The person in charge of Microsoft's VR device watched VR "mini movies" in his office, which indirectly showed that the device experience was very good?! On Tuesday, Alex kipman, the co-founder of hololens, who was plagued by sexual harassment scandal, submitted his resignation to Microsoft and quit.
According to the insider, Scott Guthrie, the head of Microsoft's cloud and AI department who received kipman's resignation, said that the project would be rescheduled.
In other words, kipman will not leave until the team transformation and work handover are completed.
Live broadcast "welfare" to all employees
It has to be said that kipman's use of VR to watch "pornographic films" in the office is really noisy.
Most importantly, the whole process was "live broadcast" to the team members present, including female employees
Now, let's go back to that night and see how kipman died and collapsed.
At 8 o'clock in the evening, six Mr team members were working overtime to debug the prototype of VR glasses. (seeing the words "8 o'clock" and "overtime" put together, editors always feel a little uncomfortable.)
At that time, kipman, the project leader, was also waiting for the acceptance results in the office.
When it comes to kipman, I have to mention his very personalized dress.
For example, the iconic shoulder length hair and fluctuating stubble look like both the lead singer of a rock band and the technical director.
To get down to business, after the engineers finally finished, kipman took the VR glasses into the windowless cabin of the studio.
However, he may have forgotten that the contents of VR glasses will be mirrored to the large screen in the office.
This means that everyone outside the cabin will see what kipman has chosen for his virtual reality experience.
After he clicked the play button, the whole studio was full of "vitality".
In that picture, several young women in miniskirts were playing in bed, followed by a lively pillow fight.
This deployment really surprised everyone present
Afterwards, an employee who was present said in an interview, "this is not VR porn."
Of course, the kipman porn incident is just one example of thousands of leadership misconduct.
Other things like kipman's sexual harassment and verbal violence have never been eradicated in Microsoft.
Microsoft declined to comment on kipman.
The spokesman said, "we will investigate all reported cases one by one. We will take corresponding measures to solve all confirmed cases."
"Our punishments include dismissal, demotion, deduction of salary or bonus, official criticism, compulsory training, etc., or a combination of the above punishments."
It sounds very official
Another former colleague of kipman also said that they had seen kipman misbehave towards female employees.
"Once, kipman rubbed the shoulder of another female colleague. She shrugged her shoulders and wanted him to stop. It was obvious that she was uncomfortable. But kipman just kept rubbing."
An employee disclosed that the management of Microsoft also warned female employees not to be alone with kipman. Even in recent months, two "escorts" from the human resources department seem to follow kipman to attend meetings.
Regarding these matters, Microsoft only denied that kipman was "escorted" by someone in the HR department, and others were "not commented".
This is even darker than admitting directly.
Mr team is going to be "disbanded"
However, in terms of technology, kipman is very talented and enthusiastic.
At the age of seven or eight, kipman learned how to program the Atari 2600. And he dreamed of going to the United States to study. He almost applied to all the universities with "it" after his name.
Later, kipman went to Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and graduated with a degree in software engineering in 2001. In the same year, kipman joined Microsoft.
Throughout his career, he worked for hololens and xbox Kinect and other technologies have applied for hundreds of patents.
When I was young, my style was totally different
It is very interesting that kipman's initial work was to develop windows Vista - an operating system that was ultimately completely unpopular.
From the perspective of "metaphysics", maybe the lukewarm nature of hololens has something to do with kipman's luck.
Just after businessinsider broke the news of kipman's resignation, Guthrie sent an email explaining what was going on.
Guthrie said in the email, "in the past few months, kipman and I have talked a lot about the future of the team... We all feel that if kipman wants to leave the company to pursue other opportunities, now is the best time."
"I am very grateful to kipman for the vision he has brought to Microsoft in recent years and for all he has done for Microsoft to lay out the meta universe."
"Kipman will cooperate with the team to complete the transformation smoothly in the next two months, and then leave."
Sing with the current popular tune, which is actually "listen to me ~ thank you ~ you should have left long ago ~"
The team change Guthrie refers to is that the current hardware team responsible for mixed reality will join the windows+devices department led by Panos Panay.
The software team responsible for Microsoft mesh hybrid reality platform and other products will join Jeff Teper's experiences+devices department.
Kipman did not comment.
However, based on what happened a while ago, we have to ask whether the change in team organization is the real reason for kipman's departure.
Of course, whether the causal relationship that Scott Guthrie mentioned in his email that kipman left Microsoft because of the team adjustment is true or not, the hololens team adjustment has not gone away.
Microsoft's Mr (hybrid reality) team mainly provides various AR and VR products and solutions. Its brands include hololens, IVAS, etc., as well as Microsoft's mesh services.
These are the key components of Microsoft's layout of the meta universe.
Guthrie said that Microsoft's Mr work has made great progress and reached two crucial milestones in May.
One is an order for the U.S. Army's integrated visual enhancement system (IVAS). Microsoft said the deal was expected to generate $22billion in revenue over 10 years.
The high-profile Pentagon contract once graced hololens' image, but the progress was far behind expectations and was plagued by quality and performance problems.
The report of the Pentagon Test Office also shows that Microsoft's system "has not shown the ability to serve as an operational Mr eyepiece".
Field test photos of IVAS prototype machine in autumn 2021
The other is the cooperation with Accenture to build an immersive meeting experience with Microsoft's new SDK.
Now, the Microsoft Mr team has reached the stage of organizational adjustment.
There is only one purpose, that is to enable Microsoft to continue to accelerate the development of metauniverse in the next fiscal year.
The main adjustment directions are divided into hardware and software:
First, grace Hwang, Ruben Caballero, Scott Evans, Ashraf Michail, David Marra and their hybrid reality hardware team will join the windows+ device organization.
This includes hololens, previously led by kipman, and the IVAS project.
Then there is the team led by Carlos Aguilar, Miguel susffalich and Nikhil Subramanian. They will be integrated into the experiences+devices department led by Jeff Teper.
They are mainly responsible for software and services.
The ill fated hololens
On February 3 this year, a long article on insider said that Microsoft had killed hololens 3, a subordinate of Mr project.
And many people familiar with the matter said that this foreshadowed the end of Microsoft's hybrid reality (MR) head display project.
However, Microsoft spokesman Frank Shaw immediately denied that the hololens project was dead.
At that time, kipman, the project leader of hololens, also said on twitter, "don't trust the news you see on the Internet. Before, some people said that hololens 2 had also been canceled."
At a staff meeting before the outbreak of the new crown, chriscaposella, Microsoft's chief marketing officer, said that hololens is a good gadget for promoting videos, but it is not so important to Microsoft's business.
A few years later, the technology industry saw a huge opportunity to immerse users in digital augmented reality and the virtual world.
However, although Microsoft's hololens business started early, it doesn't look like an investment that can be returned at the beginning, but more like a mess of engineers and visions who are exploring the direction.
In February, according to insider, three insiders said that Microsoft had canceled the hololens 3 plan in recent months.
One person predicted that this was the end of the project, at least for the well-known hololens products.
In addition, Microsoft also agreed to cooperate with Samsung to develop a new hybrid reality device, which also stirred up differences within the team.
When Microsoft's hololens device was publicly unveiled in 2015, it was sought after and revered by people.
Wearers can see through their glasses that digital information is superimposed on their view of the physical world, for example, showing a manual that technicians can glimpse when repairing electrical appliances.
Unlike Google, which moved into industry after its disastrous attempt to market to consumers, Microsoft positioned hololens as an enterprise product from the very beginning.
However, one former employee estimates that hololens has sold a total of 40000 to 60000 devices since its launch in 2016. Even at the current price of more than $3500 for hololens, this makes the business insignificant in Microsoft's annual revenue of $168billion.
It's hard to say where hololens and even the entire Mr team of Microsoft will go.