John Carmack leaves for dead, burning his virtual bridges behind him

Meta’s pivot away from social media and virtual reality hit another snag. one of the company’s executives, John Carmack who helped build Meta Oculus as CTO – he stepping away from the Meta amidst frustration with the company’s incompetence.

Carmack stepped into the chief technology role at Oculus (now called Reality Labs) in 2013, and closed the door behind him after nearly ten years, having served as a consulting CTO since 2019. He shared an internal memo within the company that was leaked to the press. Carmack shared the entire note (with one edit) to his Facebook account on Friday evening. In the letter, Carmack describes how satisfied he was with the technology Oculus produced, but unhappy with the way the company was run.

“The issue is our competence,” Carmack wrote in the letter. He explained, “We have a ridiculous amount of people and resources, but we’re constantly sabotaging ourselves and wasting effort. There’s no way to sugarcoat this; I think our organization works half as effectively as it makes me happy.”

Meta did not immediately respond to Gizmodo’s request for comment on Carmack’s departure.

In a follow-up paragraph, Carmack explains the internal friction he felt, as a senior executive, while trying to steer the company in a more proactive direction:

It’s been a struggle for me. 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. A good portion of the things I complain about eventually get my way after a year or two and the evidence builds up, but I’ve never been able to kill the stupid stuff before it causes damage, or set a direction and have a team actually stick to it. I think my impact on the sidelines has been positive, but it’s never been a major driver.

meta Chief Technology Officer, Andrew BosworthAnd the Reply to Carmack’s message on Twitterindicating:[John]It is impossible to overestimate the impact it has had on our business and the industry as a whole. Your technical prowess is widely known, but it is your relentless focusCreating value for the people we will remember most. Thank you and see you in VR.

Carmack’s departure comes as Meta faces an ongoing identity crisis, caught in purgatory between virtual reality projects and his social media past. As the company tries to focus more and more towards VR, the future of the Metaverse Still looking a bit depressed (And ugly in general).