Long-time Meta (FB) COO Sheryl Sandberg is stepping down from the role she held for 14 years. And for Meta, that means losing a key executive at a time when the business is undergoing a major transition from a social network to a metaverse company.

Without Sandberg, Meta loses a strong leader who guided the company, and a young Mark Zuckerberg, through numerous controversies, including appearing before Congress in 2018 to answer for Facebook's role in Russia's interference with the 2016 presidential election.

Sandberg’s expertise, however, lay in building up businesses and their ad sales capabilities. And with Meta already a juggernaut in online ad sales and the company changing its focus to the metaverse, not to mention Zuckerberg no longer in need of a mentor, Sandberg’s days at the company were likely already numbered. Still, that doesn’t make her departure any less of a blow to the tech giant.

“Obviously this is a big change,” said Dorie Clark, executive education professor at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.

“[Sandberg’s] background is in ad sales. That's the realm where she has a huge amount of knowledge and has been quite successful,” Clark explained. “But as the company moves forward in a new direction, that is outside of the realm of her expertise, It certainly seems like a logical time for her to move on.”

Meta is in the midst of a massive transformation

Sandberg joined Facebook in 2008 when she was 38 and Zuckerberg was just 23. The two had contrasting styles, with Sandberg rising early and understanding the politics of business, and Zuckerberg, well, not. As a result, she provided the company with a steady hand during its early growth years.

“[Zuckerberg] was a young inventor coming out of Harvard, but in many ways she brought what I would consider to be stability to the leadership ranks, and was his mentor in doing it,” said Bill Klepper, academic director of executive education at Columbia Business School.