After Sheryl Sandberg stepped down, who is the second man in dead after Zuckerberg?

For more than a decade, Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg have both started and ended each week with a meeting, and the symbolism of this ritual is clear that Meta CEO Zuckerberg and COO Sandberg work together in unison.

But Sandberg made an undisclosed change in the tech giant's core when she announced her resignation from Meta, meaning that Zuckerberg no longer had a close partner in managing the company.

In a report published by the New York Times, writers Shera Frankel and Mike Isaacs said that Zuckerberg had appointed Javier Olivian, an executive within the company, to succeed Sandberg upon her departure.

But the importance of the role of COO at Meta is set to diminish, as Zuckerberg has instead appointed 4 CEOs with equal responsibilities, tasked with implementing the important decisions he makes.

According to 3 people close to him, Zuckerberg made this structural change because he wanted to consolidate his control over the company's arms.

Zuckerberg is the undisputed president of "META" by owning the majority of the voting shares in the company (Al-Jazeera)

Although Zuckerberg is the undisputed boss with the majority of the voting shares in the company, he shared power with Sandberg when he was younger and needed help expanding the company, but with 18 years of experience he now wants to exercise his full authority to be the one dead leader.

In a statement on Facebook, Zuckerberg said the four CEOs are: Andrew Bosworth, chief technology officer, Nick Clegg, chief global affairs officer, Chris Cox, chief production officer, and Olivan, who was the company's director of growth.

These four will have significant responsibilities, with Clegg being the public face and ambassador for Meta, Bosworth driving the company into the Metaverse universe, Cox overseeing the Meta applications suite, and Olivan responsible for analytics, infrastructure, and growth.

But none of them will have the power that Sandberg had when she effectively ran all business operations while Zuckerberg focused on developing Facebook products.

Zuckerberg noted the management shift in a Facebook post, stating that “I did not plan to replace Cheryl’s role in our current structure,” adding that Meta “has reached the point where its products and workgroups have to be more integrated, rather than all business and missions.” Operation is regulated separately from our products.

For RA Varukhnia, a professor in Columbia's Business and Engineering Schools, this shift in management structure made sense since Meta invested in Metaverse and moved away from the social networking model for which Sandberg built her advertising business. She defended him for years.

"Moving in this direction requires a management structure that is less centralized - and more traditional," she adds.

For years Zuckerberg and Sandberg had clear responsibilities that employees often refer to as the "Sandberg side" and "Mark's side." Sandberg ran the business, policy, and law teams with plenty of autonomy, while Zuckerberg was responsible for the engineering and product teams.

That division began to change in 2020 after Facebook dealt with privacy and misinformation scandals on the platform, when Zuckerberg told his teams he was tired of apologizing and wanted to focus more time and attention on the innovative products the company was designing.

Since then, Zuckerberg has taken more control of the public messaging and policy decisions Sandberg used to deal with, hiring employees with public policy experience while promoting CEOs who were true to his vision, first Bosworth and Cox who have been at the company for 16 years and Olivan who joined The company has been around for nearly 15 years.

The authors added that Olivian joined Facebook as Head of International Growth and rose through the ranks, and although his name is not familiar, he contributed to the rapid expansion of Facebook and was closely involved in maintaining the company's technical infrastructure.

Bosworth, seen as an ardent and sometimes outspoken fan of Zuckerberg's vision, was promoted in January to be chief technology officer, overseeing virtual and augmented reality labs that make products like the Quest VR headset.

The four CEOs of META are: Andrew Bosworth, Nick Clegg, Chris Cox and Javier Olivan (Al Jazeera)

Cox, who became product manager in 2005, is often described by employees as the heart of the company.

He left Facebook in March 2019 but returned in June 2020, prompting speculation that Zuckerberg may have been referring to him as a successor.

The authors explained that Clegg joined the company in 2018 after a career in British politics, including his tenure as Deputy Prime Minister, and was hired by Sandberg to take charge of dealing with thorny political issues globally, a task that she had previously.

Over time, Clegg has dealt with world governments and advocates for Meta on an organizational level, and in February was promoted to head of global affairs.

META insiders have long been trying to speculate on Zuckerberg's possible successor should he ever leave, but Sandberg's departure shortened that list and left no clear answers.

“Except for Cheryl, for years only a handful of people worthy of Mark's succession have emerged,” says Katie Harpath, Meta's director of public policy, who left the company last year. “It makes sense that Mark would have different options for his potential successors."

"It is dangerous to focus on just one person," she asserts.