After no less than 14 years with the company, Sheryl Sandberg has tendered her resignation as COO of Meta, the matrix of Facebook. She is considered the right hand of Mark Zuckerberg, but she has been losing prominence in recent years and according to many she had not participated in the most important decisions made by his leadership in recent times during the Trump presidency of the United States. Joined. starting next fallwhen she leaves the post after a transition period, she will be replaced by a Spaniard. Javier Oliván will be from then on the second in command of Meta.
Sandberg will not completely abandon Meta, mind you, since will continue to be part of its board of directors, in a new stage in which Meta tries to leave behind the scandals of its last stage on privacy and misinformation. Sandberg herself, in the post in which she announces her departure, acknowledges that they must develop their products to protect privacy: «the debate related to social networks has changed from that of its early days. To say that it has not always been easy is an understatement. But it should be hard. The products we create have a huge impact, so we have a responsibility to develop them in ways that protect privacy and keep people safe.«.
Sheryl Sandberg, Zuckerberg’s right hand woman
Sandberg joined Facebook in 2008 and, at least during her early years as COO, was always perceived as the “adult voice” at the top of the social network. In addition, she is one of the people responsible for growing the company into a multi-billion dollar business. At the same time, she began to gain recognition in feminism in the world of work, which culminated in the publication of a book about it in 2013, which was published in Spanish with the title Let’s go forward: women, work and the will to lead. .
Before working at Facebook, Sandberg was the Vice President of Sales and Operations at Google. She also briefly stumbled into politics, serving as Chief of Staff to Treasury Secretary Larry Summers during Bill Clinton’s tenure. Additionally, she publicly endorsed Hillary Clinton’s candidacy in 2016.
In recent months, Meta has focused on developing what Zuckerberg believes is the next step for the Internet: the metaverse. This concept refers to virtual worlds in which people can socialize, work and enjoy their leisure. To achieve this, Meta has started to make strong investments in virtual and augmented reality. All this in addition to continuing to prioritize the moderation of offensive content, related to harassment and hate speech, as well as the fight against disinformation. And of course, to continue growing.
This change of focus in Meta’s strategy is perhaps what makes the departure of Sandberg, who has apparently been threatening a change for some time, now perceived as appropriate for other managers to give the company new ideas. . Just what Javier Oliván is going to get. Of course, his position is not going to be exactly the same as Sandberg’s, and Zuckerberg himself has already confirmed that he will have a lower profile than Sandberg’s within the company. Sandberg’s COO position is almost on a par with Meta’s CEO, and has a lot of external presence. Oliván will occupy a more conventional and more internally focused COO position.
Instead, the CEO of Meta has pointed out that the time has come for Meta to have «greater integration of product and business divisions, rather than having all business and operations functions run independently of our products«.
Javier Oliván, a man from Huesca who has multiplied Facebook
Oliván has also stated that his position will be more focused on internal management, since he has commented in the statement confirming his appointment that «with some exceptions«, do not expect your post «look the same to the public«, since in Meta they have «other leaders who already have that responsibility in their work«. That does not mean that his position will be less relevant, since he is one of the main positions within any company: he will be second in the company’s chain of command.
The director, who was born in the town of Sabiñánigo (Huesca) and studied engineering at the University of Navarra, entered Facebook in 2007, just after finishing an MBA at Stanford University, where he began to use the social network. He previously went through Siemens, and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone in Japan. So most of its 40 million or so users were in the United States. He is one of the founding members of its growth division, an operation that, in view of Facebook’s figures since then, they managed to do successfully.
The group, initially small, progressively gained weight and prominence on Facebook, and Oliván accumulated power. When he was working on a Spanish version of the social network, Zuckerberg asked him to be the responsible for international growth of the company. According to Fast Company, Facebook’s growth group was one of the first to use data to drive company growth.
Currently, the growth division has a lot of power in Meta, after achieving milestones such as the facebook lite creation, which was born from the purchase of Snaptu, for which they are responsible in the growth division, and which has allowed the social network to grow a lot in countries where the Internet connection is not as powerful. In 2017, Facebook Lite had 200 million users in countries in Southeast Asia and Africa.
In May 2018, Javier Olivan was appointed responsible for global growth of the company, a job that takes place above all out of the limelight. But outside the company there weren’t many people who knew his weight in one of the biggest companies in Silicon Valley. In fact, he was also practically unknown in Spain, until just three months ago he met with the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, to discuss the company’s plans in Spain.
From now on he will have a much greater responsibility, as he himself admits: «As Meta grows, one of my top priorities will be ensuring that our company’s business and deal product areas go hand in hand. I believe that these organizations can continue to learn a lot from each other, and will benefit from being more connected«.
Meanwhile, Sandberg, who is still not completely clear about her future, has confirmed that for now she will focus more on her foundation and her philanthropic work, something that for her is now «more important, given the criticality of the current moment for women«.
