John Carmack leaves Meta. The former CTO of Oculus complains in particular about the lack of efficiency at the giant.
John Carmackthe pioneer of virtual reality who joined Meta from Oculus after it was acquired for $2 billion, said left the American giant. Business Insider was the first to report the information, citing sources close to the company, and published excerpts from an internal memo containing several criticisms against Meta and its efforts in terms of augmented and virtual realities. After the publication of the articles of Business Insider and of The New York TimesJohn Carmack confirmed the information on Twitter and Facebook. He even published the entire memo in question.
“It’s the end of my decade in virtual reality”, explained John Carmack in his memo. The man began by extolling the merits of the helmet Quest 2, being “what he wanted to see from the start”, with inside out tracking, optional PC streaming and a screen with a resolution close to 4K. However, he explains that it “could have happened a little faster and could have gone even better if other decisions had been made.”
John Carmack’s main concern with the Menlo Park firm seems to be the efficiency of the company, or rather its lack of efficiency. “We have an insane amount of people and resources, but we are constantly sabotaging ourselves and wasting our efforts,” he wrote. “There’s no other way to put it: I think our organization is running at half the efficiency that would make me happy.”
The former CTO of Oculus complains in particular about the lack of efficiency at the giant
The executive went on to say that, as a “voice among the highest levels”, he felt he should have been able to get things done, but he “obviously wasn’t persuasive enough”. Although he gives no examples, John Carmack does point out that much of the things he complains about were only fixed a year or two ago, after the evidence had accumulated. “I’ve never been able to end stupid things before they cause damage, or set a direction and have a team stick to it.” John Carmack admits he was “tired of the fight”, but he remains convinced that “VR can bring great value to the majority of people around the world, and no company is better positioned than Meta to do so.”
As he previously said on Twitter, he’s “always been very frustrated with the way things are done at [Meta].” In an interview with Lex Fridman last August, he said the loss of $10 billion by the AR and VR division made him “sick thinking about all that money spent.” He was writing on Meta’s internal messaging criticizing the functionality of the headsets and the need to install software updates before they could be used. Apparently, he was also pushing for user experience to be a priority in bringing his vision for the metaverse to fruition.
John Carmack became Oculus’ first technical director in 2013 after leaving id Software, the studio in which he co-created the licenses Doom et Quake. He had joined Meta when the company, then Facebook, bought Oculus for 2 billion in 2014. In 2019, he left his role at Oculus and was only a consulting CTO to focus on theArtificial General Intelligence (AGI), a type ofartificial intelligence able to perform human tasks. His startup, Keen Technologies, is working on developing such AI systems.
I resigned from Meta, and my internal post got leaked to the press, resulting in some fragmented quotes. Here is the full thing: https://t.co/iUcr8TYMLD
— John Carmack (@ID_AA_Carmack) December 17, 2022