Facebook’s chief technology officer Mike Schroepfer moves on from the role to become a 'Senior Fellow' as a part-time position in the company.

Schroepfer, who worked at Facebook for 13 years and is known as 'Schrep', said he would shift to a part-time role as the company's first Senior Fellow next year.

According to Schroepfer's LinkedIn, he joined the company in August 2008, at a time when Facebook was valued at $15 billion but was likely to face a harsher investment environment during the crisis, forcing it to raise a series of down rounds. The company went on to have the largest technology IPO in history, and it now has a market capitalization of well under $1 trillion.

For a while the social media giant had a slew of technological issues that have sparked a lot of controversies. However,Schroepfer helped change that by adopting AI and the algorithmic news feed, which recommends material to users based on what Facebook feels the user will be most interested in. AI is also used widely by the corporation for functions such as content moderation. Needless to say, the company's dependence on algorithmic promotion and data harvesting has proved contentious at times.

The departure of Schroepfer from Zuckerberg's inner circle is an important moment for the company. Though there have been a few high-profile departures from Facebook in recent years, such as Facebook app executive Fidji Simo, ad boss Carolyn Everson, Chief Revenue Officer David Fischer, and VR head Hugo Barra, yet it appears that none have been as close to the CEO as Schroepfer.

Schroepfer said that seasoned leader Andrew Bosworth, who oversees the company’s augmented reality and virtual reality activities, including the Oculus Quest VR headset, will take over the role next year. In fact, the company’s AR/VR unit, which was renamed Facebook Reality Labs (FRL) in 2020, was founded by Bosworth, or ‘Boz’.

"As our next CTO, Boz will continue to manage Facebook Reality Labs and supervise our work in augmented reality, virtual reality, and more, and a few additional groups will join Boz's team as part of this transition”, states CEO Mark Zuckerberg. He went on to say that this is all important to the company’s efforts to help develop the metaverse, and “I’m thrilled about the future of this work under Boz's direction, alluding to the Silicon Valley concept of shared spaces that combine the digital and physical worlds and can be accessed via various devices.

The company has been touting its role in creating a metaverse or an embodied internet, which Zuckerberg believes will be the next great computing platform.

As part of Facebook Reality Labs, the firm announced this year that it was forming a new product team to work on these goals.

“This is a difficult decision since I adore Facebook and am excited about the future we are creating together. This change in role will allow me to spend more time with my family and personal philanthropic endeavors while remaining deeply connected to the company and working on key initiatives such as recruiting and developing technical talent and continuing to foster our AI investments in critical technologies such as PyTorch”, wrote Schroepfer.