MENLO PARK (California) – Long-time Facebook executive Mike Schroepfer yesterday said he is stepping down as the company’s chief technology officer.
In a Facebook post, he said veteran leader Andrew Bosworth, who heads the social media firm’s augmented reality and virtual reality efforts, including products like its Oculus Quest VR headset, will take over the role next year.
Schroepfer, who is known as “Schrep” and spent 13 years at Facebook, said he will transition to a part-time role as the company’s first senior fellow sometime in 2022.
Bosworth, or “Boz”, created Facebook’s AR/VR organisation, which was renamed Facebook Reality Labs last year.
“As our next CTO, Boz will continue leading Facebook Reality Labs and overseeing our work in AR, VR and more, and as part of this transition, a few other groups will join Boz’s team as well,” said CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a message to employees that was posted on Facebook’s blog.
“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,” he said, referring to the Silicon Valley idea of shared spaces that merge the digital and physical worlds and can be accessed through different devices.
Facebook is under pressure from global regulators, lawmakers and civil society groups that have criticised it over abuses on its platform, such as extremism and misinformation, and want it to improve on a slew of issues including transparency, its content moderation and recommendation systems, and its approaches to user privacy and safety.
The company has been pushing its role in building an embodied internet, or “metaverse”, which Zuckerberg is betting will be the next big computing platform.
In July, the company said it is creating a new product team to work on these ambitions, as part of Facebook Reality Labs.
Zuckerberg said Schroepfer’s new role will include helping the firm recruit and develop technical talent, and foster investments in artificial intelligence.
Other central leaders who have left the company in recent months include Fidji Simo, the head of Facebook’s main app who left to become Instacart CEO, and global ads chief Carolyn Everson, who was hired as the start-up’s president. – Reuters, September 23, 2021
