John Carmack, the VR pioneer who joined Meta from Oculus after his $2 billion acquisitionHe has left the social network. Business Insider He first reported his departure, citing people familiar with the company, and published portions of his internal memo that contained sentiments critical of Meta and its augmented and virtual reality efforts. After inside information Y The New York Times’ reports came out, Carmack confirmed on Twitter and Facebook that he will in fact leave the company and even posted his note to the staff members in full.
“This is the end of my decade in virtual reality,” Carmack said in his memo. He began by 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 near-4K resolution display. 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, the lack thereof. “We have a ridiculous amount of people and resources, but we constantly sabotage ourselves and waste effort,” he wrote. “There’s no sugarcoating this; I think our organization is operating at half the effectiveness that would make me happy.”
The executive said that, as “a voice at the highest levels,” he felt he should have been able to move things forward, but “clearly wasn’t persuasive enough.” While he didn’t give detailed examples, Carmack noted that a good fraction of the things he complained about only changed their 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 make a team really stick to it,” he added. Carmack admitted near the end of the memo that he was “tired of fighting” but still believes that “virtual reality can bring value to the most people in the world, and no company is better positioned to do so than Meta.”
like the executive said on Twitterhe makes no secret that he “has always been pretty frustrated with the way things are done.” [Meta.]”In a podcast interview with Lex Friedman in August, he said the loss of $10 billion by the company’s AR and VR division made him “sick of [his] He wrote posts on Meta’s internal message board criticizing its headset’s features and the need to install software updates before you can use it. He was also apparently pushing Meta to prioritize the out-of-the-box experience. when it comes to how you want to develop your vision of the metaverse.
Carmack became Oculus’ first CTO in 2013 after leaving id Software, where he co-created the Condemn Y Earthquake franchises. He joined Meta when, like Facebook, it bought Oculus for $2 billion in 2014. In 2019, he took a Stay away from Oculus and acted as CTO only in a consulting capacity to focus on Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), or the type of AI that is capable of performing human tasks. His startup, Keen Technologies, is working on developing such AI systems.
As anyone who listens to my unscripted Connect chats knows, I’ve always been pretty frustrated with how things are done on FB/Meta. Everything necessary for spectacular success is there, but it is not assembled effectively.
— John Carmack (@ID_AA_Carmack) December 17, 2022
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