Meta Loses Another Exec After Sandberg’s Departure Announcement

David Mortenson, Meta’s executive in charge of data centers and critical infrastructure, has left the company after 11 years, according to a report by The Verge.

Santosh Janardhan, an engineering VP at the tech giant, will take over his former boss’s role later this month and assume responsibility for innovating and running the hardware, network and software that support Meta’s services.

In a memo seen by The Verge, Mortenson said he is “incredibly proud of everything we’ve achieved over the past two years I’ve been supporting [infrastructure]” and highlighted that the company has survived “the biggest capacity crunch in the company’s history” and “managed to stay productive as we shifted to work from home.”

As for Mortenson’s next steps, he wrote that he will take an extended break before he decides what’s next.

Mortenson’s departure follows the shock announcement that COO Sheryl Sandberg will step down as CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s top lieutenant this fall and the revelation that Meta has parted ways with Head of AI Jerome Pessanti.

The trio of departures this month is likely to renew talks of a broader executive brain drain at Meta, which saw a long list of senior leaders in all business areas depart in 2021 and recently implemented a company-wide hiring freeze.

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