Meta held a virtual meeting for its more than 70,000 employees on Thursday and had a special topic for discussion: the recently announced departure of Cheryl Sandberg, its longtime CEO.
“People asked me all day yesterday, ‘Why now?’ Why now?’ Why now, because it’s time to write the next chapter of my life, “Sandberg said at the meeting, where Recode received an exclusive recording and transcribed it below. “But really, [it’s] because I have so much faith in the leadership team that Mark and I put in place, ”she continued.
The meeting focuses on Sandberg’s contribution to Meta’s business – namely, making it profitable – as well as Sandberg’s early memories of Zuckerberg and Zuckerberg’s plans to more closely integrate Meta’s product and business teams when Sandberg leaves.
Sandberg’s departure comes at a time of unparalleled uncertainty about the future of Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook. The tech giant is reorienting its vision away from social media to focus on building a “metaverse”; meanwhile, its share price is facing historic declines and it continues to face the continuing threat of regulatory scrutiny.
That’s why leaving Sandberg – long considered the “room adult” who helped Zuckerberg mature his business – came as a shock to the company and the entire technology industry.
Unlike regular weekly meetings with executives’ questions and answers, which are usually held weekly at Meta, the “chat by the fire” format at Thursday’s meeting meant that the company did not accept direct questions from employees. The approximately 30-minute discussion was mostly Sandberg and Zuckerberg, who expressed their gratitude to each other. Zuckerberg thanked Sandberg for teaching his 23-year-old self “how to run a company,” and Sandberg praised Zuckerberg for his vision and the teams they built together.
They did not mention the biggest problems facing the company, such as Meta’s current challenges in moderating content (which Sandberg observed), the declining relevance of Facebook with younger users amid the rise of its competitor TikTok and skepticism about the future. of the metaverse.
The congratulatory tone of the meeting also covered up any questions about the relationship between Zuckerberg and Sandberg, which according to several reports have receded in recent years. (Meta denied any rupture.)
Although the meeting does not dive directly into the many pressing issues facing the company, this leaked Meta in-house recording offers insights into how the company positions a key moment when one of its most formative and prominent leaders leaves.
The following is a quick transcript of Meta’s internal meeting on June 2, 2022. This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Moderator
Hello everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today to be with us following the news you saw on FYI from the Mark and Cheryl publications. And we will not answer questions – this time it is a little different from questions and answers. But we really wanted to hear from Mark and Cheryl and talk to the news staff directly. So without further ado, Mark, we’ll pass it on to you.
Mark Zuckerberg
Well thank you. Well, I wanted to get the company together to talk about yesterday’s news. As I wrote my post, this is the end of an era. That’s right. After 14 years, Cheryl decided to step down as Meta’s chief operating officer. And I think it’s hard for us to sit where we are today, where we have this really successful company, to get into what things have been like since Cheryl joined, to see how much of an impact she has had on that. place.
When Cheryl joined me, it was in 2008. I was then 23 years old and knew almost nothing about running a company. We had this great product at the time, it was a website, not a mobile app, it was just Facebook. But it was a great product that people were very excited about. In fact, we had nothing in the way of a profitable business. We had few ideas, we didn’t really know where to go with the ads. And we really struggled just to move from this free start-up culture to a real organization.
And, you know, a lot of what Cheryl did was architect our advertising business, she hired a lot of great people, she built our management culture, and she taught me and a lot of other people here how to run a company. And I think, do you know where we are now, where we have this successful business and we have an organization that works effectively. And we have hundreds and in many ways thousands of great leaders around the company who can push them forward. This is a very different world from where we were when Cheryl was building all this. You know, I think a lot of her legacy is that she just created opportunities for millions of people around the world, and I think she deserves a lot of credit for what Meta is today.
I think it was a really unusual partnership like this to last so long, Cheryl will say she thought it would last five years, but it lasted 14. I was a little more optimistic that it would last a little over five years. But I mean, usually these things don’t last that long because business is evolving and people’s needs and people’s ambitions are changing. But I think our partnership has worked so long because Cheryl is just such an amazing person and leader, partner and friend and she likes so much of what she did, she really focuses on making the partnership work and she focuses on nurturing the relationship. and helps the people around her grow.
I’m just very grateful to have had the opportunity to build this company and work so closely with Cheryl, and I feel like she’s leaving us in a great place after training so many other great and talented people here. And of course, it will not go that far, because it will be on our board in the future. So it’s hard to exaggerate how much Cheryl has influenced this place anyway. But I just want to start by thanking you for everything you’ve done.
Cheryl Sandberg
Thank you. You know, I don’t know if I expected it to last five years. But the story is that I met Mark at this party. And we stood by the wall next to the door and talked all the time. And then we went out to dinner once, and then somehow, you know, he was very recognizable. I wasn’t, but I had a great team at Google. And one of this team saw us there so we wouldn’t go out again. We had dinner at my house, we couldn’t have dinner at Mark’s house, because Mark – don’t forget you had a studio with a mattress on the floor. And you rightly thought that this was not a good place to have dinner with me.
And so we dined at my house many, many, many times over many months. And then at the end we went out to dinner. Me, Mark and Dave, my husband, and Priscilla was his young friend at the time. And on the way there, Dave and I talked, and he looked at me and said, “You have to be able to see yourself in this business for five years, or it doesn’t make sense.” as Mark said 14 years ago – can you work for and with this person for the next five years of your life? And the answer to that was just a resounding yes.
And you know, I said that in my post, but this job was an honor and a privilege for a lifetime, and it really starts with Mark.
Upon entering, I asked him for three things: to sit together, to meet every week, and to give feedback. And on the third … I asked him to give me feedback every week. And he immediately said, “No, I will not give you feedback every week unless you give it to me. And we tuned in, I think it was Friday in our early days for our meetings and feedback days. And I remember that in one of my first weeks, the feedback came right away and it was Tuesday, and I said to myself, “Wow, this is not a feedback day, the feedback day is Friday.”
But the fact that we talked about it to have a real partnership – and that’s something I tried to convey to the company – because we’re a company full of people, we’re a company full of relationships, that’s all relationships between everyone you who either make this place work or make it not work, who create the products or don’t sell the ads or don’t deliver or don’t, who keep things working or not. And honesty and directness do not allow things to accumulate and keep things on track. And Mark immediately said, “Well, it doesn’t have to be Friday.” And Mark was always really honest with me.
When I thought about this culture of feedback, what was the feedback that Mark had the most for me? And we really have to be ambitious to the end. I remember when that crash of 2008 happened, you know, and I was doomed and gloomy and I thought we’d never sell another ad and our revenue estimates for 2009, Mark was like, “Not good enough.” . And I said, “Well, you know, the markets are collapsing and the whole world is falling apart.” And everyone remembers that – well, not everyone, because some of you are very young – but many of us remember that time around the world and in the markets. And there was a feeling that the end of the recession would never come. Mark says, “Well, we still have to sell ads and build businesses through that.” And we did.
And at every stage of the game, Mark has always made us bolder. One of the other things I’ve always thought about is that Mark has always said that there are two ways for a company to fail. One way is to set ambitious plans and …
Add Comment