Sheryl Sandberg Leans into Meta Exodus

Sheryl Sandberg is Breaking up with Mark Zuckerberg

The fall of a Meta

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Hey guys,

The exodus from Meta (formerly “Facebook”) really has no limits. Sheryl Sandberg is stepping down from her role as Chief Operating Officer at Meta, maybe the most important person at Facebook for any number of the past few years. Sheryl has always been the shrewd humanity to Mark’s robotic clinging to power, and why go down with that ship?

Meta is clearly a company in decline.

Sandberg joined Facebook in early 2008 as the No. 2 to Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg.

You can read her Facebook post about it?here.

The sad part is deep down you know Sheryl as one of the most prominent female leaders in Tech ever, is more martyr than hero. How many PR copyrighters did it take to write her goodbye post however?

Sheryl's Facebook Post Goodbye

Sheryl helped turn Facebook into an advertising juggernaut and one of the most powerful companies in the tech industry, with a market cap that?topped $1 trillion ?at one point. How quickly things change.

Her post on Facebook was beyond cliché and a bit pathetic in what it didn’t say.

Saying Goodbye to the Queen of BigTech

“Over the next few months, Mark and I will transition my direct reports,” Sandberg said in a lengthy Facebook post discussing stepping down. Meta is also planning an internal reorganization to go along with the change, Zuckerberg said.

With the breakup, Mark is losing the best part of him at Facebook. We all know what this really means. But does he? He’s on his own now, the last mad tyrant at Meta. A mad tyrant afraid to admit that he’s losing to TikTok, among other things. Afraid to admit that his place in advertising in the Metaverse will never be the same. Dark thoughts for Tyrants, these days, even in BigTech and VC Overlords.

Meta’s stock is down 44% year to date. Over the past 5 years it’s up only 22%. It’s market cap has sunk to $513.5 Billion, around half of what it was once worth at its peak.

The Facebook scandals must have taken their toll on Sheryl, who always faced her incredible role with a smile and a grit of one of the top female leaders in BigTech.

At a time in the history of the internet when fewer people really engage or use Facebook, she’s stepping back.

But it appears even the highest echelon of Women in Tech, can only be so brave. They go out with a whimper instead of a bang.

14 years building one of the most toxic companies in history is enough, your fight is over Sheryl. Digital Ads will live on without your work there, even you are replaceable in the cold machine of Silicon Valley and in the reptilian chill of the eyes that are Mark Zuckerberg’s. Money and power were not the answer, and Facebook mostly failed on its promises of grandeur of “human connection”.

The downfall of Facebook has been almost painful to watch. Meta has come under fire in recent years for its massive influence, its lack of success in stopping the spread of misinformation and harmful material, and its acquisitions of one-time rivals like Instagram and WhatsApp. Zuckerberg and other execs have been forced to testify before Congress multiple times in the last three years, although Sandberg has largely escaped that spotlight.

By 2021, when a?former Facebook product manager ?handed over damaging documents to the?Wall Street Journal, Zuckerberg and Sandberg struggled to explain what had gone wrong. Zuckerberg at least seemed much more concerned with the metaverse than addressing product-related shortcomings. It’s this lack of accountability and holding on to so much power on Mark's side that must have irked Sheryl on some level. Mark’s failure of leadership has been so obvious, even from the early years of Facebook. Meta is still just an Advertising machine, the business isn't even diversified, it’s not even future proofed.

The chief operating officer was at the center of Facebook’s many controversies

Sheryl somehow escaped the spotlight even as Facebook’s tragedy grew in revenue and an astounding lack of accountability. The profits at all costs hegemony of Facebook must have killed a bit of Sheryl inside day by day. Sheryl gave the best 14 year of her life to a company that arguably made the world a worse off place.

Is she without a conscience? Who will ever know the truth. Even still,?the news Wednesday that she will soon leave her position ?as the social media giant’s number-two executive sent shockwaves throughout the company and the rest of Silicon Valley. Because it signaled it’s really the beginning of the end for Facebook.

The frank reality is you cannot replace the level of talent that is leaving Meta since the pandemic or the stock reversal that’s poised sentiment further at the company, as if that were even possible. Meta's pivot isn't even remotely realistic, and everyone knows it.

Sheryl Leans in to the End of Facebook

Meta now claims not 2, but 3 billion users with WhatsApp and Instagram, but in reality ByteDance has disrupted Facebook and its apps are mostly used only in special cases among young people today.

Sandberg, 52, helped build the world’s most profitable social network alongside Mark Zuckerberg, who she met when the CEO was just 23 and still struggling to turn his viral site into an actual business. Sheryl made Mark incredibly rich, and gave him the world but all good things must come to an end.

Facebook has always been about pretending they are doing good work in the world, but even as her goodbye notes and interviews sounded like more pretending, you have to give Sandberg credit for her job well done.

Thanks for reading!

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You did the right thing breaking up with Mark, Sheryl, not even his wife can save him at this point. Power and money does corrupt totally. Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook story is a testimony to all that went wrong with Silicon Valley at scale. Part hero, part martyr, Sheryl Sandberg’s legacy will be mixed and Meta likely owes more than 50% of its success to her.

How do you ever describe the decade of abuse by Facebook that made us lose trust in all of Silicon Valley? It is indeed the end of an era Mark. You didn't deserve someone like Sheryl by your side and your selfishness as a leader will be your downfall. The Emperor of Tech is crying.

Join me writing about retail, technology and the future of the internet on Sublink?here . I cannot continue to write without community support.

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