John Carmack Leaves Meta

The problem Meta ran into is that it’s difficult/impossible to make money on it. It’s a niche market at best, and it’s much more difficult to prove the value when compared to something like Facebook. Facebook is easy to use and provides social value to everyone on the planet. And I say that not using it myself but I live in a small town and all business here rely on Facebook; the municipalities use it to communicate; elderly use it… it’s accessible.

I’m sure the wall Carmack ran into was the shareholders. To shareholders it’s more often than not about profits. To Carmack it’s probably about the product he envisions, not the profits. But you can’t have both sustainably when folks can live without VR.

I would jump on the bandwagon if my VR headset was mine: like a computer I can install whatever I want there—not in a walled garden owned by Evil Corp.

The proper VR solution needs to be open source hardware and software. By the people, for the people. Reduce the barrier to entry and people will use it.

One more thing: those virtual avatars are impossible to take seriously. If I’m in a virtual boardroom filled with those, I might as well be playing Minecraft.

Back then, I would religiously read every workplace posts from Carmack (that wasn’t hidden to other orgs). I loved everything he was saying, I always found it really insightful. It also seemed clear (much before he went part time) that he was saying that on the outskirt of the project.

There’s a big culture of flatness at fb (and now meta). No titles are public, and you’re supposed to respect everybody’s opinion in the room. You’re supposed to lead without authority: by convincing people. You’re also quite free to explore things, as long as you can make a case for it.

There’s upsides and downsides to such environment. You can really multiply yourself if you create trust and clout. On the other hand, authority and a big title doesn’t always gives you room for directing a project.

I was always wondering how effective Carmack was going to be in such an environment. He doesn’t seem to be the type to lead, but I can see this happening in a small team, but an entire org that’s growing extremely quickly? For the kind of things he wanted to happen you’d have to make sure to hire people who cared about exactly the same kind of stuff, which doesn’t really happen when you’re in a diverse environment. Extremists must then spend their time pulling the group in one direction or the other.

Bah humbug.

When we renamed it with a catchy name: Agile. The Manifesto's entire deal is highlighting the key considerations an organization must take into account if they want to move to a flat organizational structure.