Facebook Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer to Step Down in 2022 After 13 Years in the Company

Sophie Webster, Tech Times 22 September 2021, 08:09 pm

Facebook's Chief Technology Officer, Mike Schroepfer, is resigning from his position come 2022. The announcement regarding his resignation was submitted on Sept. 22.

Facebook's CTO to Step Down

Schroepfer will be taking a part-time role with the company. In 2022, he will be replaced by Andrew Bosworth as the new CTO. Bosworth is currently the head of the company's hardware division, according to CNBC.

According to a company filing, Schroepfer informed the social media giant of his intention to resign from his position on Sept. 20.

He wrote on his Facebook profile that it was a difficult decision to make because of how much he loves the company and how excited he is about the future projects that the company will launch.

The former CTO stated that he would use his remaining time for philanthropy and spend time with his family.

Also Read: Facebook Halts the Production of 'Oculus Quest 2' Due to Skin Irritation Complaints

Meanwhile, Bosworth wrote on Schroepfer's comments and congratulated him for his 13-year run, calling it "epic."

The change in leadership comes after several reports released by The Wall Street Journal last week shed light on how the social media giant fails to address problems affecting users across Facebook's services.

That includes the controversy surrounding Instagram, accusing the company of having negative effects on teenage girls' mental health of teenage girls and how drug cartels use Facebook in Mexico to recruit hitmen, and how anti-vaxxers use Facebook to promote alternative medicine, among others several other issues.

Bosworth taking over the CTO role shows the company's growing priority of hardware among its future plans.

Earlier this year, Facebook announced that the metaverse would be the major focus for Oculus. The metaverse is the virtual space where users can safely meet.

In September, Facebook announced that it would launch smart glasses after it partnered up with Ray-Ban and a new generation of Portal video-calling devices.

As the new CTO, Bosworth will continue to oversee the company's Reality Labs division and its efforts in augmented reality and virtual reality, as written by Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a blog post, thanking Schroepfer for his service.

Schroepfer has been with the social media giant since 2008, when he took the vice president of engineering. In 2013, he became the company's CTO.

Schroepfer's part-time role with the company starting in 2022 will be as a senior fellow. He will focus on helping Facebook hire technical talent and assist in the company's projects in artificial intelligence.

Facebook's AI Project

In March, the social media company stated that it wants to teach AI systems to understand what is happening in videos the same way that humans can. This project can be one of the biggest technology breakthroughs if it goes well.

Facebook stated that the new initiative could give the company an edge to train AI on users' public videos.

Access to training data is the biggest advantage of tech companies when it comes to AI, according to The Verge.

By collecting the resources from users, tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Amazon have led in various areas.

While Facebook has already trained models on reading billions of images that it collected from Instagram, it has not announced projects of similar ambition for video understanding and when it will be launched.