Key points:

  • Meta employees are not entirely sold on Zuckerberg’s metaverse dream
  • This news comes just a day before Meta will roll out its new virtual reality headset (VR) 
  • A New York Times report broadly speaks about Meta’s direction in the lead-up to the company’s 2022 Meta Connect event
  • It highlights a few interesting points regarding how Meta’s employees feel toward a “mixed-reality” future

By now, tech enthusiasts and fanatics may know of Mark Zuckerberg’s obsession with creating a metaverse. However, his employees are not very ecstatic about the idea. One major reason influencing this could be the company’s visibly high metaverse expenditures. Just to give you some context, Meta witnessed a $10 billion loss on VR investments in 2021.

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Meta employees not on board with Zuckerberg’s metaverse vision

The New York Times report about Meta’s direction in the lead-up to its 2022 Meta Connect event offered some interesting insights into what employees think about Meta’s metaverse strategies. 

Their frustration was pretty clear. For example, one source said that the company’s incredibly high metaverse expenditure makes them “sick to their stomach”. Meta saw a $10 billion loss on VR investments last year. 

The metaverse bashing does not stop here.

Only 58 percent of participants of a Blind survey of Meta employees claimed to grasp CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s goals for the metaverse. Employees were reportedly pressured to use the internal Horizon Worlds VR software for team meetings early this year, according to one anecdote in the Times report. fIt revealed that many staff members either lacked VR headsets or were using them incorrectly.

What does Meta’s chief metaverse exec has to say?

According to The Verge, the company’s chief metaverse executive Vishal Shah even made a note in an internal company post suggesting that not enough staff members use Horizon Worlds and that the app would undergo noteworthy quality control modifications for the rest of 2022. 

The company’s efforts to pursue virtual reality are allegedly being referred to by certain employees as “M.M.H.,” or “make Mark happy,” about the CEO’s supposed personal metaverse aspirations that are reportedly motivating the company’s efforts in that area.

Will Meta change its stance?

One would think that the negative energy around Meta’s metaverse aspiration would stop them in their tracks. However, we do not think that it would stop Zuckerberg from pursuing his metaverse dream. 

As things stand, Meta will soon release its first headset today, which is reportedly named Quest Pro. In addition, despite the ongoing backlash to the visual theme of Horizon Worlds, we have few reasons to believe that investments toward the development of the application are likely to slow down anytime soon. 

For the latest metaverse news and bytes, continue reading iTMunch!

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Feature Image Source: Photo by Dima Solomin on Unsplash