Meta's VR consulting CTO leaves the company, telling the firm to "make better decisions" and "give a damn"
"We constantly self-sabotage and squander effort."
Meta's VR consulting CTO, John Carmack, is leaving the company after "a decade in VR", accusing the firm of "self-sabotage".
In an internal note seen by Business Insider, Carmack criticised the company's "efficiency", adding that despite Quest 2 being "almost exactly what [he] wanted to see" with its "mobile hardware, inside out tracking, optional PC streaming, 4K(ish) software", he was "offended" at seeing a "5 per cent GPU utilisation number in production".
"We have a ridiculous amount of people and resources, but we constantly self-sabotage and squander effort," Carmack - who co-created the Doom and Quake franchises - said in the leaked memo. "There is no way to sugarcoat this; I think our organisation is operating at half the effectiveness that would make me happy.
"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 finished by saying he was "wearied of the fight" but asked that the team "make better decisions and fill [their] products with 'give a damn'".
"VR can bring value to most of the people in the world, and no company is better positioned to do it than Meta," he concluded. "Maybe it is actually possible to get there by just plowing ahead with current practices, but there is plenty of room for improvement."
