They were set up as a public benefit company and their returns were capped at 100x. They (well, Sam) went out of their way to put themselves in this death march to the IPO. If they had just done what Mark Zuckerberg did with Muse, they're not in this position.
Do you know how bad you have to be at the tech business to make Mark Zuckerberg look like a prudent-yet-visionary leader?
You're giving him too much credit if you think he figured anything on his own - this is the guy who thought 'metaverse' was a good idea.
Even that guy could read the situation.
The job of a CEO is to have a vision that is compelling for the market and an ability to execute upon it, thus the "executive" in "Chief Executive Officer". Zuckerberg doesn't have this. What he does have is an absolute majority of voting control over Meta's shares, so his actual ability to do his job doesn't matter.
It's almost as if creating incentivizing systems that don't hold people to account is a bad idea.