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

For far more than a decade, Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg began and finished each week by meeting alongside one another.

The symbolism of the ritual was apparent. It was supposed to signal that Mr. Zuckerberg, the chief government of Meta, and Ms. Sandberg, the chief running officer, have been in lock step with each other at the leading of the organization.

But when Ms. Sandberg, 52, reported on Wednesday that she would action down from Meta this fall, she crystallized an unspoken modify at the tech huge: Mr. Zuckerberg no longer has any obvious No. 2.

Even though Mr. Zuckerberg named Javier Olivan, a longtime executive, to just take over Ms. Sandberg’s position when she departs, the significance of the main functioning officer job has diminished at Meta, which was previously known as Fb. Mr. Zuckerberg, 38, instead has 4 executives who have equally huge responsibilities and who answer to and operate main choices by him.

Mr. Zuckerberg manufactured the structural change mainly because he needed to consolidate his manage around all arms of the business, 3 men and women shut to him claimed. When Mr. Zuckerberg has often been the undisputed boss, with a vast majority of the company’s voting shares, he shared electricity with Ms. Sandberg when he was a younger businessman and necessary assistance growing the organization. But with more than 18 a long time of experience under his belt, he would like to physical exercise all of his ability and be identified a lot more clearly as Meta’s sole leader, the folks explained.

The four prime lieutenants are Andrew Bosworth, the main technology officer Nick Clegg, the president of global affairs Chris Cox, the chief product officer and Mr. Olivan, who was the head of growth, Mr. Zuckerberg stated in a Fb concept about Ms. Sandberg’s exit on Wednesday.

Each individual of the 4 guys has important tasks. Mr. Clegg is the public deal with and ambassador for Meta, while Mr. Bosworth is pushing the firm into the immersive earth of the so-called metaverse. Mr. Cox oversees Meta’s family of applications — Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Facebook — and Mr. Olivan will be in demand of analytics, infrastructure and growth.

But none of them have as a great deal ability as Ms. Sandberg applied to, when she proficiently ran all of the small business operations though Mr. Zuckerberg focused on acquiring Facebook’s items.

Mr. Zuckerberg alluded to the electrical power change on Wednesday in his Fb put up. He stated he did not “plan to substitute Sheryl’s function in our existing structure,” introducing that Meta “has arrived at the place in which it can make feeling for our item and company teams to be additional intently built-in, instead than having all the enterprise and operations functions structured individually from our goods.”

R.A. Farrokhnia, a professor at Columbia’s Business enterprise and Engineering Educational institutions, claimed the shift in administration framework manufactured perception as Meta invested in the metaverse and moved away from the social networking product that Ms. Sandberg constructed an advertising business enterprise for and championed for several years.

“Moving in this route necessitates a a lot more decentralized — and far more conventional — governance composition,” Mr. Farrokhnia reported. “You have a number of people coming together where the sum of the pieces gets to be significantly much larger.”

A spokesman for Meta declined to remark and declined to supply interviews with executives.

For several years, Mr. Zuckerberg and Ms. Sandberg experienced clear-slice responsibilities, which workforce normally referred to as the “Sandberg side” and “Mark aspect.” Ms. Sandberg ran the business enterprise, plan and legal teams with a good deal of autonomy, while Mr. Zuckerberg was accountable for the engineering and products teams.

That started altering in 2020 right after Fb dealt with scandals involving privateness, misinformation and other poisonous material on the platform. Mr. Zuckerberg informed his teams that he was finished apologizing and preferred to target a lot more time and focus on ground breaking products and solutions that the enterprise was designing.

Because then, Mr. Zuckerberg has assumed much more manage around public messaging and plan conclusions, which Ms. Sandberg used to handle. He also introduced in hires with public policy skills and promoted longtime executives who have been loyal to his eyesight.

3 executives he promoted had been Mr. Bosworth and Mr. Cox, who have been at the firm for 16 decades, and Mr. Olivan, who joined virtually 15 several years back. They had been among the Mr. Zuckerberg’s earliest recruits, and were instrumental in building the earliest versions of Facebook.

Mr. Olivan, 44, who is acknowledged internally as Javi, joined Facebook as head of international expansion and rose steadily by means of the ranks. He is not a household identify but oversaw Facebook’s immediate growth and was carefully associated with keeping the company’s technological infrastructure.

Mr. Bosworth, 40, is witnessed as an enthusiastic and in some cases brash cheerleader for Mr. Zuckerberg’s vision. In January, he was promoted to be the future chief engineering officer. He oversees the digital and augmented truth labs, which make products like the Quest virtual truth headsets that are at the heart of Mr. Zuckerberg’s press for the metaverse. He and Mr. Zuckerberg are also near friends who holiday jointly.

Mr. Cox, 39, who grew to become chief item officer in 2005, has normally been explained by workers as the coronary heart of the corporation. He still left Fb in March 2019 but returned in June 2020, prompting speculation that Mr. Zuckerberg may well have been signaling him as a successor.

Throughout Mr. Cox’s absence, some of his groups had been reassigned to report directly to Mr. Zuckerberg or other executives, mentioned two senior Meta workforce who have labored with Mr. Cox because his return. They mentioned he experienced not assumed the sort of expansive position he the moment experienced with thousands of engineers reporting to him.

Mr. Clegg, 55, joined the firm in 2018 after a job in British politics, including a stint as deputy primary minister. Ms. Sandberg employed him to choose over handling Facebook’s thorny political troubles globally, a activity that was once hers. More than time, he has become a variety of de facto head of point out for the business, dealing with earth governments and advocating for Meta at a regulatory degree. In February, he was promoted to president of world-wide affairs, reporting to Mr. Zuckerberg.

At Meta, insiders have long speculated in excess of who a potential successor to Mr. Zuckerberg would be, must he at any time depart. Ms. Sandberg’s impending departure has now shortened that list and left no very clear answers.

“Over the many years, several people other than Sheryl have emerged as a likely successor to Mark,” said Katie Harbath, a director of community coverage at Meta who left the firm final calendar year. “It tends to make sense for Mark to want selections for feasible successors.”

She added: “It can be dangerous to only concentrate on 1 man or woman.”