VR luminary John Carmack accompanied Oculus from the beginning and experienced the integration of the start-up into Facebook’s corporate structure as head of technology. Now he speaks openly about this time.
Carmack, who started the VR hype in 2012 together with Palmer Luckey and joined the Oculus team as chief technology officer in the summer of 2013, gives a rare insight into the Oculus corporate culture before and after the Facebook takeover on the Hacker News website.
The social network acquired Oculus in spring 2014 and completely absorbed the start-up in the following years. In the summer of 2019, the last Oculus founder left Facebook. Oculus itself is just a brand name today.
Chaotisches Oculus
“I actually wanted Facebook to have a bigger impact on Oculus after the takeover, because Oculus, to be honest was a bit messy. Instead, Oculus enjoyed tremendous freedom for years, ”writes Carmack.
According to the programmer, there was practically no governance structure. “Nobody ever told me what to do,” writes Carmack. Conversely, he himself had no power to lead others. The important decisions were made without him, which was also related to his decision not to move to Facebook headquarters.
Carmack was only able to guide others through his example and arguments, the programmer writes. However, the arguments had “only after years of accumulated evidence” had an effect. Carmack was one from the start Proponents of mobile virtual reality and was instrumental in the development of Samsung Gear VR, Oculus Go and Oculus Quest.
“We don’t need more and more performance, but lower entry barriers,” said Carmack after the weak market launch of the PC VR glasses Oculus Rift in 2016. The future of virtual reality is mobile, the PC should rather be the creative laboratory for VR experiments become.
Years later, that’s exactly what happened: Facebook is now fully relying on the self-sufficient Oculus Quest, while the Rift product, which has little promising future, will soon be taken off the market.
Carmack: Happy as a part-time consultant
Schon in Steven Levys Buch “Facebook: The Inside Story” (Amazon-Link) of 2020, Carmack was critical of poor management after the Facebook takeover. “We wasted a lot of resources. We have been funded in abundance and there have been many projects that have been started and abandoned for good or bad reasons, ”said Carmack.
At the end of 2019, the programmer resigned from his position as head of technology and has since worked as a consultant for Facebook. “I’m pretty happy and effective as a part-time consultant today,” writes Carmack.
All in all, the Facebook takeover was “not a perfect fairy tale ending”. “But looking back, I still think that the acquisition was right for Oculus.”
Those: Hacker News, Cover picture: Facebook
Read more about Facebook:
steady2
Carmack on Oculus: “Facebook Acquisition Was Right” was last modified: February 19th, 2021 by
–
