Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook and its parent company Meta, has announced she will step down from her role, ending 14 years in the job that made her one of the most powerful figures in the tech world and saw the company weather a meteoric rise and multiple controversies.
Sandberg announced the move in a post on her own Facebook page on Wednesday, adding that she was not sure of what the future holds for her but plans to focus on her foundation and philanthropic work going forward.
She quickly gained notoriety as one of the most visible and most powerful female executives globally, with previous positions at Google and the Clinton administration. In 2013 she published her female empowerment manifesto Lean In.
More recently, she has overseen operations as the company weathers a financial downturn amid a shift away from its core social media platforms into virtual reality.
Most recently Sandberg and Facebook had faced increased scrutiny after documents leaked by the whistleblower Frances Haugen were turned over to Congress and published by a number of news outlets.
The documents revealed the extent to which Meta knew about the aggressive spread of misinformation and hate speech on its platform, that it was reluctant to censor rightwing news organizations for fear of angering the Trump administration, and how it struggled to crack down on human trafficking operations advertised on Instagram. It also revealed internal studies that showed grave mental health effects of the platform on teens.
Sandberg referenced in her departure missive the ways the tech landscape has evolved since she began at the company.
As backlash mounted over the whistleblower documents in 2021, Sandberg and Zuckerberg avoided making public comment on the revelations, instead leaving Nick Clegg, the vice-president of global affairs, and Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, to manage the official response to the revelations.
Reuters contributed reporting.
