John Carmarcklegendary programmer known to gamers for co-founding id Software and helping to create such seminal titles as Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, DOOM and Quake, has left Metaa company for which he had been developing VR products for almost ten years.
The news emerged during the night, when excerpts of the farewell letter that the programmer wrote to the employees, which in the initial intentions should have remained private, began to circulate on the net. After the public dissemination, Carmack decided to publish it in its entirety on her personal profiles. “I have resigned as Executive Consultant for VR with Meta. My post for internal use ended up in the hands of the press, who chose to share only excerpts. Here is the full post, as seen by employees.”
In his farewell post, which can be read in his interest at this address, Carmack confesses that he has mixed feelingsexplaining that while he’s proud of Quest 2 (“it’s almost exactly what I wanted from the start,” he wrote), the same can’t be said ofefficiency of the company, which in his opinion leaves something to be desired: “We have a ridiculous amount of people and resources, but we constantly sabotage ourselves by undermining our efforts. There’s no sugarcoating this: I think our organization is operating half as efficiently as I would be happy. Someone he might taunt me and retort that we’re actually doing well, but others might laugh and say, ‘Half? Ha! We’re one-quarter efficiency!’
Carmack then explained that, despite holding a high-level role (he was Chief Technology Officer from 2013 to 2022, after which he continued his collaboration as an Executive Consultant), he was unable to change that: “I have a high-level voice here, so that should allow me to change things, but I’m obviously not persuasive enough.” The programmer admitted to “not being able to stop stupid things before they cause damage, or set a direction and push the team to follow it”.
From now on, Carmack will dedicate himself full time to his startup, Keen Technologiesengaged in the study of Strong Artificial Intelligence (in English Artificial General Intelligence, or AGI).
