Who Will Replace Sheryl Sandberg? Maybe No One

Sheryl Sandberg started at a company called Facebook, but stepped down from a changed company called Meta. So who will replace her? No one, suggests the New York Times.

CEO/co-founder Mark Zuckerberg posted Wednesday on Facebook that he didn't "plan to replace Sheryl's role in our existing structure." Instead, the Times notes, around 2020 his company has been structured with "four executives who have equally large responsibilities and who answer to and run major decisions by him." (There's the "public face" ambassador, the Metaverse man, and then the overseer of Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Facebook — with another executive handling analytics, infrastructure and growth.)

"But none of them have as much power as Ms. Sandberg used to, when she effectively ran all of the business operations while Mr. Zuckerberg focused on developing Facebook's products..." Mr. Zuckerberg made the structural shift because he wanted to consolidate his control over all arms of the company, three people close to him said. While Mr. Zuckerberg has always been the undisputed boss, with a majority of the company's voting shares, he shared power with Ms. Sandberg when he was a younger businessman and needed help expanding the company. But with more than 18 years of experience under his belt, he wants to exercise all of his power and be identified more clearly as Meta's sole leader, the people said....

For years, Mr. Zuckerberg and Ms. Sandberg had clear-cut responsibilities, which employees often referred to as the "Sandberg side" and "Mark side." Ms. Sandberg ran the business, policy and legal teams with a lot of autonomy, while Mr. Zuckerberg was responsible for the engineering and product teams. That began changing in 2020 after Facebook dealt with scandals involving privacy, misinformation and other toxic content on the platform. Mr. Zuckerberg told his teams that he was done apologizing and wanted to focus more time and attention on innovative products that the company was designing.

Since then, Mr. Zuckerberg has assumed more control over public messaging and policy decisions, which Ms. Sandberg used to handle. He also brought in hires with public policy expertise and promoted longtime executives who were loyal to his vision.

Who?

[UnknownSoldier]

> Ms. Sandberg ran the business, policy and legal teams with a lot of autonomy, while Mr. Zuckerberg was responsible for the engineering and product teams.

Ah, so the TL:DR; is:

Zuckerberg = data mining
Sandberg = selling of data mined
Iceberg = Fecesbook / Meta's public perception

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot to add "censoring human rights abuses for profit" to her job description.

"Facebook’s eventual solution was to “geo-block” or selectively bar users in a geographic region from viewing certain content, should the threats from Turkish officials escalate.

Three years later, YPG’s photos and updates about the Turkish military’s brutal attacks on the Kurdish minority in Syria still can’t be viewed by Facebook users inside Turkey, according to the report.

Turkey conside

Re:

[UnknownSoldier]

WOW. Thanks for the sharing.

Mod parent +1 informative

Re:

[pbasch]

I don't get this. Is it a reference to the more and more common trope of confusing trans women with a weird grotesque caricature of transvestites? I hear that a bit more now... something about "beards and lipstick". All I can say is, I guess gender nonconformity must be so terrifying to some people (I'm from NYC, not such a big deal). There is a solution, however: join a religious sect, like the Hasids or the Amish. They don't have to see anything they don't like. And, at the least for the Amish, they have

No replacement? It makes sense

[OneHundredAndTen]

At the executive level you have lots of people making a fat living for doing little more than warming a chair and pretending to be important. Parasitism is a feature in the corporate world, just as it is so in the government and civil service: the difference is that the latter is widely recognized whereas the former tends to be swept under the rug.

Re:No replacement? It makes sense

[JaredOfEuropa]

Sandberg has been instrumental in getting FB where it is today. Zuckerberg might be a douchbag, but Sandberg is perhaps the true evil genius of the company. But she has certainly done more than just warm a chair there.

Re:

[JaredOfEuropa]

Sometimes, when a person has been with the company for a while and is doing a good job, their role becomes tailored around that person’s particular strengths and weaknesses. When that person leaves, they don’t try and find another person to fill that bespoke role, but instead come up with one or more cookie-cutter roles to get the same job done by different persons. Sometimes such a move may even trigger a reorganisation. I’ve seen it happen a few times, with execs as well as with senior

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct, like wielding her power to keep her boyfriend's name out of the press.

https://nypost.com/2022/04/21/... [nypost.com]

Another hateful feminazi token?

[greytree]

Don't worry, Biden knows a few.

Wanted Ad

[haggie]

With all of the tech layoffs, I'm sure Facebook won't have any problem finding another evil henchperson for Zuck.

Zuckerberg is taking full control

[Catvid-22]

If a position isn't being filled but its supposed responsibilities has been farmvilled out to different subordinate positions, then most likely the person above them is now the one calling the shots. Of course in a certain sense, Zuckerberg has always called the shots at FB. But given that it's a public company, any spat with Sandberg would have more likely triggered investor panic than a conflict with four less prominent executives. So Sandberg, at the very least, was a moderating influence. Now, it seems there's nothing and nobody standing between Zuckerberg and his Meta vison.

In Other Words . . .

[OneSmartFellow]

. . . Zuck manned up.

About fucking time.