When Facebook held its Nasdaq debut 10 years in the past, the prospectus named six govt officers.

Just one nonetheless stays: Mark Zuckerberg.

Sheryl Sandberg announced her departure from the corporate, now named Meta, on Wednesday, abandoning an advanced 14-year legacy on the social media big, a job that turned her right into a billionaire and one of the highly effective girls within the enterprise world.

In 2012, she was seen as so essential to Fb’s credibility with prospects and traders that the corporate’s IPO submitting named her as one in all two key individuals.

“We at the moment depend upon the continued providers and efficiency of our key personnel, together with Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Okay. Sandberg,” Fb wrote within the danger elements part of its prospectus.

The language caught, and is repeated right through the corporate’s newest annual filing. But it surely’s change into more and more divorced from actuality.

In the previous couple of years, Sandberg’s star has pale, as unflattering studies emerged of her mishandling of the Russian disinformation story following the 2016 presidential election. In response to a 2018 report within the Wall Road Journal, Zuckerberg blamed Sandberg for the fallout over the scandal surrounding Cambridge Analytica, the info analytics agency that improperly used Fb profiles for political analysis.

As a champion of ladies in tech, Sandberg additionally caught flack final 12 months after former worker Frances Haugen revealed internal documents displaying the corporate knew its merchandise might hurt the psychological well being of teenage women — and refused to make modifications.

Investor Whitney Tilson published a letter he wrote to Sandberg in October, after Haugen appeared on “60 Minutes.”

“Horrified would not even start to explain my emotions,” Tilson wrote. “In case you and Mark assume you could run the previous playbook that is labored each time previously – apologize and take a couple of token steps, however probably not change something – and that this may simply blow over, you might be sorely mistaken.”

Sandberg, 52, continued to look on earnings calls to speak in regards to the advert enterprise and points like regulation. There, too, she’s discovered herself in a troublesome spot. Removed from its days as a Silicon Valley progress engine, Fb just lately reported its first-ever quarter of progress beneath 10%, and mentioned that income within the second quarter could decline from a 12 months earlier.

“The corporate must discover a new approach ahead, and maybe this was the most effective time for Sandberg to depart,” Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst at analysis agency Insider Intelligence, wrote in an emailed assertion.

Zuckerberg has tried to vary the dialog, specializing in the metaverse and a way forward for digital leaning, play and work. In his new world, Sandberg was an outsider.

Throughout the 77-minute presentation in October that Zuckerberg used to announce the name change and to indicate off what Meta is attempting to construct, the corporate’s No. 2 was nowhere to be discovered.

Nonetheless, Zuckerberg praised Sandberg on Wednesday, declaring it the “finish of an period.” Whereas Javier Olivan, Meta’s chief progress officer, will assume the title of chief working officer later this 12 months, Zuckerberg wrote in a Fb publish that he would not plan to interchange Sheryl’s function and, “I am unsure that may be attainable since she’s a famous person who outlined the COO function in her personal distinctive approach.”

Fourteen years older than Zuckerberg, Sandberg dropped at Fb a hefty resume from her years at Google and her work in Washington as a part of former President Bill Clinton’s Treasury Division. Zuckerberg, against this, was a school dropout who’d by no means had an actual job.

Sandberg had an simple affect on constructing Fb’s promoting enterprise and its inside operations, together with advertising and marketing and human assets. However the imaginative and prescient of the corporate has at all times been crafted by one particular person and one particular person solely. For Zuckerberg, realizing that imaginative and prescient was a process for engineers.

“We’ve got a saying: ‘Transfer quick and break issues,'” Zuckerberg famously wrote in his letter to potential shareholders within the IPO submitting. “The concept is that in case you by no means break something, you are in all probability not shifting quick sufficient.”

For Zuckerberg, shifting quick meant serving as Fb’s singular head of enterprise improvement for a few of its most vital selections. He supplied to purchase Instagram shortly earlier than the IPO without input from the board, and he reportedly orchestrated the $19 billion buy of WhatsApp after seeing knowledge that confirmed the messaging app was an existential menace to his enterprise.

Sandberg joined Fb’s board in 2008, and indicated on Wednesday that she is going to proceed to function a director. However Zuckerberg has everlasting management over voting rights for the corporate’s inventory, due to his super-voting shares. Meaning he will get to decide on the board members who will adhere to his imaginative and prescient.

That is why Zuckerberg will get to determine when he desires to vary the title of the corporate to Meta and spend $10 billion this 12 months constructing a metaverse which will or could not flip into an actual enterprise by the top of the last decade.

Sandberg informed CNBC that she’s planning to deal with philanthropy, particularly serving to girls, including that she’s “very optimistic about the way forward for the corporate.”

However traders have been bailing, with the inventory shedding half its worth since peaking in September. It dropped one other 2.6% in prolonged buying and selling after Sandberg introduced her departure.

No matter occurs now, Zuckerberg has no person responsible however himself.

— CNBC’s Julia Boorstin contributed to this report.

WATCH: Sandberg says decision to leave about focusing on philanthropy