sandberg is leaving because she says she is ready for a new chapter in her life. She will initially focus more on philanthropic work and, as far as we know, has no new job yet.

Sandberg was regarded as an experienced board member alongside the then inexperienced Zuckerberg, who was 23 years old when she took office and said he had no idea how to run a company. She had previously worked at Google as the head of its sales department.

Zuckerberg writes that her successor will be Javier Olivan. The role of operational director is changing. Where Sandberg led all parts of the company except for the development of the products themselves, including HR and lobbying in addition to advertising, this will not be the case with Olivan. Instead, the heads of HR and diversity will report directly to Zuckerberg.