Facebook CTO To Step Down After Thirteen Years

The Chief Technology Officer of Facebook, Mike Schroepfer, has announced that he will stepping down from the role next year, transitioning to a part-time position as a “Senior Fellow” at the company.

He will be replaced in the role by Andrew Bosworth, a long-term executive at Facebook, who has most recently led the company’s Facebook Reality Labs. Bosworth will continue to lead the AR/VR organisation in his new role.

Schroepfer joined the company in August of 2008, according to his LinkedIn, a time when Facebook was riding high on a $15 billion valuation but was soon to encounter a harsher investment environment during the recession that led it to raise a series of down rounds. The company went on to have the biggest technology IPO in history and is currently trading at a market cap just south of $1 trillion.

Schroepfer joined Facebook in August 2008. Facebook has been through a varied road of successes and failures in technological terms since this time, and the company went on to have the biggest technology IPO in history and is currently trading at a market cap of just under $1 trillion.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared the departure on the company’s newsroom: “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.”

Schroepfer’s exit follows the departure of a number of other senior Facebook executive in recent years, including Facebook app chief Fidji Simo, ad chief Carolyn Everson, Chief Revenue Officer David Fischer, and VR head Hugo Barra.