Sheryl Sandberg has been the most prominent and successful woman in the tech industry for more than a decade. As Facebook’s chief operating officer (COO), she was the strategist behind the platform’s rise to the top of social media. So, despite speculation that it might happen, it came as a shock to many when Sandberg announced in June 2022 that she was leaving Facebook’s parent company, Meta, after 14 years. The previous several years had been a difficult time — both for Sandberg and for her employer. There were reports that she was burned out and increasingly distanced from the rest of the company. A former co-worker of hers told TheWall Street Journal (WSJ): “She sees herself as someone who has been targeted, been tarred as a woman executive in a way that would not happen to a man. She’s sick of it.”
It had not always been this way. When Facebook poached her from Google in 2008, Sandberg was already a rising star of the tech world. At the time, Facebook was a free social-media site with no real business model, and its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, a 23-year-old computer geek. Sandberg was the great networker and sharp business mind who allowed Zuckerberg to concentrate on what he did best: create innovative software. She is the architect of Facebook’s phenomenal advertising business, transforming the company from a start-up into a tech giant that earned $118 billion (€115 billion) in 2021 with more than 77,000 employees. Only Google’s parent company, Alphabet, earned more from advertising last year. David Jones, head of The Brandtech Group, told the Financial Times: “Facebook would not be Facebook without Sheryl.”
Sandberg is particularly proud of Facebook’s role as an enabler. As the platform grew from strength to strength, countless small businesses around the world benefited from the company’s ability to place the right ads in front of the right people. Her prominent role in all this success has naturally made Sandberg an icon for women in tech, and she’s been a strong supporter of women in leadership positions across all industries. In 2013, she published her best-selling book Lean In, in which she encouraged women to assert themselves. She told Harvard Business Review that she wanted “more companies to recognize what women bring to the table.” By 2016, there were rumours everywhere that Sandberg would leave the corporate world and take up a cabinet position as treasury secretary in a government led by Hillary Clinton — who was widely expected to win the election.
Unfriending Facebook
Of course, things didn’t happen that way. Instead, 2016 became an infamous year in the history of Facebook, as the company was roundly criticized for not doing enough to stop interference in the US presidential election. And things got worse in 2018, when The Guardian and The New York Times reported that the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica had accessed and shared the data of nearly 90 million Facebook users in order to target them with ads supporting Donald Trump. Zuckerberg reportedly blamed Sandberg for the scandal — both of them were called to Washington, DC, to testify before Congress about foreign influence in social media.
As further scandals grew over privacy, hate speech and corporate power, Sandberg found herself at least as much in the firing line as her boss. “She built the foundation that allowed Facebook to grow into what it became — good and bad,” says Jones. Inside the company, she saw her standing and influence suffer as Zuckerberg began taking greater control of all areas himself. The WSJ wrote that the proportion of company employees who report to Sandberg had fallen from 43 per cent in 2014 to 31 per cent by 2021. This is, at least partly, a result of Zuckerberg’s ten-billion-dollar investment in creating virtual worlds, known as the metaverse, in which digital advertising is less important.
Goodbye for now
Even through professional troubles, Sandberg has continued to be a supporter of women as leaders, although critics say her experience is not representative of typical working women. They have a point — Sandberg has never been “average”. She was top of her economics class at Harvard University, one of America’s most prestigious educational institutions. She went on to work at McKinsey & Company, the World Bank and as chief of staff to US Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers. In 2001, she joined Google as manager of its business unit — before it actually had any business. She helped make Google a profitable company, just as she would later do for Facebook.
What Sandberg’s decision to leave means for Meta’s future is unclear. It comes at a turbulent time for the company. Fewer young people are joining Facebook, and even Instagram faces an extremely strong competitor in TikTok. And a change to Apple’s privacy rules in 2021 allows iPhone users to block tracking, which is what made Facebook so valuable to advertisers.
What Sandberg’s exit means for herself isn’t clear either. She says she wants to spend time on family and her philanthropic work, but she will get job offers — the first ones reportedly arrived within hours of her announcement. We have probably not seen the last of Sheryl.