Facebook executive Mike Schroepfer is stepping down as the company’s chief technology officer.
Andrew Bosworth, who heads the tech giant’s augmented reality and virtual reality departments, which includes products such as the Oculus Quest VR headset, will take on the role in 2022, Schroepfer wrote in a Facebook post.
Schroepfer, known as “Schrep” and who spent 13 years at Facebook, said he would move to a part-time role as Facebook’s first Senior Fellow in 2022.
Bosworth, or “Boz,” led the creation of Facebook’s AR/VR organization, which was renamed Facebook Reality Labs (FRL) in 2020.
Facebook has come under fire from global regulators, lawmakers, and civil society groups who have vilified the tech giant for abuses on its platform, including extremism and misinformation, as well as issues of transparency, content moderation, recommendation systems, and user privacy and security policies.
Facebook is positioning its role in building an embodied internet, or “metaverse,” which Zuckerberg believes will be the next big computing platform. In July, it formed a brand new product team to work on these goals as part of Facebook Reality Labs.
Zuckerberg said Schroepfer’s new role will be to help the tech giant recruit and develop technical talent and invest in artificial intelligence.
For more information, read the original story in Reuters.
