Famed programmer John Carmack announced today that he is stepping down from his position at Meta after working on virtual reality technology for a decade.
Carmack is the prolific programmer and co-founder of the id Software team, known for his work on classic games like Wolfenstein 3D and Quake, as well as his contributions to virtual reality.
Carmack joined Oculus in 2013 as CTO before the company was acquired by Meta (then known as Facebook) in 2014, and subsequently scaled back his role in the company after just five years by taking on a senior consultant position as Chief Technology Officer to focus more on Akbar is on his new startup, Keen Technologies, where he’s focused on artificial general intelligence.
“We have an awful lot of people and resources, but we constantly sabotage ourselves,” Carmack said in a Facebook post detailing why he was stepping down from Meta. “There’s no way to cover this up; I think our organization is working half as effectively as it makes me happy.”
Based on Carmack’s post and his tweets, he appeared to be unhappy with the way things are currently going at Meta, noting in one tweet that he’s always been “very disappointed with how things get done at FB/Meta,” a company that invests most of its capital in the Reality Labs division because it It prioritizes making software and virtual reality headsets designed for the metaverse.
It seemed like this decision would be made sooner or later, as Carmack had previously expressed frustration with things like the Quest 2, which he felt didn’t provide a good user experience due to frequent updates, not to mention his opposition to the company’s latest — and expensive — virtual reality headset, the Quest Pro. .