Pictured: Jack McCauley, at Dublin Tech Summit 2024.
Jack McCauley’s reputation as builder of the Oculus VR headsets precedes him. Managing Editor Sarah Freeman speaks with him about new inventions, the importance of culture and where he gets his drive.
The Berkeley-educated engineer was one of the big draws at Dublin Tech Summit 2024, with crowds of tech enthusiasts turning up to hear him speak.
The American inventor is Professor and Innovator in Residence at the Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation at UC Berkeley. He is probably best known for his co-founding role with Oculus VR, where he built the Oculus DK1 and DK2 virtual reality headsets, prior to the acquisition of the company in 2014 by Meta (then Facebook) for $2 billion.
McCauley joins our video call from his San Francisco home. We’ve barely exchanged pleasantries when McCauley apologises for the disruption and hops up to check on an experiment he has running in his workshop.
“I’ve got a live flame over there. I want to keep an eye on it.”
The experiment is aimed at distilling water to render it safe for drinking.
McCauley has been the recipient of numerous awards and scholarships throughout his life, most famously perhaps for Berkeley University from where he graduated with a degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in 1986. He would say he has always been driven to create and build.
“I grew up in the Netherlands and we moved to the US in 1970. We had a TV but my parents didn’t let us watch it too much so I spent all my time with Lego and things like that as a little kid. I don’t remember when I started but I was fascinated with those building blocks.”
Aged 9, he won 1,000 dollars in saving bonds through a national competition run by the construction playset, Tinkertoy, for his original toy idea.
There is a strong artistic and cultural facet to McCauley’s personality and he says he is more on the art spectrum, surprising perhaps for someone so synonymous with engineering.
“I wouldn’t put myself in the category of an academic although that’s where I am now. Back then, anyways, I could care less about school, honestly. I was more interested in doing art and music.”
The scholarship to Berkeley came at the right time.
“I was about 20 and was working for the Department of Defence as an engineer technician. I didn’t have a degree. I was programming instrumentation.”
Leadership by stealth
McCauley says running an organisation meant that he didn’t get to do the work he enjoyed like programming and software. So he learned to hire good people.
“I hire them and leave them alone. I monitor a little bit and not get into the grill too much. I point them (in the right direction) and let them lead. We hope most people will take advantage of that.”
McCauley recounts a story of hiring an assistant off Craigslist, the online nixer portal, to put books away, clean and generally help out.
“I gave her the opportunity, right, to work with me, and she took advantage of it. She came in and worked, and I was amazed. It’s just like no one ever gave her a chance to do anything. And she just grabbed a hold of it and took it and ran with it. She has an incredible work ethic and is an incredible character.”
McCauley made smart investments in Oculus and his Craigslist hire was a beneficiary of the incredible success it ultimately experienced.
“She bought a house and now she has a really great job at Facebook. She did the work. To this day, she’s a great friend of mine. Her family treats me like I’m a member of their family and that’s how we treat her too. So I just let people do their thing and get out of their way. I don’t like people telling me what to do so naturally I don’t do that. I trust them to get the job done and people respond to that.”
Resilience and the importance of routine
A typical day in McCauley’s life starts at 2am and bedtime is circa 6pm. His father was in the military and so sleeping-in was not really an option.
“I get up at 2am. I’m one of those people that is a morning owl. My Dad would get you out of bed at five in the morning. Get dressed, shower, it’s like being in boot camp. I think that’s where it came from. Also, the quiet time in the morning where I’m not being interrupted is when I can do the most creative stuff. Where it’s quiet and I can read and do research and that’s what I do.”
McCauley remembers when the company Oculus got started and he was in a wheelchair.
“I’d broken my leg and my assistant used to push me around. I had surgery on my leg twice and moved to crutches. I went to China on my crutches because I wasn’t going to get in my way. If I really want to do something, I’ll pull all the stops to do it.”
This determination helps when building and executing new ideas.
“If I can see it isn’t going anywhere, I stop working on it. I’ve watched startup companies with a product. They can beat it to death trying to make it work. And it never does. Take your pride out of it and go on to the next thing.”
Culture and creativity
We touch on generative AI and McCauley’s love of culture and his belief in the importance of creative capacity emerges. “There’s no soul in it.”
He adds, “I would rather have music created by an artist, you know. With writers, you need a person behind it, in my view.”
McCauley is curious about people and cultures.
“I’ve read the Quran twice. I heard negative things and I thought, it can’t be true, not with 1.5 billion followers. So I read it and I found out actually, it’s pretty good. It’s rules for living. I also read the Old Testament and the New Testament. I also read technical books.”
In a world of screens, McCauley advocates for hands-on play.
“If I had a child right now, the first thing I would do is buy them building blocks. That’s just the way I would do it. And they would want to have the iPad.”
To balance the digitalised world we live in, McCauley funded a facility, with others, called the Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation at UC Berkeley.
“We built it, bought the equipment. It’s a space where you actually get to use your hands. It’s very different from the rest of the university world. It bridges academics and math. It’s more creative. So that was my contribution.”
McCauley apologises again before hopping up to check on his experiment, his curiosity piqued once again.
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