Despite saying he was leaving 15 months ago, Facebook's former policy chief Elliot Schrage is still working as a full time employee with a new title
When Elliot Schrage announced his resignation last June, the buzz was that the Facebook Inc. executive—who had shaped the company's public messaging during … Tweets: @chafkin , @technology , @michaelcarusi , @kurtwagner8 , and @shiraovide Tweets: Max Chafkin / @chafkin : Facebook “fall guy” seems not to, in fact, have fallen https://www.bloomberg.com/... @technology : Elliot Schrage is still in the building 15 months after giving up one of the company's top jobs https://www.bloomberg.com/... Michael Carusi / @michaelcarusi : This feels very on brand for Facebook. Leaving FB is like deleting your FB account. You're still there in some fashion. https://www.bloomberg.com/... Kurt Wagner / @kurtwagner8 : It's been almost a year since Elliot Schrage resigned from one of FB's top jobs, hired his own replacement, and took public responsibility for one of FB's biggest scandals. So what's he up to now? He's still working full time at Facebook! https://www.bloomberg.com/... Shira Ovide / @shiraovide : Facebook's chief communicator was seen as doing a bad job communicating so he “left”...for a different role still doing a lot of Facebook's chief communicating? Quite a doozy by @KurtWagner8 https://www.bloomberg.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
When Elliot Schrage announced his departure in June 2018 after a decade as Facebook's VP of Communications and Public Policy, it read as the exit of the executive who fronted the company's response to the data scandal — and who later took personal responsibility in a leaked memo for hiring PR firm Definers and asking it to investigate Soros. Bloomberg now reports he is still a full-time employee 15 months later, simply with a new title.
The non-departure fits a pattern in the related coverage: General Counsel Colin Stretch also announced a July 2018 exit, then agreed to stay into mid-2019 or longer to handle ongoing crises, per Recode's reporting on his extended stay. Meanwhile the actual departures have been communications-side — Caryn Marooney and Debbie Frost both left in early 2019 — against a backdrop of unusually long executive tenure at Facebook.
First-order effects
- Schrage's announced handover has not happened: Facebook retains a full-time, scandal-era communications and policy chief under a new title, and the succession his June 2018 resignation implied remains unfilled in practice.
Second-order effects
- The Stretch precedent — a declared leaver extended through multiple crises — is now a repeatable playbook, letting Facebook keep institutional crisis-handling in place while the communications bench around it (Marooney, Frost) actually thins out.
Third-order effects
- If resignation announcements keep functioning as role changes rather than exits, Facebook's leadership turnover becomes unreadable from the outside, weakening the accountability signal that executive departures normally carry after scandals.
The trend: Facebook's crisis-era leadership is exiting far more slowly than announced, with resignations operating as internal role changes that preserve scandal-era continuity.