Thread by @MerlinVR_

Hi, I’m Merlin, I developed UdonSharp for scripting in VRChat worlds which has become the de-facto standard. I was hired by VRChat a few years ago to continue work on UdonSharp, and ended up creating Udon 2. I have bad news. I received abrupt notice of my termination on Thursday.

This was over I assume, a few disagreements over how VRChat treats its developer community in the last few years, and my subsequent abrasiveness in response to the other parties not recognizing issues. I regret how far I went and realize that I should have just given up.

I say “assume” because I was only told that I was being fired and had all vrchat-related accounts cut off minutes later. I asked if I could write a simple goodbye message to post in Slack and was denied even that.

I am sorry. I didn’t expect Udon 2; one of the most anticipated improvements for VRChat, to be potentially put in jeopardy over this.

The straw that I assume broke the camel’s back was a recent bad developer communication that I warned to avoid and was ignored. I got more heated than I should’ve, I knew that I should have dropped the subject earlier because I wasn’t being listened to.

About a week later my manager contacted me in Slack private messages to tell me to knock it off, I expressed my frustration and was more abrasive than I should have been with him. But we came to the agreement that I just wouldn’t talk about those issues anymore.

About a week after that talk, he emailed me again, reiterating the same issue we already resolved, saying vaguely this was my last warning before more serious punishment. Which I assumed would be demotion, some courses I needed to take, some unpaid leave, etc.

I was very unhappy that he pushed the issue that he and I had already come to a solution on, and it made me feel that literally nothing was learned at the exec level.

I wrote a long, and somewhat rude letter that I asked for his feedback and to pass on. He of course said he would not, but that he would be happy to work with me to make it more productive.

I realized I was incredibly burned out from the whole situation, and frankly did not expect taking several days to edit my feedback to make any difference at all in changing the company.

I apologized to my manager for my behavior, told him I was feeling burned out, and requested a month or two off.

A few days later they scheduled a meeting. In the meeting with my manager and the new head of HR, they said they could give me 2 weeks off, and they could only do more if I got a doctor’s note or something so they would be legally required.

At this point, I will mention VRChat has ‘unlimited’ vacation. Moreover I had not really taken a vacation for more than some weekends in my last 2.5 years at VRC.

I had worked through all Christmas breaks. I worked through most other holidays. I worked over most weekends. I worked 12+ hours a day for many months.

I told them that I really wanted a month and that I didn’t want to have to jump through legal hoops and doctors just to get some vacation. They said they’d get back to me.

At this point I emailed a very brief and objective, though harsh mail to my manager in frustration that I wasn’t being heard. Saying that VRChat should hire a director of developer relations to handle creator communications.

I don’t know if this was the last nail in the coffin or if they were considering firing me before I even asked for time off, or if they were considering it when I asked for more than 2 weeks off.

I knew I shouldn't have sent it because it was essentially saying exec members were not doing their job.

A few days later they scheduled a meeting that I was expecting to be about getting some time off. Instead I was told I was getting some time off in a less expected way…

I will also note that a piece underlying my burnout and frustration was that I was being embarrassingly undercompensated. I was paid $100k/yr for a cost of living comparable to Portland, OR. For a role that at most other companies would pay 3x that or more.

I was being paid the same amount as I was in my first year out of college nearly 10 years ago. And half of what I was being paid at the end of my prior employment.

I took the initial pay because I really wanted to make Udon 2 and naively hoped that I’d get raises. By the end of my previous job between raises, bonuses, and overtime pay, I was getting paid 2x what I was initially after 3 years. At VRChat none of those materialized.

The best I got was a 4.1% raise to counter a part of inflation. A raise that I was told was only given to ‘top performers’. I was feeling very appreciated by the company; in that only top performers had the privilege to lose a bit less of their salary to inflation.

The kicker here was my student loan repayments restarted in the same month, which more than neutralized the raise.

I am personally happy to just be able to afford to pay the bills, but considering many entry level positions in my city pay 10-30% more than I was getting paid at VRChat it just felt like incredibly unfair compensation for what I provided the platform.

I was by far not the only one with similar experiences with salary at the company.

In my first few months at the company I had shipped a complete rewrite of U# to be much more capable and robust, I had also pitched, demoed, and roadmapped Udon 2. To which, the only notable appreciation I received was from the community, which I am grateful for.

Many talks with friends, coworkers, and acquaintances over how excited they were for Udon 2 gave me energy.

I sincerely hope VRChat is able to ship Udon 2 in a reasonable time frame that would be held to a standard of quality I’d hold my work to. Because otherwise the last several years of my life will have been mostly for naught.

Right now I’m not sure what I’ll be doing, there’s a lot of stuff I wanted to explore that I didn’t have any time to do when working at VRChat.

I may look into forking UdonSharp back since I was able to keep it MIT licensed. I may look at adding some improvements like non-UdonSharpBehaviour classes, with a bunch of limitations of course because of Udon.

Beyond that I may explore shader-related stuff or other tooling that’s tangentially related to VRC, but not dependent on it. Maybe I’ll finally have some time to finish creating an avatar that I’ve been wanting to make for years.

After I take the unpaid ‘vacation’ that VRChat has graciously granted me I will possibly be looking for employment elsewhere depending on how things go.

For now I will be starting my Patreon up again if anyone wants to provide support. I have enough savings to be okay for a bit; most of that savings leftover from my prior job. Of course if you were subbed before, you will need to resub if you want to.

Thank you for your support over the years, I’m really sorry this happened. I’ve really looked forward to Udon 2, I hope to be able to contribute in other ways, and I hope VRC is able to ship Udon 2 eventually in my absence.

I realize this has been very long, if you’ve read to this point I really appreciate it.

I can be reached primarily on Discord at ‘merlinvr’, I don’t use Twitter too much anymore and am usually more active on other similar platforms as MerlinVR. I will be around Twitter for a bit though.

Also here's my Patreon patreon.com/MerlinVR