John Carmack departs Meta and bids farewell to VR development
John Carmack has resigned as Meta's executive consultant for VR and left the company after almost a decade.
In a lengthy resignation email, posted in full by Carmack on Facebook after snippets were initially leaked to the press, the veteran programmer said the move signals the end of "my decade in VR" and noted he has "mixed feelings" about leaving the company.
Carmack spent years working at Meta as CTO of VR company Oculus after it was purchased by the social media turned metaverse platform (then known as Facebook) in 2013.
In 2019, Carmack stepped down as Oculus CTO to explore the world of artificial intelligence, but said he would remain at Oculus (which now operates under the Reality Labs moniker) in a consulting CTO position.
Now, three years later, Carmack has completely severed ties with Meta after becoming frustrated at inefficiencies within the company.
"This is the end of my decade in VR. I have mixed feelings. Quest 2 is almost exactly what I wanted to see from the beginning–mobile hardware, inside out tracking, optional PC streaming, 4k (ish) screen, cost effective," he wrote.
"Despite all the complaints I have about our software, millions of people are still getting value out of it. We have a good product. It is successful, and successful products make the world a better place. It all could have happened a bit faster and been going better if different decisions had been made, but we built something pretty close to The Right Thing.
"The issue is our efficiency. Some will ask why I care how the progress is happening, as long as it is happening? If I am trying to sway others, I would say that an org that has only known inefficiency is ill prepared for the inevitable competition and/or belt tightening, but really,
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