John Carmack has announced that he has resigned from his role as an executive consultant for VR at Meta. As for the reason for his departure, Carmack has written up a long post on Facebook, primarily citing efficiency issues within the company. Carmack starts the post off by saying, "Quest 2 is almost exactly what I wanted to see from the beginning." He lists all the reasons why he still believes in the product, but says that both the company and product are being held back by one major issue, "efficiency".
"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."
He proceeded to make a light-hearted comment, comparing Meta's efficiency to seeing a five percent GPU utilization number in production. He had to edit the post, to mention that this was merely a poetic comparison, as some people appeared to be missing the point.
"We have a ridiculous amount of people and resources, but we constantly self-sabotage and squander effort," he continued. "There is no way to sugar coat this; I think our organization is operating at half the effectiveness that would make me happy. Some may scoff and contend we are doing just fine, but others will laugh and say “Half? Ha! I’m at quarter efficiency!”
"It has been a struggle for me. I have a voice at the highest levels here, so it feels like I should be able to move things, but I’m evidently not persuasive enough. A good fraction of the things I complain about eventually turn my way after a year or two passes and evidence piles up, but I have never been able to kill stupid things before they cause damage, or set a direction and have a team actually stick to it. I think my influence at the margins has been positive, but it has never been a prime mover."
He did admit that there was more he could have done from his end as well, like moving to Menlo Park after the acquisition and fighting the leadership a bit more.
He signed off by saying that he is "wearied of the fight" and has his own startup to focus on. However, he believed that VR can still bring value to the world, and nobody is in a better position to do so than Meta.
"Make better decisions and fill your products with “Give a Damn”!"