Industry veteran John Carmark has left Meta's Reality Labs

Back in 2013 the legendary John Carmark, co-founder of id Software and programmer on Doom and Quake, joined the company Oculus, known for their VR headset Oculus Rift, as Chief Technical Officer. A year later Oculus' was bought by Meta (then Facebook) but Carmark retained his role at, what is now called, Reality Labs, though from 2019 in a lesser capacity and at reduced hours as consulting CTO.

Now Carmark has left the company completely and has also decided to post his full resignation letter to the employees at Reality Labs on Facebook.

While Carmarck praises the Meta Quest 2 as "almost exactly what I wanted to see from the beginning - mobile hardware, inside out tracking, optional PC streaming, 4k (ish) screen, cost effective," he is also highly critical of how things are being run at Reality Labs.

"We have a ridiculous amount of people and resources, but we constantly self-sabotage and squander effort. There is no way to sugar coat this; I think our organization is operating at half the effectiveness that would make me happy. Some may scoff and contend we are doing just fine, but others will laugh and say 'Half? Ha! I'm at quarter efficiency!'" writes Carmark.

Over the last couple of years, Meta has been pouring billions of dollars into R&D at Reality Labs hoping to realize their vision of a VR-driven "Metaverse," so far with limited results to show for it.

Thanks, IGN.