Mike Schroepfer, Facebook Chief Technology Officer, took to the media on Wednesday to announce that he will be stepping down from his role.
He will be transitioning to a part-time position in the company as a “Senior Fellow”. It is considered one of the biggest leadership departures for the tech company in the last few years.
Schroepfer’s former role will be filled by long-term executive Andrew Bosworth who is known for leading the company’s Facebook Reality Labs. Despite his new appointment, Bosworth will continue with the AR/VR team, confirmed by Australian casino online.
Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared a note in the newsroom regarding his departure: “I want to take a moment to thank Schrep for his extraordinary contributions to our community and our company over the last 13 years. He has played a critical role in almost everything we’ve done — from building and scaling our teams to mentoring many of our key leaders, and from helping us develop new technologies like AI and VR to operating our infrastructure and business services at global scale. Schrep and I have had a close partnership over the years, and in addition to being a great leader, he’s also a great person and a close friend.”
This leadership change came right after the surging of reports last week from the Wall Street Journal which talked about how Facebook ignores or fails to address several problems affecting its users properly. This also includes Instagram’s impact on teenage girls’ mental health and how Facebook is being used by drug cartels in Mexican to recruit hitmen.
The appointment of Bosworth to CTO serves as an indication that Facebook’s future plans will be placing more focus on hardware. Sometime this year, the tech giant announced that metaverse, a new space in virtual reality where people can meet, will be the main focus for the company’s Oculus division. Not long after, Facebook announced its partnership with Ray-Ban for a proposed smart glasses and a new generation of Portal video-calling devices, which will be another exciting tech to be adapted by best online pokies.
Schroepfer joined Facebook back in August of 2008 as a vice president of engineering, he went on to be promoted to the position of CTO back in March 2013 before he finally stepped down for Bosworth. He is now among the high-profile exits Facebook has seen over the years, which includes Ad boss Carolyn Everson, Chief Revenue Officer David Fischer, Facebook app chief Fidji Simo and VR head Hugo Barra. But none of them was close to the CEO as Schroepfer had been.
In his Facebook profile, Schroepfer wrote: “This is a difficult decision because of how much I love Facebook and how excited I am about the future we are building together. This change in role will allow me to dedicate more time to my family and my personal philanthropic efforts while staying deeply connected to the company working on key initiatives including recruiting and developing technical talent and continuing to foster our AI investments in critical technologies like PyTorch.”