Lauren Goode and Kevin Systrom speak onstage at WIRED25 Summit: WIRED Celebrates 25th Anniversary With Tech Icons Of The Past & Future on October 15, 2018 in San Francisco, California.

Instagram's former CEO Kevin Systrom spoke publicly for the first time on Monday since leaving Facebook last month, saying "no one ever leaves a job because everything's awesome" when asked about why he stepped down.

"Work's hard," Systrom said after being asked if there were tensions when he left Instagram.

"In this case, there are no hard feelings at all. I'm excited to do something new. I think Instagram's in a really, really good place," he said at the Wired 25th anniversary summit in San Francisco.

Systrom and fellow Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger announced in late September that they were leaving the company. A week later, the company announced that Adam Mosseri, a longtime Facebook executive, would replace the pair as the new head of Instagram.