Longtime YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki says she will step down

One ​​of Silicon Valley's most prominent women, she was one of Google's first employees and a key member of the inner circle of the company's founders.

Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube and one of Silicon Valley's hottest women, said Thursday that she was stepping down from her longtime role as head of the internet's most popular video service.< /p>

Ms. Wojcicki's departure signifies the end of the early pioneering days of YouTube and its parent company, Google, and adds to a long list of women who have left senior positions at major Silicon Valley companies in recent years.

Google spent part of its early days in Ms. Wojcicki's garage. A personal friend of Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, she became one of the company's first employees and rose through the management ranks over the past two decades. After YouTube was acquired by Google, Ms. Wojcicki, 54, helped make the video platform one of the biggest social media companies in the world.

"Today, after almost 25 years here, I have decided to step back from my role as YouTube manager and start a new chapter focused on my family, my health and my personal projects that excite me,” Ms. Wojcicki wrote in a letter to employees, posted on The Official YouTube Blog. as Chief Executive Officer.

In a joint statement, Mr. Page and Mr. Brin said, "Susan holds a unique place in Google's history and has made the most incredible contribution to products used by people all over the world. We are so grateful for all she has done over the past 25 years."

Andrea Faville, a spokeswoman for YouTube, declined to comment on the Mrs. Wojcicki's health. But in recent months, Ms. Wojcicki has appeared to be reducing her public appearances, such as missing a "Made on YouTube" event in September.

Ms. Wojcicki will remain advisor at Alphabet, the parent company of Google. Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Alphabet, asked him to advise companies across the company's portfolio at a time when artificial intelligence was poised to transform many of its products.

"Susan played a key role in Google's origin story, and over the years her leadership has opened up entirely new chapters for the business,” Mr. Pichai said in a statement. He added that there are "exciting opportunities" ahead for the platform.

Ms. Wojcicki's exit from YouTube's top job further narrows the ranks of women at the helm of major tech companies. Sheryl Sandberg, who was chief operating officer at Meta, left her post last year. Meg Whitman, who led Hewlett-Packard and one of its successor companies; IBM's Ginni Rometty; and Yahoo's Marissa Mayer have also left senior roles in recent years. While Safra Catz remains chief executive of enterprise software maker Oracle, Jayshree Ullal leads Arista Networks and Lisa Su leads chipmaker AMD, the industry has lost a group of women leaders who have broken down barriers, with few obvious female successors in sight.

"It's a changing of the guard," said Laura Kray, professor of leadership at the University of California, Berkeley, in an interview. "It is a worrying trend that these high-performing women leaders are being replaced by men."

Professor Kray, Head of Faculty at the Center for Equity, the gender and leadership, added that women's careers in the tech industry tend to be shorter than men's, and that the loss of powerful female leaders has reduced the number of role models for young women in the industry. technology.

Although technology companies have highlighted the need for more diverse leadership in recent years, the gender gap extends from large companies to small . According to a Silicon Valley Bank report, more than half of US start-ups lacked women in leadership positions in 2020.

Diane Greene, the former CEO of Google Cloud, said Ms. Wojcicki was synonymous with Google and helped build it into a juggernaut.

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