Wojcicki is leaving to spend extra time along with her household and deal with her well being and private tasks, in accordance with a letter she despatched to staff that was posted on YouTube’s company weblog. She shall be changed by Neal Mohan, YouTube’s head of product, who first got here to Google via the corporate’s acquisition of promoting tech platform DoubleClick in 2008.
With Mohan taking up, the CEOs of Twitter, Facebook, Snap, Netflix, Disney and YouTube at the moment are all males.
“It’s always such a big impact when somebody who is a woman at such a high-profile position leaves,” stated Sheryl Daija, CEO and founding father of BRIDGE, a corporation that represents range, fairness and inclusion leaders. “As we lose women leaders, we also risk losing the next generation of women. As we lose leaders that are people of color, we then risk losing the next generation of people of color. So there’s this domino effect.”
Wojcicki’s departure is a serious altering of the guard for Google. It was in Wojcicki’s Silicon Valley storage that Larry Page and Sergey Brin started constructing the search large. Brin later married her sister, and Wojcicki stayed with the corporate, rising via the ranks and holding a variety of main roles earlier than being appointed head of YouTube in 2014.
Wojcicki was seen by many Google staff as kind of a member of Brin and Page’s household, given her lengthy relationship with them and standing as one of many firm’s founding staff. Her identify was floated by some as a possible future CEO of all of Google, given her ties to Brin and Page and lengthy tenure.
Instead, many high-profile ladies in tech have stepped down from their roles earlier than turning into CEO. Wojcicki’s departure follows a string of different high-profile leaders who’ve left huge know-how firms. Earlier this week, Meta Chief Business Officer Marne Levine introduced she can be leaving after 13 years on the firm. Last 12 months, former Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg introduced she was stepping down after a 14-year stint on the social media large.
Those leaders go away the ranks of ladies within the c-suite of main tech firms even thinner. Deborah Liu, a former Facebook government, is the CEO of Ancestry.com whereas Safra Catz is the CEO of software program firm Oracle.
The current spate of job cuts within the tech sector has jeopardized the progress many main firms made in diversifying their workforces throughout the pandemic with the lure of distant work. Silicon Valley layoffs have hit ladies significantly arduous, as a result of they have been newer to their jobs and occupied roles that firms have been much less fascinated by retaining, in accordance with consultants.
In reality, attrition charges for individuals who work in roles selling range, fairness and inclusion have outpaced different roles at greater than 600 U.S. firms that laid off employees since late 2020 — a disparity that grew worse within the final 6 months, in accordance with current knowledge from Revelio Labs, an organization that analyzes developments within the labor market.
“The [economic] uncertainty will mean workers who are already not quite your stereotypical tech bro might be more in jeopardy,” stated Reyhan Ayas, a senior economist at Revelio Labs, an organization that analyzes developments within the labor market.
Wojcicki oversaw large development, taking YouTube from round a billion customers a few decade in the past to the over 2 billion individuals who use it month-to-month at this time. She additionally oversaw the growth of YouTube’s Creator Program and helped spearhead efforts to assist creators monetize their work. During her tenure, YouTube was one in every of Google’s most essential income development drivers, going from $3.6 billion in income within the fourth quarter of 2018, when the corporate first broke out YouTube’s monetary numbers, to just about $8 billion within the fourth quarter of 2022. Wall Street analysts typically identified that YouTube’s income per consumer was considerably decrease than rivals like Facebook.
Over the years, Wojcicki additionally confronted numerous scrutiny over how YouTube dealt with problematic content material. During her tenure, activists and regulators around the globe criticized the corporate for permitting hate speech, misinformation and conspiracy theories. In the lead-up to the pandemic, anti-vaccine influencers had grown in style on the platform, and the positioning had turn into a key a part of the ecosystem of vaccine skeptics that exploded when covid-19 started spreading.
The firm has additionally confronted the ire of civil rights teams and lawmakers over its lack of transparency about how the platform fights misinformation in languages apart from English and the unfold of election-misinformation on its social community. Last 12 months, Wojcicki promised members of the congressional Hispanic Caucus in a personal assembly to supply extra knowledge about how Spanish misinformation is moderated on the video-sharing community, in accordance with the lawmakers.
“We’ve tried to engage with YouTube for years, in attempts to better understand how the platform moderates content and whether it applies its rules equitably across the globe and across languages,” Nora Benavidez, a senior counsel and director of digital justice and civil rights at media and know-how advocacy group Free Press, stated in a press release. “The transition of leadership is a critical moment for YouTube to step up its game to prioritize engagement with the civil and human rights field.”
Wojcicki additionally made the choice, together with Google CEO Sundar Pichai, to ban Trump from the positioning following the Jan. 6 assaults. When Facebook stated earlier this 12 months it might rescind its ban on Trump, the main focus swung as to whether YouTube would do the identical. YouTube’s ban stays, for now.
Taylor Lorenz contributed to this report.
correction
The storage rented by Google’s founders was positioned at Wojcicki’s home. An earlier model stated it was at her mother and father’ home. The story has been corrected.