Mark Zuckerberg is valuable to Facebook as their CEO. That doesn’t mean the company can’t just fire him like any other employee.
The First Post is reporting that Facebook has the right to terminate Zuckerberg under any reason they see fit, including no reason at all. His tenure at Facebook is on an “at will” basis which means that he could be fired at any time.
His employment agreement was exposed last month when Facebook filed their massive IPO.
While everything about Zuckerberg’s employment including benefits and personnel policy can be changed whenever they want, the “at will” employment termination can only be changed after a written agreement approved by the Facebook board.
The “at will” clause also applies to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. She does, however, have a clause in her agreement that has Facebook reimbursing her for all business expenses. Zuckerberg does not have that clause in his agreement.
In another interesting clause, Zuckerberg is not allowed to help start up a service that would compete with Facebook during his time with the company. The same clause applies to COO Sheryl Sandberg, CFO David Ebersman and VP of Engineering Mike Schroepfer.
Interestingly enough, none of the agreements mention whether or not these people could start a competitor if they were to leave the company.
Zuckerberg is starting out with a base salary of $500,000 so it doesn’t seem that he’ll be leaving the company of his own free will any time soon. Sandberg and Ebersman will have an annual salary of $300,000 each while Schroepfer’s annual salary is set at $275,000. All of them are entitled to an end-year bonus equal to 45 percent or less of their annual salary.
