I don't believe that this was faked excuse. It is grueling to work in Chinese startup. In one of the articles about Xioami, he had a meeting in evening then flew out for a business meeting tomorrow morning, which means red-eye for him. This is not unheard in China. Work-life balance doesn't exist. US executives can't keep up with this demanding nature in Chinese work culture.
But Hugo seems to leave in good terms. His hiring and Xiaomi's well-received exposure to other markets in China coincided so it benefited both, company and him.
Being "just" a team changes internal politics a lot. You can have engineers re-assigned to other projects easily, you have to fight over internal resources, etc. Maybe it's not a problem at Facebook, but in many companies becoming just another team is the death knell for acquisitions.
Instagram has seen most of its success as "just a team" at Facebook. WhatsApp is probably the only acquisition Facebook made that didn't integrate fully.
I don't believe that this was faked excuse. It is grueling to work in Chinese startup. In one of the articles about Xioami, he had a meeting in evening then flew out for a business meeting tomorrow morning, which means red-eye for him. This is not unheard in China. Work-life balance doesn't exist. US executives can't keep up with this demanding nature in Chinese work culture. But Hugo seems to leave in good terms. Hi…
Err, that kind of thing isn't unheard of in Western countries either.
It's just a matter of "is the person motivated enough?", which is more an individual thing. :D
It's interesting that he's joining Facebook, not Oculus. Oculus is just a "team" now.
I think this is what was predicted early on. There's no reason for FB to keep a separate entity based on high-end PC gaming, especially when its clear Oculus was bought to give Zuckerberg the "Facebook VR" he's been talking about for quite some time. I imagine the end game for Oculus is to be a branding for a mobile platform for VR. I'm not sure if its anyone's interest to keep it alive as a physical product, outside of visors you slip your phone into, and certainly not as a high-end gaming PC product.
Between HTC/Valve and the upcoming Windows Holographic/XboxVR and its upcoming tracked controllers and other competitors on the horizon, I'm not sure what room there is for an Oculus PC product. I also suspect even at the $599 pricing, they're losing money, especially if you consider the millions spent paying for exclusives or even funding full games for what ended up being a market of under 250,000 consumers after 6+ months of hard work and advertising, on top of years of hype. I imagine their projections were in the low millions, not couple hundred thousand.
> Condescension (which is what links to that site are) does not make a substantive comment. Neither does asking a question which is trivially answered by Googling. Why are you reserving your rage for the person trying to support community norms, and not for the person helplessly demanding that others explain to him what he could trivially discover on his own? > A LMGTFY link is juvenile, full stop. It's not appropria…
>Neither does asking a question which is trivially answered by Googling. see my response to owebmaster. >Why are you reserving your rage for the person trying to support community norms It is not a community norm to condescend with instructions on how to use Google. The downvotes should make that clear. >when substituted for the search query "who is hugo barra" see my response to owebmaster. I'm sorry if you have som…
> It is not a community norm to condescend with instructions on how to use Google. The downvotes should make that clear.
It isn't now, and that's sad. But there was a time when this community valued straightforward, direct communication. If that time has passed, it's a loss for the community, and for you, whether you understand that or not.
A LMGTFY link is juvenile, full stop. It's not appropriate in any response. Condescension (which is what links to that site are) does not make a substantive comment. If you Google his name, you get an article that he was a VP at Google. Put bluntly, who cares if a VP at Google and VP at Xiami moved to Facebook? Explain why this is relevant and not the equivalent of the magazines in grocery stores discussion who the l…
> Condescension (which is what links to that site are) does not make a substantive comment. Neither does asking a question which is trivially answered by Googling. Why are you reserving your rage for the person trying to support community norms, and not for the person helplessly demanding that others explain to him what he could trivially discover on his own? > A LMGTFY link is juvenile, full stop. It's not appropria…
> > Condescension (which is what links to that site are) does not make a substantive comment.
> Neither does asking a question which is trivially answered by Googling.
Two wrongs don't make a right; that you see something as a violation of the norms of the site is a good reason to downvote or flag it, it's not a good reason to respond with your own violation of those norms, and should you choose such a violation, you should not expect it to be excused.
>Neither does asking a question which is trivially answered by Googling. see my response to owebmaster. >Why are you reserving your rage for the person trying to support community norms It is not a community norm to condescend with instructions on how to use Google. The downvotes should make that clear. >when substituted for the search query "who is hugo barra" see my response to owebmaster. I'm sorry if you have som…
> It is not a community norm to condescend with instructions on how to use Google. The downvotes should make that clear. It isn't now, and that's sad. But there was a time when this community valued straightforward, direct communication. If that time has passed, it's a loss for the community, and for you, whether you understand that or not.
There used to be a thing on usenet, when usenet was still a thing, of people saying "RTFM" or "RTFF" (the last "F" being FAQ). You still see it a bit on the web, but not nearly as much. Of course it was rude and condescending and incredibly unfriendly to newbies, and many people objected to it, but there were always some people who insisted on doing it, and defending it, because it was "straightforward, direct communication" (to use your phrase). In real life, of course, you'd never be so rude to someone - not a friend, not a stranger, not a customer, not a colleague - but for some reason basic politeness gets a bit muddled up on the Internet sometimes.
It's interesting that he's joining Facebook, not Oculus. Oculus is just a "team" now.
They have been quietly deprioritizing the Oculus brand for a while now. They did a whole series of pop up stores before Christmas at various airports, trying to demo Gear VR. No mention of Oculus or Samsumg, 100% Facebook branding.
Before Christmas there was definitely a large Oculus branded popup in a few locations near me. I think it still makes sense for Oculus to remain a separate brand.
Hugo Barra was previously a VP of product development in Google's Android division. He moved to Xiaomi a few years ago, and oversaw their international expansion. That was seen as a pretty big move, since it was probably the most significant poaching of a non-Chinese executive from US tech company by a Chinese tech company. His resignation from Xiaomi was announced a few days ago - presumably in order to move to this…
I see, so is there something significant about this move to Facebook? Or is it just more about the fact that he left Xiaomi?
Both. It's not often that a former VP of Google ends up at Facebook.