Top woman Facebook stops after fourteen years

Chief of Operations Sheryl Sandberg quits Meta, formerly Facebook. Sandberg has been number two at the company since 2008, behind founder Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg is taking advantage of the departure to have more departments of the company report directly to him.

Sandberg writes that she thought she would stay with Facebook for five years, but she was there for a total of fourteen years. She will not really leave 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 is known, has no new job yet.

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

Zuckerberg writes that her successor will be Javier Olivan. The role of operational director will change. Where Sandberg led all parts of the company except the development of the products themselves, which included human resources 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.