John Carmack, the VR pioneer who joined Oculus’ Meta after its release Acquisition of $2 billionleft the social network. Business Intern first signaled his departure, citing people familiar with the company, and published excerpts from his internal memo containing critical sentiments towards Meta and its augmented and virtual reality efforts. After Initiated and The New York Times’ Reports have come out, Carmack confirmed on Twitter and Facebook that he actually leaves the company and even releases his memo to staff members in full.
“It’s the end of my decade in VR,” Carmack said in his memo. He started out praising the Quest 2 headset for being what he “wanted to see from the start,” with its inside-out tracking, optional PC streaming, cost-effectiveness, and a display with near 4K resolution. However, he argued that it could have “happened a little faster and gone better if different decisions had been made”.
Carmack’s main problem with Meta appears to be the company’s efficiency — or, according to his memo, lack thereof. “We have a ridiculous amount of people and resources, but we are constantly self-sabotaging and wasting our efforts,” he wrote. “There’s no way to sugarcoat that; I think our organization is operating at half the efficiency that would make me happy.”
The executive said that as the “highest level voice” he felt he should have been able to get things done but was “obviously not persuasive enough”. While he didn’t give detailed examples, Carmack noted that a good chunk of the things he complained about only turned his way a year or two after evidence of the problem had already accumulated. . “I’ve never been able to kill stupid things before they do damage, or set a direction and have a team actually stick to it,” he added. Carmack admitted near the end of the memo that he was “fighting tired” but still believes that “virtual reality can bring value to most people around the world, and no company is better placed to do that Meta”.
As an executive said on Twitterhe does not hide that he has “always been quite frustrated with the way things are going”. [Meta.]”In one podcast interview With Lex Fridman in August, he said the loss of 10 billion dollars by the company’s AR and VR division made him “sick of [his] stomach thinking of so much money spent. “He wrote messages on Meta’s internal message board criticizing the functionality of his headsets and the need to install software updates before they could be used. Apparently he was also pushing Meta to prioritize the immediate user experience when it comes to how they want to build their vision of the metaverse.
Carmack became Oculus’ first chief technology officer in 2013 after leaving id Software, where he co-created the Loss and earthquake franchisees. He joined Meta when, as Facebook, he bought Oculus for $2 billion in 2014. In 2019, he took a take a step back from Oculus and acted as CTO purely as a consultant to focus on artificial general intelligence (AGI), or the type of AI capable of performing human tasks. His startup, Keen Technologies, is working on the development of this type of AI systems.
As anyone who listens to my unscripted chats on Connect knows, I’ve always been quite frustrated with the way things are going at FB/Meta. Everything needed for spectacular success is there, but it’s not put together efficiently.
— John Carmack (@ID_AA_Carmack) December 17, 2022
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