Facebook CTO Schroepfer Steps Down, Moves Into Part-Time Role

Facebook Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer has announced he’ll be stepping down, his post on the social media site says.

Instead, beginning sometime in 2022, he’ll be the company’s first senior fellow on a part-time basis, he 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.”

He said some of those initiatives would include recruiting and developing technical talent, along with working with AI investments for “critical technologies” like PyTorch, which has recently been made the company’s default AI framework.

The new CTO will be Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, who created Facebook’s AR/VR organization, dubbed Facebook Reality Labs last year.

Bosworth’s job has seen him looking after the social media giant’s efforts for things like augmented reality, virtual reality and consumer hardware for Oculus, Portal and Facebook Reality Labs research.

Meanwhile, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, thanked Schroepfer for his work over the years.

“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 said in a separate statement. “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.”

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