With Meta’s ambition to establish the metaverse well underway, the Wall Street Journal reports that Meta has started recruiting personnel from Microsoft and Apple.
Microsoft employees are being poached by Meta
According to the article, Microsoft’s augmented reality unit lost roughly 100 people to Meta, according to a former employee. He went on to say that the Meta had targeted people who had worked on Microsoft’s HoloLens augmented reality (AR) devices in the past.
This assertion was backed up by a look at the LinkedIn accounts of several former Microsoft HoloLens employees, which revealed that over 40 of them had moved on to Meta. Microsoft began working in the Augmented Reality sector in 2016. This implies that the majority of its employees are desirable to competitors like Meta, who might profit from their knowledge in the field.
Apple has been providing incentives ranging from $50,000 to $180,000 to its employees in order to keep them from quitting. This is the company’s attempt to keep them from defecting to competitors.
The rebranding of Facebook as Meta has boosted interest in the Metaverse to unprecedented heights.
Since Facebook announced its intention to shift its focus to the metaverse, a number of established businesses have ramped up their efforts in the area.
Several of them, like Samsung, Adidas, Disney, and others, have taken various steps in the field in order to guarantee a place in the current digital revolution.
Last year, the fresh surge of enthusiasm was instrumental in propelling the price performance of Metaverse-related projects to new heights. According to a Bloomberg analysis, meta-related tokens increased by over 37,000% last year, while Bitcoin increased by only 100%.
Due to the pessimistic tenor of the market, the coins have lost some of their luster in the new year. It should be noted, however, that the costs of these projects are rising again as the market experiences a brief green run.
The top ten tokens by market size in the space have had their value climb by over 5% in the previous 24 hours, according to statistics accessible on CryptoSlate.
The price of projects like The Sandbox has increased by over 15%, while the price of Decentraland has increased by 8%. Others, such as AXS, ENJ, and THETA, have increased by 9%, 10%, and 6%, respectively.
Meta’s recruitment strategies
It’s nothing unusual for top tech corporations to poach from one other and from smaller businesses. As a large firm like Meta strives to develop fast, what stands out now is the magnitude and pace, according to Matt Stern, chief operating officer of Mira Labs Inc., a startup that helps companies adopt augmented reality for their workplaces.
“It’s pushed upmarket pricing,” he remarked. “Competition is challenging for tiny businesses.”
Facebook changed its name to Meta in October and said that it will reorient the firm around the metaverse. It predicted that expenditure on the new unit for the initiative will eat into its total operating profit in 2021 by roughly $10 billion. Over the next five years, the business wants to hire 10,000 people in Europe to help build out its metaverse products, according to the company.
Microsoft isn’t the only corporation dealing with Meta’s burgeoning talent pool. According to former Microsoft workers who have transferred to Meta and LinkedIn profiles of former Apple employees, Apple Inc. AAPL 0.26% is also losing personnel to Meta. Apple’s measures to curb departures were previously revealed by Bloomberg. Apple has been silent about the matter.
The metaverse is a mostly imagined virtual universe in which proponents believe people will work, learn, and shop. Microsoft, Meta, and Apple are investing billions of dollars in the development of augmented- and virtual-reality technology and software that might constitute the foundation of this new digital universe.
Users are entirely immersed in a virtual environment—for example, a videogame—while wearing a headset that blocks out the outside world. According to research company International Data Corp, Meta’s Oculus will have a 75% share of the headset market in 2021. According to IDC, 9.4 million VR headsets were shipped last year, with that figure expected to climb to 13.6 million by the end of this year.
Digital material, such as 3-D graphics or visual instructions, is superimposed on a user’s perspective of the actual world in augmented reality. Some in the IT sector believe it will someday be a bigger market than VR, but it will be more difficult to build. Last year, only about 325,000 augmented reality headsets were sold. According to IDC, that figure might rise to 1.35 million devices this year.
Engineers with experience in AR and VR are seeing their profiles and pay surge as most tech titans aim to produce their own smart glasses, which are regular-size spectacles with some AR features. The phrase “metaverse” has become more popular in job descriptions. According to Indeed, the percentage of job advertisements that cited the metaverse in December was more than ten times more than a year ago.
Microsoft was a pioneer in the field of augmented reality. HoloLens has initially launched over five years ago and has since grown into one of the most sophisticated headsets on the market. While it has mostly concentrated on corporate apps, it is also working on a lighter, more inexpensive version for consumers, though it will be years before it is available, according to former Microsoft workers.
According to former Microsoft employees, Meta is also working on augmented reality glasses, which has prompted its recruiting spree. It made an early foray into the market in September with a pair of smart glasses developed in collaboration with EssilorLuxottica SA, the creator of Ray-Ban sunglasses. For the time being, they just have basic features like capturing images and recording short movies.
According to observers, Microsoft personnel are particularly appealing candidates for headhunting since the company has been ahead of the competition in the field of augmented reality.
“Microsoft still maintains a significant lead in the AR industry until someone else delivers another AR product,” said Jitesh Ubrani, research manager at IDC.
The first-generation HoloLens was introduced by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in 2015. Rather than marketing its headgear as a game and entertainment platform for consumers, Microsoft has concentrated on selling it as a corporate productivity tool.