File photograph: Eric Thayer/The New York Times Facebook/Meta chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg has announced that she is stepping down from the senior executive position at Facebook/Meta which made her one of the most powerful figures in business after she joined the company in 2008. Without her voice in the ear of then-23-year old Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook might have been another short-term social network wonder, going the obscure way of MySpace and a number of other hopefuls of the era. Wishful thinking now.