Meta is now laying off thousands of employees while all but announcing that staff working on Meta's Horizon Worlds is next on the chopping block this year. So it's important to note that Rec Room and VRChat -- two metaverse platforms which have ironically thrived on Meta's own Quest platform -- are currently hiring:
- Machine Learning Engineer
- Product Data Scientist
- Senior Product Data Scientist
- Engineering Gameplay Engineer, Retention
- Principal Product Manager | Discovery
VRChat job openings (selected):
- Senior Data Scientist, Product Analytics
- Staff/Principal Designer
- Senior Server Engineer - Experience
- Senior Manager, Trust & Safety
- Director of Product, New Audiences
All remote roles, too! That they're hiring is not a surprise, since VRChat has (by their own reporting) 10 million active users, while Rec Room (by my estimate) has well over 20 million users. What is somewhat surprising is that neither company was acquired by Meta, seeing that much or most of that user base -- nearly 70%, in VRChat's case -- use a Meta Quest headset. But oh well.
In VRChat's case, by the way, I know several staffers were deeply involved in Second Life back in the day, while the founders are very much aware of the platform. Also, I recently chatted with a VRC staffer who got their start as a community developer, and shared some about the VRChat corporate culture and advice on getting hired:
“Overall it doesn't feel very different in my case," Merlin says about corporate life at VRChat Inc., "since I'd had relatively close interaction with VRChat as a community developer for a while beforehand and I knew a number of the people I am now working with from being friends with them in VRChat.”
Like the rest of the VRChat team, he only works remotely: “We often have team meetings in VRChat which is cool.”
Merlin’s advice for other VRChat content creators who might want to follow his path:
“If you think a position on the VRChat careers page fits your skill set, apply. VRChat is hiring pretty quickly at the moment; it's worth putting in an application even if you don't check all the boxes 100%. For a number of open positions, your VRChat worlds/avatars could be used as portfolio material. Many VRChat employees are community members who demonstrated their skills in part through content they made on the platform.”
More here. Speaking of which, I'm happy to make a job recommendation to longtime readers whose virtual world work I'm very familiar with -- hit me up!
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