2. Another hyped lay off by Mark was that of Van Natta who held the post of business development executive and was later promoted to chief operating officer. He got Facebook’s business engine running, assembling its first sales and finance teams and negotiating an investment from Microsoft in 2007 that valued the company at $15 billion. But Van was more of a startup guy who enjoyed the chaos at a new enterprise. He was great at deal making but not so good at management. So Mark had to let Van go.

This led to one of the most beneficial moves taken by Mark for Facebook. He hired Sheryl Sandberg who was with Google at that time. She turned Facebook around bringing the revenue from $150 million to nearly $4 billion. A longtime Facebook exec calls the subsequent partnership between Zuckerberg and Sandberg “a blessing from the gods”.

Mark has been often painted as the heartless boss who fires people brutally. He on the contrary must be a very good boss because people like Sheryl Sandberg do not work for jerks. They have the option of switching over to a better company. But the truth of the matter is for all of us to see. Facebook is growing bigger and stronger every day, all thanks to Mark’s ability to fire the dead weights.