The day after Sheryl Sandberg’s resignation from Meta, of which she has long served as chief operating officer, the company’s employees participated in a 30-minute virtual meeting: a “Fireside chat” between Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and the woman who was de facto number two for 14 years of the colossus of Menlo Park. Recode, a Vox Media publication, obtained the recording of the meeting and published the full transcript of the conversation, to which the employees – unlike the Q&A that Meta usually holds every week – could not participate with direct questions.
“People asked me, yesterday, all day: ‘Why now?’ – Sandberg said -. The reason is that it is time to write a new chapter in my life. And also because, really, I have a great one confidence in leadership that Mark and I have built ”.
In short, this is the official motivation. But according to the Wall Street Journal, there is more. On the one hand, personal events, and that sense of “burnout” – emotional collapse – that he would have confided to his closest collaborators, caused by the feeling of having become a “punching bag” for all problems related to the company. On the other hand, two investigations weigh on him: the first on the pressure that Sandberg would have put on a British tabloid to have an article archived on his ex-partner Bobby Kotick, the second on the corporate resources that would have been used for the marriage with Tom Bernthal.
The statements of Zuckerberg and Sandberg do not contain shocking background, for those looking for the scoop on the real reasons why the manager left Meta after 14 years. But what they said is interesting for several reasons: letting go of memories, Sandberg adds a lot to what we know about Facebook’s corporate culture (which later became Meta) and the vision and strategies of its founder. Zuckerberg, on the other hand, celebrated his long-time collaborator but also took the opportunity to explain to employees who will now be at the top of the company and how the Sandberg replacements will operate.
These are the highlights of the conversation between Zuckerberg and Sandberg:
Mark Zuckeberg
“When Sheryl joined Facebook in 2008, I was 23. At the time, I knew little about running a business. We had a great product, it was a website, not a mobile app, it was just Facebook. It was a great product that people were super excited about. But we really didn’t have anything that could be considered a profitable business ”.
“A lot of what Sheryl did was organize our advertising business, hire a lot of great people, build our managerial culture and teach me and so many other people here how to run a business.”
“I’m super grateful for having this opportunity to build this company and work so closely with Sheryl, and I feel like she’s leaving us in a great place after training so many other great and talented people. And, of course, you won’t get very far because you will be on our board of directors in the future. “
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Sheryl Sandberg
“I met Mark at a party. We stood by the wall near the door for a long time and talked the whole time. And then we went out for dinner once but Mark was well known. I was not, but I had a great team at Google. And someone on that team saw us together at the dinner table, so we didn’t go out again. We had dinner at my house instead. We couldn’t do it at Mark’s house because Mark, he remembers, had a studio with a mattress on the floor. And there was no need to dine there with me “
“I think about the way the confrontation with Mark pushed me to do better. It pushed me to be ambitious all the way. I remember when there was the (global economic) crash of 2008 and I thought we would never sell another advertisement. And our 2009 revenue projections for Mark weren’t “good enough”. And I said, “Well, you know, the markets are crashing and the whole world is imploding.” And it seemed like the end of the recession would never come. But Mark said, “Well, we still have to sell ads as well build the business even in this condition“. And we did it”.
“One of the other moments I’ve always thought about is that Mark has always said there are two ways to make a company fail. One way is to set ambitious plans and not carry them out. But the second way is to make plans that aren’t ambitious and that should be. Mark always said: ‘I never want the second to happen to us: that we will not have plans that we will not be able to carry out. If you look at where the company is right now, the metaverse plan is ambitious and this is Mark at his best. “
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Mark Zuckerberg
“The first thing I’d like to be clear is that we’re not replacing Sheryl’s role as it is now, for a few reasons. One is that it would be impossible. Sheryl is a unique and super talented leader who came together in a specific context of our company where there were different branches that had to be built from scratch beyond the product ”.
“I think it makes a lot more sense to integrate business and product, rather than making them two separate parts of the company. Javi Olivan will be the next COO of the company. While Marne Levine is our chief business officer for the company and the entire Meta corporate group. But it’s important to point out that Javi Olivan’s role as chief operating officer will be different than Sheryl’s. It will be a more traditional COO role, in which Javi will mainly focus internally and operationally. And in most cases, I don’t think he’s going to have relationships with the outside world. The public representative of the company will be Marne Levinecome chief business officer”.