Mark Zuckerberg hired Sheryl Sandberg as Facebook’s chief operating officer in 2008 as the social
network (grow) fast and trying to attract investment. Zuckerberg, who founded
Facebook in his Harvard dorm room, was just 23 – Sandberg, then 38, was “the adult in the room”.
The former sales executive at Google and chief of staff at the US Treasury (rise) to
become one of the most influential figures in the global technology sector and one of very few women at
the top of the industry. She also made a lot of money – she is now worth close to 2 billion US dollars.
Sandberg, now 54, left that role in June 2022, and on 17 January, she (announce) she
was leaving Meta’s board too. “This (feel) like the right time to step away,” she wrote
in a Facebook post, as Meta was “well-positioned for the future”.
Sandberg was one of six executive officers named when Facebook filed for an initial public offering in
2012. With her exit, only Zuckerberg remains. She (see) as so critical to the
company’s success she was named alongside the founder as one of the key personnel who posed a
potential risk to investors’ money if they were to leave.
Zuckerberg and Sandberg met at a Christmas party at the home of Dan Rosensweig, a Silicon Valley
executive in 2007. “We talked for probably an hour by the door,” Zuckerberg told the New Yorker.
They went on to have twice-weekly dinners at Sandberg’s house. Dave Goldberg, Sandberg’s late
husband, said it was like they were “dating”.
“What do you believe? What do you care about? What’s the mission? It was very philosophical,”
Sandberg said. Describing her role at Facebook, Zuckerberg hassaid she “handlesthings I don’t want to.
All that stuff that in other companies I might have to do. And she’s much better at that.”
That “stuff” (include) developing an advertising strategy to make the company
hundreds of billions a year and hiring and firing employees. She also handled political and ethical issues,
dealing with the Cambridge Analytica breach, the January 2021 attack on the US Capitol and the
documents leaked by the whistleblower Frances Haugen that revealed some of the platform’s most toxic
impacts.
The run of scandals (prompt) activists to call for Sandberg’s resignation and question
her legacy as a women’s rights advocate. Shaunna Thomas, the co-founder of women’s rights group
UltraViolet, has said that under Sandberg’s watch, Meta platforms became “a right-wing playground
where misogyny, racism, disinformation” grew.
“Sheryl Sandberg may fancy herself a feminist, but her decisions at Meta made social-media platforms
less safe for women, people of colour and the American electoral system,” Thomas said. “Sandberg had
the power to take action for 14 years, yet consistently (choose) not to.”
However, Debra Williamson, an analyst at Insider Intelligence, said: “There (be)
plenty of controversies surrounding Meta, but from a purely business standpoint, what she built at
Facebook is pretty powerful and will go down in the history books.”
“What we realised is that in order to really get to equality, equality in leadership everywhere, from our
parliaments to our statehouses to our homes, we’re going to have to go younger,” she said last year.
“Who wants to say to a girl seven years before she enters the workforce, ‘One day you’re going to be in a
meeting and some man is going to talk over you, voice something you just said and get credit for your
ideas.’” Her second book, Option B, is “about facing adversity, building resilience, and finding joy”
and (focus) on her husband’s death. “I was in ‘the void’,” she wrote, “a vast emptiness that fills your
heart and lungs and restricts your ability to think or even breathe.”


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