It is reported that in the past ten years, Zuckerberg, the first leader and Sandberg, the second leader of meta (former Facebook), have met at the beginning and end of each week. This "ceremony" is highly symbolic, indicating that the CEO and COO of meta maintain close unity and jointly lead this social networking giant.
The second leader resigned
However, Sandberg, 52, announced last week that he would leave meta, which will bring a huge change to meta - Zuckerberg will no longer have a powerful second in command.
Zuckerberg soon announced that he would appoint a long-term senior executive, Javier olivan, to take over Sandberg's work. However, previously, the power of the post of chief operating officer within meta had been weakened. At the age of 38, Zuckerberg has four generals, each responsible for a large business. They report to Zuckerberg and implement his top decisions.
Three sources said that the reason why Zuckerberg adjusted his management structure was to firmly control the company's major businesses.
Plump wings
Historically, Zuckerberg has been the undisputed big boss of meta, with absolute voting rights. However, when he was young, Zuckerberg had little experience in operating the company, so he adopted the decentralized management mode with Sandberg.
The source said that after 18 years of managing the company, Zuckerberg has full wings. He hopes to be regarded as the only leader of meta by the outside world.
The above four deputy directors of Zuckerberg include Andrew Bosworth, chief technology officer, Nick cleg, president in charge of global policy affairs, Chris Cox, chief product, and Oliver, who is responsible for business growth.
These four leaders have a clear division of labor. Craig is equivalent to the ambassador and external image of meta. Bowers is leading the company into the concept of the so-called meta universe. Cox is responsible for its social product family (instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Facebook platforms). Oliver is mainly responsible for data analysis, infrastructure and growth strategy.
Obviously, the power of these four generals will be far weaker than that of Sandberg in the past. Previously, Sandberg was basically responsible for the daily operation of the company, and Zuckerberg mainly focused on developing products.
In his post on the Facebook platform last week, Zuckerberg also talked about the adjustment of the management structure. He said that in the new structure, there will not be one person to replace all of Sandberg's work.
He said that the development of meta has reached a new stage, and all internal products and business groups need to be more closely united and integrated, rather than separate daily operations according to products.
R.A. farrokhna, a professor of Columbia University in the United States, said that the adjustment of meta's management structure is a wise move because the company is investing in the meta universe and has got rid of the social network business model (mainly advertising revenue) led by Sandberg in the traditional era.
Farooney said that the new business transformation requires meta to implement a decentralized and more traditional management mode. Many people and businesses come together and can produce the effect that one plus one is greater than two.
A spokesman for meta declined to comment on the management structure adjustment.
Clear cut
In the past many years, the management authorities of Zuckerberg and Sandberg have been completely different. Internal employees call them "Sandberg side" or "mark side" respectively ("mark" is Zuckerberg's name).
Sandberg manages the daily business, policy and legal teams with great autonomy, while Zuckerberg is mainly responsible for the engineering technology and product development team.
However, this dual management structure began to change in 2020. At that time, meta encountered various scandals and great external pressure, involving invasion of privacy, false information on the platform and toxic content.
Zuckerberg told internal employees that he was tired of apologizing to the society frequently and hoped to spend more time and energy on new product development.
After that, Zuckerberg took over the work that traditionally belonged to Sandberg, including social communication, policy-making and so on. He has also recruited some experienced talents in the field of public policy, and promoted confidants loyal to his development vision.
At that time, three senior executives were promoted, including the above-mentioned bovos, Cox and Oliver. The first two had worked in the company for 16 years, while Oliver had worked in the company for 15 years.
These three were management talents recruited by Zuckerberg in his early days, and made great contributions to the development of Facebook's early platform.
Oliver
Oliver, 44, is called "Jia Wen" within the company. When he first joined Facebook, he was responsible for the growth of the international market. Later, he was promoted all the way. Oliver is not well-known in the society, but he leads the company's business expansion and is also responsible for maintaining the company's technical infrastructure.
Burworth
He is 40 years old. He strongly supports Zuckerberg's development vision. He is full of enthusiasm and sometimes even a little self righteous. Earlier this year, Bowers was promoted to the new chief technology officer.
Bowers is responsible for the virtual reality and Augmented Reality Laboratory, which develops quest and other virtual reality headgear, which is also an important component of the meta universe concept promoted by Zuckerberg. It is reported that bovos and Zuckerberg are very close friends and often spend holidays together.
Cox
Cox, 39, was promoted to chief product officer in 2005. Meta employees described him as "the heart of the company". In addition, Cox left Facebook in March 2019, but joined again in June the next year. There are rumors in the industry that Zuckerberg may promise Cox that "you are my future successor".
Two sources said that when Cox left the company, the team he took charge of instead reported to Zuckerberg and other senior executives. However, since his return to the company, he has not recovered to the peak of his power in the past (for example, thousands of engineers have reported to him).
Craig
Craig is 55 years old. In his early years, he worked in the British government (once served as Deputy Prime Minister) and joined Facebook in 2018.
Sandberg recruited Craig to take charge of the most thorny global public policy issues (Sandberg's own "hot potato"). Over the years, Craig has become the "foreign minister" of Facebook. He deals with governments around the world and runs for the company's interests in policy supervision.
In February this year, Craig was promoted to President of global policy affairs, reporting directly to Zuckerberg.
Successor
Within meta, many people are guessing who will succeed Zuckerberg if he leaves the company in the future?
Sandberg's resignation means that one person is missing from the list of successors, but there is no clear answer to who will take over.
Katie harbath once served as director of public policy at meta and left last year. Habas revealed that in recent years, no one except Sandberg has any sign of Zuckerberg's successor.
Habas said that Zuckerberg hopes to have several options on the issue of succession, which is wise. "If only one person is trained, there will be risks."