As Meta Platforms’ Metaverse plans are going full steam ahead, more and more Microsoft and Apple employees have decided to jump ship and join the multinational technology conglomerate.
The Wall Street Journal quotes a former Microsoft employee who revealed that approximately 100 people from the tech giant’s AR team decided to join Meta Platforms in the past year. Notably, the former employee claims that Meta has focused particularly on picking up skilled individuals who helped develop Microsoft’s HoloLens AR headsets.
WSJ also mentions that the staffs’ Linkedin profiles show over 70 people who once worked on Microsoft’s HoloLens have since left the project in the past year. Now, over 40 of those employees have new positions over at Meta.
Microsoft is one of the pioneers of developing AR space, so its employees are valuable assets to Meta Platforms. Microsoft announced its HoloLens project over five years ago in 2016, and now, the technology for this project has turned into one of the most advanced headsets across the globe.
On the other hand, Apple is trying its hardest to counteract a massive employee emigration to Meta. For one thing, the company now offers worthwhile stock options to employees, along with incredible bonuses spanning between $50,000 and $180,000. In late December 2021, Apple offered these bonuses to a group of engineers within silicon design, hardware, and some software operations workers.
Facebook’s Journey to Become Meta
In October 2021, the company we knew as Facebook announced its major rebranding to Meta Platforms. This significant change in the company’s existence indicated that it was ready to explore more sectors outside of social media. Since its rebranding, Meta has been working hard in developing its virtual reality (VR) hardware business, “Reality Labs.” By mid-November 2021, they successfully created a prototype of its VR “haptic gloves.”
Although Meta has had several early successes already, the company’s attempts at dominating the metaverse space have been met with countless criticisms from the overall community. Even leaders within the NFT, blockchain, GameFi, and crypto spaces have expressed such criticisms.
For instance, Hodl Asset’s Jenny Ta previously said that it shouldn’t be Mark Zuckerberg to lead Facebook into the Metaverse. She also mentioned his history surrounding data mining, privacy, and content policies. During an interview with Cointelegraph, Ta said that the only way for Meta to have a clean slate or a fresh start is for Zuckerberg to step down and assign a new CEO.
Both Microsoft and Apple have set their sights on the Metaverse and what it could bring to the table for quite a while now. During the early days of November 2021, Microsoft announced a plethora of updates for Teams, along with upgrades to its Xbox gaming console. Not only that, but the tech giant also launched a new product called “Dynamics 365 Connected Spaces.”
