Sheryl Sandberg and Mark Zuckerberg’s partnership have shaped our social world.

Sheryl Sandberg, Meta’s COO, Leaving After 14 Years at The Company. You heard it right. Now here she leaves the company after spending 14 years at Meta. The executive is planning to focus on her family and the charitable work that she is associated with. She will, however, remain on the board of Meta

While joining Meta, then Facebook, Sheryl hoped to spend merely five years when she took the job as the COO of the company in 2008. This was enough time to standardize the swaggering culture of the company into a more sustainable system and build a successful ad business while setting up policies for smooth operations in Washington DC. She was able to establish herself as a professional international standard for female executives. She calculated five years to be enough while she could accomplish all this and then – maybe move to a more successful company like Disney.

Is it due to the collapse of Facebook?

But it took her 14 years to announce that she is leaving the company. For someone as ambitious as Sandberg, being in the same position for 14 years would have felt like an eternity. Many speculated she left the company either due to the collapse of Facebook due to privacy and content management scandals or similar issues that she had to defend against. But she chose to stay even when the company rebranded itself to Meta. 

Her post about leaving the company stating “I’ve got personal news” might look like an essay to some, but it was a profound appreciation towards her colleagues and what the company did for small business owners and the users. Similar to her every public communication this post was carefully drafted. She used an upbeat tone until mentioning Zuckerberg’s farewell to her.

Surely her tenure will always remain in the shadows of the deal she made with the founder of Facebook while joining the company. She stated that Zuckerberg had given him a great level of autonomy over certain parts of the organization that interested him the least, most of the non-product areas. Looking from this perspective, it surely made sense to take command of the ads selling on Facebook. But according to the deal between them, she also had to look after the communications, policy, lobbying, and the non-tech areas. There was also a time when the Chief Security Officer reported to the General Council, which in turn was reporting to Sandberg herself.

Recent Investigations

When things became messy in the 2016 elections, Sandberg had a hard time getting Zuckerberg’s attention relating to the problem they were in. The consequences were disastrous for the company. Zuckerberg later explained to her that “the Deal” between them was disastrous but a necessity.

A spokeswoman for Meta stated that Sandberg’s decision to leave has nothing to do with the recent investigations of whether she has utilized Meta’s resources to try to suppress a news story about her ex-boyfriend. the investigation is over and resolved. 

Sandberg is leaving the company when Meta is making a shift towards virtual reality, the Metaverse which will require a major shift in the company’s business model. The spokeswoman further added that Metaverse will be a place where the consumers connect with the businesses. The exact form of which will be chalked out in the coming years or perhaps in a long time. She said that Sandberg made the decision to leave the company last weekend and told Zuckerberg about it along with her plans to get married. The two of them have developed a close friendship over the years.

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Zuckerberg on Sheryl’s Departure

Zuckerberg, in his farewell post for Sandberg, pointed out that many of his team members were recruited by Sandberg, claiming her to be the superstar of the company. But then he stated that the terms of the deal with Sandberg were not sustainable anymore. He further added that Meta has reached a point where our products and business groups are more closely integrated and they cannot be anymore operated with operations and business functions organized disjointly from the products and he needed to take on them himself now.

Sandberg will transition out from Meta gradually not until the fall. She stated that she has not planned yet where she is headed next, except for her plans to invest more time and energy into her philanthropic works.

So, Sheryl Sandberg, Meta’s COO, Leaving After 14 Years at The Company