Sheryl Sandberg intended to spend just five years at Facebook when she joined in 2008 as Mark Zuckerberg’s right-hand man. Instead, she stayed 14, becoming one of Silicon Valley’s most recognizable and polarizing figures.
When she steps down as chief operating officer of Facebook, now known as Meta, this year, she will leave a mixed legacy behind. On the one hand, she has built an image of a seasoned executive and role model for women, which has helped the company to be worth $538 billion (£2.57 trillion) by turbocharging its digital advertising machine.
But Sandberg has also become a lightning rod for criticism, accused of trying to sweep controversies over content moderation and privacy under the rug as Facebook bounced from scandal to scandal after the 2016 US election.
“Facebook wouldn’t be Facebook without Sheryl,” said David Jones, chief executive of the Brandtech Group and former chief executive of advertising group Havas. “She built the foundation that allowed Facebook to grow into what it has become — good or bad.”
For Sandberg and Zuckerberg, the moment marks a crossroads, as the power duo, who have estranged themselves in recent years, are now looking to remake their images separately after years of scrutiny.
Zuckerberg has been focusing on his vision for the metaverse, at a time when Facebook’s stock price fluctuates, growth slows and competition increases. Sandberg, a committed Democrat, said she intends to dedicate herself to family and philanthropic endeavors, amid speculation she might enter politics. She will remain on Meta’s board of directors.
Sandberg also comes out in doubt after a report by The Wall Street Journal alleging she pressured the Daily Mail to drop negative coverage of her ex-boyfriend Bobby Kotick, chief executive of Activision Blizzard. Meta declared the matter closed.
Separately, on Thursday (2), the Journal reported an investigation into using company resources to plan her next wedding to marketing executive Tom Bernthal. A spokesperson for Meta said of the report: “None of this had any impact on his personal decision to leave.”
Sandberg has been credited with turning a ragtag startup run by 20-something tech bros into an enviable digital advertising empire during the first half of his tenure. She said she was “placed on this planet to scale organizations”, and she did. According to Facebook’s IPO filings, in 2009, the company’s sales were $777 million. In 2021, Meta generated US$ 117 billion (R$ 560.4 billion) in revenue.
Her success was due in part to her meticulous attention to detail and her prowess as a consummate “networker,” co-workers say. Marketers describe her as spending more time with advertising executives than her rivals, like her former employer Google, and hosting fancy dinners at her Menlo Park home to attract clients. She listened, and then acted upon her demands, they said.
“She played an important role in making Mark Zuckerberg take the advertising community very seriously,” Jones said.
Sandberg has also surrounded himself with allies, mostly women, from his past tenures at Harvard, Treasury and Google — dubbed “Friends of Sheryl Sandberg,” or FOSS. Many saw the FOSS phenomenon as Sandberg advocating women in line with her corporate feminist manifesto, “Lean In”; others lamented the creation of these groups.
“When you had her protection it was incredibly empowering, but when you don’t have Sheryl’s blessing it can be very limiting,” said a former senior official.
Sandberg’s ability to influence meetings brought business and was crucial to the creation of Facebook’s public policy and communications team. She personally took on the role of chief lobbyist, meeting with regulators and lawmakers while Zuckerberg focused on product innovation.
As Silicon Valley grew, lawmakers actively tried to meet with Sandberg ahead of the 2016 election, aiming to embrace the tech sector, according to former colleagues. But it didn’t last.
Her public profile as second-in-command after Zuckerberg left her in the line of fire — in front of lawmakers, customers and the public — as the company was hit by a series of scandals following the 2016 election.
“Sheryl was always the soft power, with the phone calls and the charm offensive, when Facebook faced a crisis,” said an executive at an advertising agency.
The ad business model it pioneered is also being investigated. Critics and civil society groups argued that toxic and provocative posts were rewarded in an attempt to grab users’ attention, while collecting user data for targeting also contributed to lapses in privacy.
Sandberg has also developed a reputation for not spotting problems and becoming defensive when they erupt into scandals, seeking to control press narratives and ward off regulators.
“It’s not about what she did, it’s about the response. A lot of those things were unintended consequences. But then you have to turn around and act,” said another advertising executive.
This approach, called delay, deny and deviate, was applied to the way she handled the Cambridge Analytica scandal, as well as the revelations of Russian disinformation campaigns surrounding the 2016 election, according to various reports.
Sometimes this turned into accusations. The New York Times revealed in 2018 that, under Sandberg’s supervision, Facebook hired the Republican-leaning consultancy Definers Public Affairs to spread misinformation about competitors and critics.
More recently, she has caused a backlash for downplaying the notion that Facebook played a role in the events leading up to the January 6 Capitol storming, arguing that it was “largely” organized on other platforms.
Some expressed sympathy for his position; Zuckerberg, after all, is the ultimate decision maker. “She felt trapped around these things, which continued to escalate the ‘straying’ approach,” said a former senior official. “She could never get out of the crouch because the company faces crisis after crisis.”
His departure doesn’t come out of nowhere, according to sources. In recent years, Sandberg has withdrawn from the spotlight and his influence has waned as tensions with Zuckerberg boiled over.
“Year after year, the chasm between Sheryl and Mark and what they thought should be done from a content moderation standpoint certainly grew,” the former employee said, adding that Zuckerberg’s free speech stance shocked him. with Sandberg’s desire for firmer moderation.
In his letter about Sandberg’s departure, Zuckerberg said Javier Olivan, the company’s chief growth officer, will take on a “more traditional COO role” in which he will be “focused internally and operationally.”
Despite Sandberg being a “superstar who has uniquely defined the role of COO”, Zuckerberg wrote that “Meta has reached the point where it makes sense for our product and business groups to be more integrated, rather than having every business and operational functions organized separately from our products”.
The move cements Zuckerberg’s own power as he takes on many of the people who used to report directly to her.
Zuckerberg described the move as the “end of an era”. But with that he also indicated his intention to start a new one – in which Sandberg’s previous role, for all its power and breadth, will no longer exist.
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