After 13 years at Facebook, CTO Mike Schroepfer has decided to step down from the role sometime in 2022, he announced on Wednesday. Andrew Bosworth, currently head of AR and VR at Facebook, will replace him.
“I will stay on as long as it takes to ensure a successful leadership transition,” Schroepfer tweeted. In a Facebook post, he added that he plans to take on a new part-time role as Facebook’s first Senior Fellow.
“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,” Schroepfer wrote.
In a message posted publicly, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg thanked Schroepfer for his work at Facebook. He said that Bosworth will continue leading the Reality Labs division, overseeing AR, VR and consumer hardware, as well as “a few other groups.”
“This is all foundational to our broader efforts helping to build the metaverse, and I’m excited about the future of this work under Boz’s leadership,” Zuckerberg wrote.
News of the change in leadership follows a series of critical reports about Facebook’s leadership and business practices. The Wall Street Journal last week published a series of articles showing how the company’s leaders knew about the negative impacts of its platforms but failed to address them. Meanwhile, Politico first reported about a lawsuit charging that Facebook overpaid the FTC by billions in order to shield Zuckerberg from personal liability.
