Who is Javier Oliván, the Spaniard whom Mark Zuckerberg has transformed into his new right-hand man

Objective It takes months in a process of total transformation. Within a year, Facebook changed its name, washed its image, tainted with somewhat shady information, and focused its strategy on the metaverse. To do this he reorganized the leadership of the company with a Spanish engineer in command of the operations department, the right hand of Mark Zuckerberg.

The appointment of Javier Olivan It is the result of Sheryl Sandberg’s resignation as director of operations at Meta, a position she has held for 14 years. She announced this through a ‘post’ on her Facebook profile, where she explained that she will focus on her foundation and raising her children.

“When I took this job in 2008, I expected to stay in this position for five years,” he said. Sandberg frees a chair who will occupy another heavyweight of the company and who, moreover, is Spanish.

Who is Javier Oliván, Meta’s new Director of Operations

Native of Sabiñánigo (Huesca), Javier Oliván studied Automatic Engineering and Industrial Electronics from the University of Navarra, where he graduated with a brilliant academic record.

of humble originThe son of a businessman and a teacher, Oliván received a scholarship from the Rafael del Pino Foundation, which enabled him to take a master’s degree from the prestigious Stanford Universitywhere he met a young Mark Zuckerberg who would change his life.

Oliván himself said in a conversation with Bernardo Hernández, co-founder of Idealista, Glovo, Wallapop or Tuenti that he met Mark in one of the master’s courses and told him: “I don’t understand why you are not doing this and this, we should internationalizing the platform, translating it into all languages ​​… “Zuckerberg was impressed, then asked if he wanted to work at Facebook. Oliván didn’t think twice and accepted the offer.

It’s been 14 years since that episode. Meanwhile, the engineer has wandered through various positions at the company, although the longest was that of vice president of internalization and growth.

Before working on Facebook, Oliván tried it Siemensin Munich (Germany) and also spent a couple of years in Tokyo, hired by the Japanese NTT data. It was 2005 when he decided to cross the ocean and go to the heart of Silicon Valley, where he tried unsuccessfully to create a kind of Spanish Facebook called Nosuni.

One of Oliván’s most important tasks was adapting Facebook to other languages. This change meant the internationalization of the platform, which led to worldwide success. “Many people look back and attribute more success than they deserve to their intelligence,” she said.

Since then, he has only gone to achieve more goals. From vice president of Internalization and Growth to vice president of Product, a position that Zuckerberg after the Cambridge Analytica scandal directed and managed the functionality of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger.

Following the name change, Oliván was promoted to Director of Growth and Vice President of Products and Infrastructure.

“In addition to his product teams, he has also led others, such as data science, internationalization, user experience research and content strategy,” company sources told the EFE agency.

Despite having kept a low profile throughout his career, especially in Spain, where “he is nobody”, the president, Pedro Sánchez, called him to La Moncloa two and a half months ago to talk about the investments that Facebook has planned in Spain. . .

“We celebrate the company’s investments in our country which will generate 2,000 jobs. Spain is a ‘hub’ of talent and entrepreneurship and will continue to be at the forefront of digitization, supporting technologies such as the metaverse,” said the administrator. delegate at the end of the meeting.

Unlike his predecessor Sheryl Sandberg, Olivan has kept a low profile over his 14+ years on Facebook. Olivan (or “Javi” as employees call him) has no intention of following in Sandberg’s footsteps. She will have a more “traditional” “COO role” that is “internally and operationally focused,” according to Zuckerberg.

“Sheryl has been a major supporter of Meta and for years has worked with partners and helped tell our story to an outside audience,” Olivan wrote in his Facebook post. “With a few exceptions, I don’t expect my role to have the same public aspect as we have other leaders in Meta who are already doing that job.”

According to some sources told to The Verge, people who worked with Oliván describe him as a respected executive machine, with little ego and detail-oriented. They also praise its ability to stay ahead of the competition.

Enrique Dans, a professor at IE Business School, commented on his blog that Oliván’s main challenge as director of operations is “how to fundamentally change a company that has always lived by squeezing as much information as possible from its users and selling it virtually without limitation to advertisers.

And it is that Olivan took the reins of Sandberg in a very delicate moment for Meta, with several open fronts. For one thing, the company’s stock price has dropped more than 40% in the past year.

On the other hand, Facebook is on low hours, blocked by the rise of apps like TikTok; And all this while former social network employees like Frances Haugen take out Mark’s dirty laundry at key moments like the US presidential election.

Now all the burden will fall on Oliván, who has the great challenge of adapting Meta to a different, more transparent and less wild business model.

With information from La Vanguardia.

SL