John Carmack goes out swinging at Meta

Industry veteran John Carmack has left his position at Facebook parent Meta and boy does he have some stuff he wants to say.

His departure was reported by Insider, but he later posted his full leaving message on Facebook. Carmack said he had resigned from the role of executive consultant for Meta’s VR business, saying that he had “mixed feelings” following his decade working on virtual reality.

The Id Software vet said that while he was happy with the company’s new Quest 2 headset, he was far from happy with how inefficient Meta is as a company.

“We have a ridiculous amount of people and resources, but we constantly self-sabotage and squander effort. There is no way to sugar coat this; I think our organisation 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.”

Carmack finished by saying that he was “wearied of the fight” and that he was running his own startup. He initially joined Oculus back in 2013 as CTO, before the company was acquired by Facebook in 2014.