- Sheryl Sandberg, a key player in Zuckerberg’s company since its inception, resigned on Wednesday.
- The COO transformed the startup into a mega-company with multi-million dollar revenues.
- She is replaced by Javier Olivan, a Spaniard who is very far from Sandberg’s public exposure.
“After 14 years, I am leaving Meta.” That simple is the beginning of the Facebook ad from Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of the tech giant.
Sandberg, everyone agrees, was the right hand of Mark Zuckerberg and a key person in the development of the company.
“When I accepted the job in 2008, I thought I was going to be there for about 5 years. I was 14 and I think it is time to write a new chapter of my life,” she added.
While Meta (Facebook) shares initially fell 3.9%, they then returned to trading in line with the previous day’s close.
Goal: Javier Olivan arrives, a low-profile Spaniard
The current Chief Growth Officer, Javier Olivan, is going to take over the vacant COO position, Zuckerberg himself said in another publication.
He also said that he does not plan to replace Sandberg directly within the company structure.
Olivan has been part of the company for almost 15 years and has been involved in projects for all the company’s brands, from Facebook and Instagram to WhatsApp and Messenger.
“Although I will have the same position, my role will be different,” Olivan said in a statement. “With a few exceptions, it won’t have the same public presence, as we have other leaders in Meta doing that work,” he added.
His lower exposure powerfully caught the attention of the financial media in the United States, such as CNBC, who, when searching their social networks, found a big difference: while Sandberg has almost 1,000,000 followers on Instagram, Olive barely has 17 followers in a private account.
Sandberg resigns on Facebook
Analysts specializing in the growth of technology firms assure that This is the end of an era for Facebookcompany that now points to a more concentrated focus on hardware products and the so-called “metaverse”.
Sandberg, who became Facebook’s second-in-command behind Zuckerberg, he arrived at the company when the CEO of the company was just 23 years old.
She was 38 and had vast corporate experience. She had even worked at Google.
She was one of the brand’s most exposed executives and was key architect of the advertising-based business model.
As one of the ideologues of digital ads, she transformed Facebook from a startup into a revenue-generating tech giant rarely seen in corporate America.
When Sandberg arrived, Facebook had revenues of $272 million and losses of $50 million.
In 2011, following the IPO of Zuckerberg’s firm, revenues climbed to $3.7 billion and profits to $1 billion.
In 2021, the now called Meta recorded revenues of US$ 118,000 million and profits of a whopping US$ 39,450 million.
Sandberg said in his Facebook post that he will remain on Meta’s board of directors after stepping down at the start of the second half of 2022.
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