“Don't let yourself off the hook by deciding that something is out of your reach, instead, ask yourself, 'What would I do if I weren't afraid?’” - Sheryl Sandberg, former COO at Meta.
That’s a powerful question that can resonate with a lot of us and has been inspiring women all around the world for years. But mostly, that’s one way of describing the career and life philosophy of one of the most influential women in the tech industry.
Sheryl Sandberg is known to us for many things. And none of them is speaking “less successful” than the other. From being an outstanding student at Harvard to propelling the global business operations at Google, then being the second in command at Facebook (later Meta), and later also becoming a best-seller author.
But the reality is that she had to overcome a lot of obstacles to get where she is today. Nonetheless, with all that astounding career background, nothing stopped Sheryl Sandberg from becoming one of the most inspiring and influential women in the tech industry. She has not only achieved great heights in her career, but she has also been an advocate for women’s empowerment and leadership.
For all of this, Sheryl Sandberg is considered one of the most powerful women figures according to Forbes, and we couldn’t agree more.
So we wondered… Where does one even start a career that ends up being so successful? And it turns out that for Sheryl Sandberg, everything started when she decided to join Google Inc. back in 2000. Sheryl Sandberg saw the opportunity that Google presented with its new technology and decided to join the company that year. It was proven to be one of the best decisions she could make both for herself and for the company.
Before that, we can recall her working for the World Bank for 2 years before earning her bachelor's degree. During that period, we can assume she was exposed to an international business mindset as she worked on new technology multiple projects with international reach that targeted developing countries.
Obviously, she wouldn’t stop there. In 1995, she finished an MBA at Harvard. Now the time has come to take things further and seize every learning opportunity. So following the MBA, she worked for McKinsey and Company for a year and then served as Chief of Staff for the US Department of Treasury for 5 years.
This learning mindset, as stated by Sheryl herself in “There is no perfect fit when you're looking for the next big thing to do. You have to take opportunities and make an opportunity fit for you…”- is best highlighted by the choices she made afterward.
But as she started with the position of General Manager of Business Operations at Google Inc., she reported having only 4 people in her department. But it makes sense! After all, Google wasn’t the giant that it is today. At that time, she was responsible for sales operations, and she helped the company grow its advertising business.
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Sheryl Sandberg’s hard work and innovative ideas toward new technology quickly caught the attention of her colleagues and superiors.
So, it wasn’t long until she became Vice President of Global Online Sales and Operations. And believe it or not, it’s under her leadership AdSense and AdWords were booming, accounting for a very consistent part of the company’s revenues. There’s no denying that Sheryl Sandberg played a vital role in making Google the dominant player in the online advertising space.
However, Sandberg’s career at Google was not without challenges. Despite her exceptional performance, she still encountered sexism and gender discrimination in the workplace. Even now, there is a scarce number of women in tech, in the beginning of the 2000s, the situation was even worse.
This did not let that stop her and her success! She was not only thriving at managing business operations and teams, but she was also responsible for the philanthropic arm of Google back in 2004, called Google.org. To this day, this branch of Google focuses on economic empowerment where needed, future technology development, innovations, and learning opportunities.
Sheryl Sandberg’s career path at Google was so fruitful that she asked to be promoted to Chief Operating Officer. Yet, the former CEO at Google, Eric Schmidt, denied her request. The company had enough decision-makers, with the 2 founders and Schimdt being in charge. Instead, Sheryl proposed the idea of becoming Chief Financial Officer.
But whatever position they would have offered now, it was too late. Sandberg was already interested by 2008 in being a part of Facebook, looking for something new to learn and experiment with.
She left Google and accepted the position of COO at Facebook that year after convincing Mark Zuckerberg that she could manage the revenue aspect of the company, solving the profit problem that it had. Once at Facebook, it’s right to say that Sheryl put everything that she learned into action and became crucial in Facebook’s growth to the multi-billion dollar company that it is today.
Her strategy was resembling what she did for Google, as the new advertising strategies for Facebook would again count for a huge part of future revenues in the company. She was the second in command after Zuckerberg and beside him, she might be the most iconic figure for the company. But hey, no journey is paved only with gold and neither was Sandberg’s.
She supervised the company’s policy division during the massive Cambridge Analytica scandal. It was back in 2016 when millions of users got their data used for political manipulation in Trump’s campaign to get people to vote for him. Besides this, there were many other cases of scandals and accusations against Facebook that Sheryl Sandberg had to go through.
But with her career becoming more and more successful, she decided it was time to leave the future technology world behind and take her responsibility for empowering women more seriously.
For this reason, in 2013, she published the NYT best-seller business book “Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead”. It was through this book, and the foundation “Lean In” that was later formed, that Sheryl Sandberg started to put her life philosophy out there to help women all over the world seize opportunities for themselves.
Even more so, she encourages women to give up the social pressure of “having it all” - the perfect job, the perfect family, the perfect husband - and start realizing that nobody has. Instead, she tells us it is important to decide the priorities for yourself but never fall short on what you’d like to do before you know your worth and what you can do.
As a leader, we can see Sheryl Sandberg being focused on a collaborative, open way of leading with a focus on empathy and active listening. There is no wonder her teams were performing very well, with a leader so eager to drive excellence both through trusting her people and also through the power of leading by example.
Even so, her life philosophy was criticized by many, with people arguing that she missed a lot of points with her pieces of advice. Yet nothing stopped her from co-authoring her second book “Option B” alongside Adam Grant and publishing it in 2017. The book came 2 years after Sheryl’s husband, Dave Goldberg, CEO of SurveyMonkey, died. This time the book didn’t focus that much on gender inequality and empowering women in the workplace. Rather the emphasis has been put on how we can get through the most difficult times in our lives. With examples from her own experience and others, the book was a new success for Sheryl.
After decades of climbing the corporate ladder and making a significant impact in the tech industry, as of the fall of 2022, Sheryl Sandberg decided to step aside from Facebook and focus on her family and being a voice for other women, leaving aside future technology for a moment.
Although Sandberg’s decision to leave Facebook was a surprise to many, it was made due to her willingness to focus on her kids and her foundation for the empowerment of women in business. After all, an experience of more than 20 years in shaping the future tech industry could get anyone to the point where enough is enough. Sheryl still serves in the board meetings at Meta (ex-Facebook) and will probably still do so as her house in Menlo Park, California, is just a 20-minute ride away from the company’s headquarters.
“Resilience is a muscle you build in yourself, in other people, in children.” With this statement closing her second book in 2017, Sheryl Sandberg offered us one of the best words to describe her as a public figure as well as a mother, and that is resilience.
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