Who’s new Meta COO Javier Olivan?

Mark Zuckerberg as soon as referred to as Javier Olivan, Meta’s new chief working officer, “one of the influential individuals in Fb’s historical past.”

However in contrast to his predecessor Sheryl Sandberg, Olivan has deliberately stored a low profile in his greater than 14 years as Fb’s progress czar. Initially tasked with rising Fb’s consumer base exterior of the U.S. when it solely had 40 million customers, his remit has expanded over time to incorporate Meta’s advertisements merchandise, core infrastructure, advertising, analytics, company improvement, and belief and security efforts. When he formally takes over as COO later this yr, he’ll additionally inherit Sandberg’s hundreds of salespeople and a covert disaster administration crew referred to as Strategic Response.

Regardless of all that affect, Olivan (or “Javi” as he is referred to as by staff) isn’t planning to observe in Sandberg’s footsteps. He’ll have a extra “conventional COO function” that’s “centered internally and operationally,” in keeping with Zuckerberg. Sandberg made the function of COO about far more than simply operations, primarily changing into the general public voice of Fb for key durations of its historical past. Olivan, against this, plans to remain within the background.

“Sheryl has been a outstanding advocate for Meta and has labored with companions and helped to inform our story to exterior audiences for years,” Olivan wrote in his personal publish on Fb announcement the COO change. “With some exceptions, I don’t anticipate my function may have the identical public-facing side, on condition that we’ve got different leaders at Meta who’re already liable for that work.”

Individuals who have labored with Olivan describe him as a revered, low-ego, detail-orientated execution machine. In addition they reward his skill to see round corners when anticipating the competitors. He shuns the press, having given solely a small handful of interviews over the course of his profession.

Initially from a tiny mountainside city in Spain, Olivan studied electrical and industrial engineering on the College of Navarra earlier than transferring to the U.S. to get his MBA from Stanford College’s Graduate Faculty of Enterprise. He was a product supervisor at Siemens earlier than becoming a member of Fb within the early 2000s.

As soon as at Fb, Olivan turned the architect of one of the profitable progress methods in company historical past, with greater than 3 billion customers now between Fb, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Early on, he led Fb’s translation into non-English languages and positioned an early concentrate on rising internationally. That meant remaking Fb for markets with extra primary smartphones and slower, spottier web entry — a playbook that has since been replicated by Google, Snap and others.

“I drive a variety of the fellows to make use of low-end telephones now,” Olivan informed Time journal in 2014. “That you must really feel the ache.”

He has additionally performed a key function in Fb’s marquee acquisitions over time. Earlier than Fb purchased WhatsApp, he wrote internally {that a} widespread messaging app changing into a full-fledged social community was “the most important aggressive risk we face as a enterprise.” He additionally championed the 2013 buy of VPN app Onavo, which the corporate later shuttered after covertly utilizing it to assemble utilization information about opponents. In 2018, he took over the “Integrity” belief and security crew tasked with conserving misinformation and different dangerous content material at bay.

In a 2017 publish celebrating his ten-year anniversary working on the firm, Zuckerberg mentioned that Olivan is “one of many individuals who can reliably remedy any large problem we face.” Within the close to time period, a type of challenges might be dispelling issues concerning the departure of his larger-than-life predecessor, despite the fact that sources say Sandberg’s affect internally has considerably waned lately.

In an inside FAQ publish this week shared with Meta staff and seen by The Verge, administration instructed them on how to reply to questions on Sandberg’s departure, together with whether or not she was leaving due to “the enterprise doing poorly” or there being “much less dedication to the promoting enterprise.” In verbal one-on-one settings, staff had been informed to say that Sandberg and Zuckerberg have “the upmost confidence within the management crew they’ve constructed,” and that the corporate is “assured our apps will proceed to be one of the best place for advertisers to achieve individuals and get measurable outcomes lengthy into the longer term.”

Olivan is taking the reins from Sandberg at a difficult time for Meta’s enterprise. With the corporate’s inventory value down greater than 40 p.c this yr and income progress slowing considerably, traders might be watching to see if his advertisements crew can efficiently ship outcomes in a world with much less consumer information. His progress crew has the tough activity of turning round stalling progress for the Fb app whereas TikTok continues to attract away younger individuals. In the meantime, ex-employees like Frances Haugen are more and more sounding the alarm concerning the harms of social media, placing strain on his Integrity crew.

He could not have Sandberg’s profile, however Olivan may have loads of the duty that comes with being Meta’s high enterprise government.