Facebook Names Sheryl Sandberg to Its Board of Directors | Hacker News Reader

Facebook Names Sheryl Sandberg to Its Board of Directors

newsroom.fb.com

34 pointshornokplease8 comments

Well a FB link that don't demand a FB login - there is hope.

Anyhow given her job of "Sandberg oversees Facebook’s business operations including sales, marketing, business development, legal, human resources, public policy and communications. " and the good words zucker has said about her, then why is it she is only now being made a director? Makes you wonder what the other directors had to do for there roles and if there was anything left for them to do with her onboard already!

It's quite common for corporate boards to be comprised of outsiders, with the CEO as the only board member who is also an employee. I wouldn't call it unusual that Sandberg is not currently on the board, nor is it unusual that she is now joining the board. For example, Oracle has four employees on the board, Microsoft has only one (Ballmer), and Apple has only one (Cook).

It's a PR release. Don't get too excited. It's meant to be spread around.

The board is founder controlled. Sheryl Sandberg is heavily invested with the founder. Adding her to the board further cements his position and gets PR points for having a woman on the board (which many boards don't have).

I have no opinion as to whether or not this is a good or bad thing - but that's what I see from my more or less limited view point.

Putting Sandberg on its Board is no surprise given that Sandberg is seen as critical to FB's operations and success by both the press and by Zuckerberg.

So, the only interesting part of this is the timing - why now, several weeks after the IPO?

Just to play the cynic, you've got the strange situation of a publicly traded company where the majority of voting rights are still tied up by its founder. Putting someone on the board who's already completely tied to its current path could be seen as just another symptom of a board in name only.

Personally I think the board's role should be to provide some measure of skepticism to the company's direction. This seems like putting just another yes man on a board without any teeth. So another way to look at this is why put Sheryl on the board at all?

The Menlo Park, Calif., company has come under fire from corporate governance advocates who have criticized Facebook for having no women on the board. They questioned why Ms. Sandberg, a strong proponent of women in the workplace, wasn't on the board.

In February, California State Teacher's Retirement System's Director of Corporate Governance wrote a letter to Mr. Zuckerberg saying, "We are disappointed that Facebook's board will not have any women."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230478240457748...

Maybe she threatened to leave if they didn't give her a seat on the board, now that she's got the billion in stock.

Was Zuckerberg thinking about the right time for this in 2009 when he asked this question on Quora:

http://www.quora.com/When-did-Steve-Ballmer-join-Microsofts-...

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