Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg Resigned: All Investors Need To Know

Sheryl Sandberg was holding the second biggest post in Meta Inc. She was Chief Operating Officer at the social media behemoth and took many key decisions at the company during her 14 years stay. Let us look at how she shaped up the company when she joined back in 2008.  

A bit about Sheryl Sandberg

Before joining Facebook, Sheryl had previously worked at Google and helped the company build its advertising and sales business. As per reports available, she was the one who expanded Google's Adwords and Adsense projects. These are the projects that have made Google a billion-dollar revenue company in the coming years.

Let us look at her journey on Facebook/Meta

Ads business: When she joined Facebook, the company had little advertising business and had around 70 million users. In the next three years, the company went from 70 million users to 700 million. She helped scale the advertising business, which in turn ensured profits. 

Hiring: Sheryl also has an important role to play in Facebook's key hiring early on. Some of her key hires are Lori Goler as head of recruiting, who is still at the company. Elliot Schrage, former vice-president for global communications, marketing, and public policy at Facebook, and Priti Youssef Choksi, Facebook’s former director, Business Development and Director, Corporate Development

Policies: She has worked on all important policies that the company has for its employees. One of the key policies she incorporated early on was she extended maternity and paternity leave to four months at Facebook, which was in line with her ideas of gender equality. 

Joins company's board: One of the early criticisms of Facebook was that its board was all male. This changed in 2012 when Sandberg joined the board. She will continue to serve on Meta’s board, even as she leaves her role as COO.

Controversy: Cambridge Analytica scandal 2018

Sandberg faced increasingly negative scrutiny once Facebook’s role in elections in the US and other countries started getting viewed critically. This began after the 2016 US election with allegations of Russia’s involvement in spreading disinformation and that perhaps Facebook did not do enough to quell these problems.

Mark Zukerberg on her exit:

When Sheryl joined me in 2008, I was only 23 years old, and I barely knew anything about running a company. Sheryl architected our ads business, hired great people, forged our management culture, and taught me how to run a company. I don’t plan to replace Sheryl’s role in our existing structure. I’m not sure that would be possible since she’s a superstar who defined the COO role in her own unique way.

Sheryl's image did suffer in the last few years but there is no doubt that she played a critical role in helping Facebook go beyond a niche social network into the giant corporation that it is today.

The Way Forward:

Analysts note that Sandberg built a world-class ad-busines for the company. Javier Olivan will be the new COO who will have to carry a unique set of responsibilities as Facebook needs to find newer and better ways forward to achieve its metaverse vision.