Virtual reality pioneer John Carmack leaves for dead

John Carmacka pioneer of virtual reality technology, has left Meta after more than eight years at the company, according to an internal publication reviewed by The New York Times.

In the post written by Mr. Carmack, 52, the technologist criticized his employer. He said that Meta, which is in the midst of a transformation from a social networking company to one focused on an immersive metaverse, was operating “at half efficiency” and had “a ridiculous amount of people and resources, but we’re always sabotaging and squandering effort”.

“It’s been a struggle for me,” Mr. Carmack wrote in the post to an internal forum this week. “I have a voice on the highest levels here, so I feel like I should be able to move things along, but I’m clearly not convincing enough.”

As the former CTO of Oculus, the virtual reality company Bought Facebook for $2 billion In 2014, Mr. Carmack was one of the most influential voices in the development of virtual reality headsets. He stayed with Facebook after CEO Mark Zuckerberg decided to turn the company around last year to focus on the metaverse and rebranded Facebook as Meta.

However, even though Meta was quickly moving into an area Mr. Carmack specialized in, he It was a discordant voice at times about how to make an effort. It became known for internal posts criticizing the decision-making and direction set by Mr. Zuckerberg and Andrew Bosworth, Meta’s chief technology officer. Mr. Carmack has been working part-time for the company in recent years.

Mr. Carmack and Meta did not respond to requests for comment. from the inside I mentioned earlier On the departure of Mr. Carmack.

Meta’s earnings have been hit hard by its spending on the metaverse and slowing growth in social media and digital advertising. In July, Silicon Valley announced a new The first drop in sales as a public company. Last month, Meta said he was Lay off about 11,000 employeesor about 13 percent of its workforce, in what was the company’s most significant job cut.

in Podcast interview In August, Mr. Carmack said Meta’s then $10 billion loss in the division that houses augmented reality and virtual reality initiatives made him “sick to my stomach.” He added that the company’s indirect efforts have been hampered by bureaucracy and hampered by concerns about diversity and privacy.

In other posts seen by The Times this year, Mr. Carmack criticized features on the company’s Quest virtual reality headset. In his farewell, he complimented the Quest 2 headset as “nearly what I wanted to see from the start” in terms of cost and portable hardware, though he was still critical of its software.

“We built something very close to the right thing,” he said.

Mr. Carmack, who said he had finished his VR contract, concluded by saying he was “tired of fighting” and would focus on his startup. (He announced in August that his AI company, Keen Technologies, has It raised $20 million.)

“Virtual reality can bring value to most people in the world,” he wrote, “and no company is better positioned to do so than Meta.”

Prior to the Meta, Mr. Carmack pioneered many of the technologies in computer graphics that became essential to the games he developed, including Quake. He joined Oculus in 2013 as Chief Technology Officer and relinquished that position in 2019, transitioning to a part-time job.

Mr. Carmack Saw this week too in a court hearing on the Federal Trade Commission’s attempt to block Meta’s purchase of Inside, the virtual reality startup behind a fitness game called Supernatural. The agency argued that the tech giant would eliminate competition in the fledgling region if it was allowed to complete the deal. The hearing is expected to continue next week.