Joining Meta: Day One in Reality Labs

First week at Meta. Everything is bigger.

Scale Shock

Magic Leap: ~2,000 employees, under 100 in perception Meta: ~50,000+ employees, thousands in Reality Labs

The numbers are one thing. The implications are another:

• More specialists (someone owns JUST the depth filtering)
• More process (reviews, approvals, documentation)
• More resources (compute, headcount, budget)
• More complexity (coordination, alignment, communication)

The VPS Mission

I'm here to build and lead the Visual Positioning Service (VPS) - enabling XR devices to understand where they are in the world.

The vision:

• Any XR device can localize in any mapped space
• 6DoF tracking relative to persistent world maps
• Centimeter-level accuracy outdoors
• Works across Quest headsets and future devices

This extends everything I did at Magic Leap to global scale.

Different Challenges

Scale of data: Meta has billions of geolocated photos from apps like Instagram and Facebook. This data could bootstrap worldwide mapping.

Scale of deployment: Quest has millions of users. Features ship to everyone at once.

Scale of infrastructure: Google-class systems for storage, compute, ML training.

At Magic Leap, we built custom everything. At Meta, we build on massive infrastructure.

Familiar Patterns

Despite the scale difference, core problems are the same:

• How do you build accurate 3D maps efficiently?
• How do you localize quickly on constrained hardware?
• How do you handle changing environments?
• How do you protect user privacy?

The physics doesn't change because the company is bigger.

First Impressions

Talent density is high: Every meeting has people who are world experts in something.

Documentation is extensive: Everything has a wiki page, design doc, or review thread.

Process is real: Shipping anything requires multiple approval gates.

Ambition is extreme: The roadmaps assume success at everything.

Learning Mode

First 90 days: listen, learn, build relationships.

• Understanding existing systems
• Meeting stakeholders across org
• Identifying where I can add value
• Building credibility through small wins

The temptation to immediately redesign everything is strong. Resisting it.

What I Bring

Experience that's relevant:

• End-to-end perception system design
• Synthetic data for perception training
• Hardware-software co-design
• Shipping under constraints

What I need to learn:

• Meta's codebase and tools
• Organizational dynamics
• How decisions get made here
• What's already been tried

Excited and humbled. The learning curve is steep again. That's the point.