"There is no way to sugar coat this; I think our organization is operating at half the effectiveness that would make me happy," Carmack wrote in the letter, which he shared on Facebook. ""Some may scoff and contend we are doing just fine, but others will laugh and say, 'Half? Ha! I'm at quarter efficiency!'"

Diversity hires and adult children in Silicon Valley not holding up to par?!

I hate parroting cliched narratives, but John Carmack has always been focused on the engineering side of products, to the partial neglect of workplace dynamics or market awareness. I could recall interview/presentation examples from him and other ID ID founders if anyone is interested.

John characterizes the Meta/Realitylabs failure as a workplace efficiency problem, when he knew full well that the company was antithetical to the hacker/hobbyist ethic when they bought out Occulus. VR is much more enthusiast than a smartphone or social-media site, thus the FAANG post-startup mentality doomed their VR venture just as with Amazon's games and high budget TV shows. Valve and GabeN have had much more success paying some respect to the hacker mentality or otherwise respecting the userbase when applicable.

I wonder if the Zenimax lawsuit was the reason for Carmack sticking around after the acquisition.

He should work on AI next, or get back into rocketry.

"It pains me to hear people say that they don't even get their headset out to show off at the company because they know it's going to be a mess of charging and updating before they can make it do something cool," Carmack said at the time. "VR should be a delight to demo for your friends."

Ouch.

From an 'Insider' article. Sounds like the PS3, PS4, PS5, Steam experience.

Sincerely glad to hear that one of the smartest men on Earth is not working for Facebook anymore.

The man that probably kept the lights on at Facebook has left. Yep sounds good.