Carmack criticizes the company’s efficiency.
John Carmack has announced that he will be leaving his role as a VR consultant at Meta/Facebook. On his Facebook page, the former id software developer wrote a message underlining the decision to leave his position. A lot seems to be about the company not being as efficient as he himself would like.
“This is the end of my decade in VR”,
“Quest 2 is almost exactly what I wanted to see from the start.”
“It could have all happened a little faster and gone better if different decisions had been made, but we built something very similar to The Right Thing.”
“The problem is our efficiency.”
“We have a ridiculous amount of people and resources, but we are constantly sabotaging ourselves and wasting effort,”
“There’s no sugarcoating this; I think our organization is operating at half the effectiveness that would make me happy. Some may scoff and argue that we’re doing well, but others will laugh and say ‘Half? m per quarter efficiency!”
“It’s been a struggle for me. I have a top-notch voice here, so it feels like I should be able to move things around, but I’m evidently not persuasive enough. A good deal of the things I complain about end up turning my road after a year or two passes and the evidence piles up, but I’ve never been able to kill stupid things before they cause damage, or set a direction and get a team to stick to it. I think my influence in the margins it’s been positive, but it’s never been a prime mover.”
The message as a whole can be read as written on Carmacks Facebook page. She also tweeted about her frustration with Meta and Facebook.
John Carmack left id Software in 2013 to focus on Oculus and VR. He was later hired by Meta when Facebook acquired Oculus in 2014. In 2019, he stepped back and acted solely as a consultant to Oculus as it focused on artificial intelligence.
Do we think Carmack could come full circle and start playing again?
