The adult in the room
Sheryl Sandberg, the long-time Chief Operating Officer of Meta, is stepping down after 14 years at the company.
When she joined in 2008 she was often described as the "adult in the room", working alongside founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who was just 24 at the time. During her tenure Facebook went from $153m in annual revenue, with a team of a few hundred, to the $100bn+ advertising behemoth that it is today with more than 77,000 employees.
As Facebook's number two, Sandberg had ultimate responsibility for building out much of the advertising infrastructure that now powers the Meta machine. That infrastructure has turned eyeballs into revenue, arguably better than any company has managed in history, but it's also attracted controversy such as the Cambridge Analytica scandal of 2018, which saw Facebook fined $5bn for violating users' privacy. More recently concerns have been raised about the impact of social media on young people, and the spread of misinformation on Facebook and Instagram.
