‘End of an era’: Sheryl Sandberg leaves behind powerful – if complicated – legacy

theguardian.com:

Sheryl Sandberg announced on Wednesday she will step down from her role as chief operating officer of Facebook, after 14 years as one of the most powerful figures at a company that transformed Silicon Valley.

During her time at Facebook, now Meta, she saw the company through a meteoric rise and an ongoing storm of controversies. Sandberg herself transformed into a controversial figurehead for corporate feminism following the release of her book Lean In, which became a seminal manifesto for women in the workplace.

Facebook, with Sandberg as one of its most public faces, has weathered scrutiny over the Cambridge Analytica breach, the January 2021 attack on the US Capitol, and most recently documents leaked by the whistleblower Frances Haugen that revealed some of the platform’s most toxic impacts.

While the scandals have created a mixed legacy for the executive, her mark on the business of Facebook – and the entirety of the social media industry – is undeniable, said Debra Williamson an analyst at Insider Intelligence who has been following the company since its founding.

“There have been 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,” she said.

Sandberg joined Facebook four years after its founding to be “the adult in the room” of a young company and strategize the monetization of its growing user base. She helped revolutionize its advertising business model, turning the company into the juggernaut it is today at $117bn in revenue in 2021. In 2008, when she began, its yearly revenue was just $200m, according to Insider Intelligence.

The scandals that took place during her tenure led activists to call for her