Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg is Stepping Down

Sheryl Sandberg announced stepping down as Meta COO through an official Facebook post on Thursday. Sandberg, the second most important person at Meta after Mark Zuckerberg, is leaving the company after 14 years. She added that she will leave her post as COO in the fall but will retain a seat on the company board.

Sandberg, 52, has been one of the most influential women in Silicon Valley and her departure comes as the company faces an uncertain future amid fierce competition. Sandberg joined Meta, then Facebook, as COO in 2008. In the following 14 years, Sandberg led the company through an IPO and a period of explosive industry growth to become one of the most valuable and socially impactful tech companies in the world.

Meta’s Chief Growth Officer Javier Olivan will be the next COO, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced through an official Facebook post. Zuckerberg called Sandberg’s departure the ‘end of an era’. He also added that he doesn’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. But even if it were possible, I think Meta has reached the point where it makes sense for our product and business groups to be more closely integrated, rather than having all the business and operations functions organized separately from our products,” he noted in the FB post.

According to Zuckerberg, Olivan will be in charge of Meta’s ads and business products while overseeing the teams focusing on the ‘infrastructure, integrity, analytics, marketing, corporate development, and growth.” “It will be a more traditional COO role where Javi will be focused internally and operationally, building on his strong track record of making execution more efficient and rigorous”, he added.