Facebook VP of engineering departs

Cory Ondrejka, VP of engineering at Facebook, will leave the social network next week to start his own company. Ondrejka was heavily involved in the recent Oculus VR acquisition.

"December 22 will be my last day at Facebook. From high-performance javascript through mobile to virtual reality, I could never have predicted a journey quite like this one. I will miss working with everyone, but I am excited about building my next company from scratch. More on that in a few weeks," he said on, fittingly, Facebook.

"It has been a privilege to be a part of this company and community for the last 4 years and thrilling to work with so many amazing teams. Rather than break the tagger, I will just say that you all have pushed and taught me more than I could have imagined - and I can imagine a lot. I look forward to seeing what comes next because "we are 1% done" will be just as true in 2015 as it was the day I joined. No one has a greater opportunity and capability to continue connecting the world than Facebook."

Ondrejka joined Facebook in November 2010 as engineering director after his company Walletin was acquired by the social media giant. Back in 2000 as CTO of Linden Lab he was also one of the co-creators of virtual world Second Life.

"What's exciting for us is between Oculus and Facebook we have the opportunity to make it available really broadly," he said of the Oculus acquisition in an interview with The Verge.

"When you think about all the content created and games invented, having a larger, more available audience is critical for this expansion. What's going to be the killer app? While we don't know exactly what it's gonna be, we're confident there will be a bunch of them. And that killer app is gonna be so much better than anything you can experience on a screen or phone."