Facebook acquires Oculus VR

As a H1B holder - I was hired because there was no-one competent enough to hire in the US and my salary seems to be significantly higher than the average engineers salary in the same area I work at. So its kind of a silly point imho.

You would not have this immigration issue (issue as in companies trying to get larger quotas and less restrictive conditions) if you would have enough competent engineers in the US. The problem is that companies HAVE to look outside of the country to find capable work-force. It's also worth nothing that one of the prerequisites of getting an approval of a H1B visa is the fact that you can prove that the position you are trying to fill cannot be (at least easily) be filled with finding someone locally. You also need to show (and guarantee) that the person whom you are hiring on the visa, will get paid higher than average salary for the same position in that field. So essentially there are mechanisms in place to avoid companies bringing in pointless cheap labor - how those rules are enforced is up to the government tbh.

It is also worth nothing that the "crusade" against current H1B laws also include some other, very important points, like getting rid of the silly H4 visa that H1B holders spouses are forced on.

All in all I suggest digging a little more into the issue instead of commenting from a very shallow point of view.

Microsoft would of broken up the company and integrated it into their own products. Facebook allows Occulus to stay Occulus which is probably a huge motivator for the people there.

I guess I'm in the minority, but I think Facebook is a fascinating parent for Oculus.

Oculus has a technology head start, but that only gives them maybe a couple years on the cheap duplicators. In order to gain a strategic foothold their real competition is in their "app store"/content portal aspirations. They're in a race to see whose virtual space you start in when you put on your VR headset.

But in that realm they are competing with Sony, Microsoft, and Valve, all of whom have large user bases already using their portals. On that battle Oculus is at a severe disadvantage. By joining Facebook they have a network of users they can plug into, and a much bigger one than their competitors at that.

Second, Oculus is run by hardware and software engineers. They have an extraordinary team in that regard, which has allowed them to hire and expand in those areas very fast and still keep the talent bar high.

In order to build a compelling portal in a totally unmapped design language, they need world class UX and social designers. Because they are so engineering heavy, I don't think they would have an easy time identifying and integrating those people as an independent company, even with Andreesen/Horowitz pulling strings for them.

Facebook already has some great, productive, battle hardened UX teams, and I suspect they have many of the best social designers in the world. By selling to Facebook, Oculus is taking that huge question mark off the table.

In exchange they've taken on the question mark of possibly fading into obscurity in an indifferent parent organization. That's a roll of the dice. But the worst care scenario for them is they quit and start over with a LOT of cash, a rockstar reputation, and a knowledge of exactly what their acquired ghost company is organzationally incapable of doing.

And lastly, I don't think Palmer cares if HE wins. He wants to pull as much resources into the VR project as he can. Full stop. He'd happily sacrifice his company to do that. If Valve wins and he quits Facebook having failed to make it work there, he'll boot into Steam VR with a huge smile on his face knowing that he won.

:) I was ignoring the privacy aspect, it was more the goggles-to-goggles, someone hasn't thought that through.

Actually, this is the glimmer of hope. eBay bought Skype in 2007 for $2.5 billion hoping for "synergy". It left a lot of people scratching their heads. When they sold Skype to MSFT for $8.5 billion 5 years later then it didn't seem like such a bad idea. It didn't ruin Skype. Hopefully Facebook will hold on to their new plaything for a while, then sell it off.

Question is: will we like the next buyer more? Does it even matter?