Who Is Mark Zuckerberg’s New No. 2? It’s a Trick Question.

For a lot more than a 10 years, Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg started and ended each week by conference alongside one another.

The symbolism of the ritual was crystal clear. It was meant to sign that Mr. Zuckerberg, the main executive of Meta, and Ms. Sandberg, the chief operating officer, ended up in lock action with each individual other at the top rated of the business.

But when Ms. Sandberg, 52, claimed on Wednesday that she would action down from Meta this drop, she crystallized an unspoken improve at the tech large: Mr. Zuckerberg no for a longer time has any apparent No. 2.

When Mr. Zuckerberg named Javier Olivan, a longtime govt, to get in excess of Ms. Sandberg’s task when she departs, the worth of the main running officer job has diminished at Meta, which was previously identified as Facebook. Mr. Zuckerberg, 38, in its place has four executives who have equally big tasks and who response to and run important selections by him.

Mr. Zuckerberg designed the structural shift simply because he needed to consolidate his command around all arms of the business, 3 persons shut to him reported. While Mr. Zuckerberg has generally been the undisputed manager, with a the greater part of the company’s voting shares, he shared electricity with Ms. Sandberg when he was a youthful businessman and wanted help increasing the company. But with a lot more than 18 many years of expertise below his belt, he needs to exercise all of his ability and be recognized more plainly as Meta’s sole chief, the people mentioned.

The 4 top rated lieutenants are Andrew Bosworth, the chief technological know-how officer Nick Clegg, the president of global affairs Chris Cox, the chief merchandise officer and Mr. Olivan, who was the head of expansion, Mr. Zuckerberg said in a Facebook message about Ms. Sandberg’s exit on Wednesday.

Every of the four gentlemen has important tasks. Mr. Clegg is the community confront and ambassador for Meta, even though Mr. Bosworth is pushing the company into the immersive globe of the so-called metaverse. Mr. Cox oversees Meta’s relatives of apps — Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Fb — and Mr. Olivan will be in cost of analytics, infrastructure and development.

But none of them have as a lot ability as Ms. Sandberg applied to, when she proficiently ran all of the company operations when Mr. Zuckerberg targeted on establishing Facebook’s products and solutions.

Mr. Zuckerberg alluded to the energy shift on Wednesday in his Facebook submit. He reported he didn’t “plan to exchange Sheryl’s position in our existing structure,” introducing that Meta “has achieved the issue exactly where it helps make feeling for our product and company groups to be a lot more carefully built-in, alternatively than getting all the business and operations capabilities organized individually from our products and solutions.”

R.A. Farrokhnia, a professor at Columbia’s Business and Engineering Educational facilities, said the change in administration structure manufactured feeling as Meta invested in the metaverse and moved absent from the social networking model that Ms. Sandberg designed an marketing small business for and championed for several years.

“Moving in this direction involves a extra decentralized — and much more standard — governance construction,” Mr. Farrokhnia explained. “You have numerous men and women coming alongside one another in which the sum of the elements results in being substantially larger sized.”

A spokesman for Meta declined to comment and declined to deliver interviews with executives.

For yrs, Mr. Zuckerberg and Ms. Sandberg experienced obvious-minimize duties, which employees normally referred to as the “Sandberg side” and “Mark side.” Ms. Sandberg ran the business, policy and authorized teams with a whole lot of autonomy, when Mr. Zuckerberg was liable for the engineering and merchandise teams.

That began transforming in 2020 after Fb dealt with scandals involving privacy, misinformation and other poisonous information on the platform. Mr. Zuckerberg advised his teams that he was completed apologizing and wished to concentration far more time and attention on progressive products and solutions that the corporation was planning.

Considering the fact that then, Mr. Zuckerberg has assumed additional regulate above community messaging and policy conclusions, which Ms. Sandberg applied to handle. He also brought in hires with community coverage expertise and promoted longtime executives who were being faithful to his vision.

A few executives he promoted have been Mr. Bosworth and Mr. Cox, who have been at the business for 16 decades, and Mr. Olivan, who joined just about 15 years in the past. They were between Mr. Zuckerberg’s earliest recruits, and have been instrumental in creating the earliest versions of Fb.

Mr. Olivan, 44, who is identified internally as Javi, joined Fb as head of intercontinental expansion and rose steadily by means of the ranks. He is not a domestic name but oversaw Facebook’s speedy growth and was carefully included with preserving the company’s specialized infrastructure.

Mr. Bosworth, 40, is found as an enthusiastic and often brash cheerleader for Mr. Zuckerberg’s vision. In January, he was promoted to be the up coming main technology officer. He oversees the digital and augmented fact labs, which make merchandise like the Quest virtual fact headsets that are at the coronary heart of Mr. Zuckerberg’s press for the metaverse. He and Mr. Zuckerberg are also shut close friends who holiday jointly.

Mr. Cox, 39, who became main products officer in 2005, has normally been described by employees as the heart of the business. He left Facebook in March 2019 but returned in June 2020, prompting speculation that Mr. Zuckerberg may well have been signaling him as a successor.

Through Mr. Cox’s absence, some of his groups were reassigned to report specifically to Mr. Zuckerberg or other executives, claimed two senior Meta workforce who have labored with Mr. Cox because his return. They stated he had not assumed the variety of expansive function he after experienced with hundreds of engineers reporting to him.

Mr. Clegg, 55, joined the firm in 2018 immediately after a profession in British politics, like a stint as deputy primary minister. Ms. Sandberg hired him to just take around dealing with Facebook’s thorny political issues globally, a undertaking that was once hers. Over time, he has become a kind of de facto head of point out for the business, working with globe governments and advocating for Meta at a regulatory stage. In February, he was promoted to president of international affairs, reporting to Mr. Zuckerberg.

At Meta, insiders have extensive speculated more than who a opportunity successor to Mr. Zuckerberg would be, must he ever go away. Ms. Sandberg’s impending departure has now shortened that listing and left no clear answers.

“Over the decades, few individuals other than Sheryl have emerged as a opportunity successor to Mark,” reported Katie Harbath, a director of public plan at Meta who remaining the business past yr. “It makes sense for Mark to want alternatives for probable successors.”

She additional: “It can be risky to only target on one particular individual.”