[HN Gopher] John Carmack Leaves Meta
___________________________________________________________________
John Carmack Leaves Meta
Author : viburnum
Score : 1771 points
Date : 2022-12-17 00:10 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.facebook.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.facebook.com)
| b20000 wrote:
| This is a strong signal of how the leetcode hiring process gives
| rise to a bad and inefficient work environment staffed with the
| wrong type of engineers, resulting in a highly experienced
| engineer to simply walk away.
| branko_d wrote:
| This was quite poetic IMO:
|
| _" When you work hard at optimization for most of your life,
| seeing something that is grossly inefficient hurts your soul."_ -
| John Carmack
|
| https://www.facebook.com/100006735798590/posts/pfbid0iPixEvP...
| tlarkworthy wrote:
| Seems a little off to be calling out perf metrics when the whole
| system hasn't found product-market fit yet
| Jolter wrote:
| 5% is a metaphor. Read that part again.
| tlarkworthy wrote:
| The opening paragraph says "we have a good product". No, you
| have a good device, it's not the same thing. Maybe he thinks
| org ineffeciency is about not covering enough product use
| cases but the other parts of the post suggest focus on
| technical characteristics as the metric to measure success.
| Obviously he is way smarter than me so what do I know but
| that's what I see.
| [deleted]
| poszlem wrote:
| randomdata wrote:
| _> I have no idea when "design by committee" became something
| to emulate._
|
| When we renamed it with a catchy name: Agile. The Manifesto's
| entire deal is highlighting the key considerations an
| organization must take into account if they want to move to a
| flat organizational structure.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads into ideological flamewar.
| Regardless of which you're for or against, it's not what this
| site is for, and destroys what it is for.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34030063.
| poszlem wrote:
| Thank you for explaining, I will take this into account for
| sure.
|
| Could you let me know if my comment would be allowed to stay
| on the site if I only posted its first part? (and omitted the
| "left-wing" remark)
|
| Not trying to argue with your decision, just want to change
| how I write future posts.
| dang wrote:
| Yes, your comment would have been fine with just the first
| paragraph. It's the second paragraph that broke the
| guidelines.
|
| (I often mention that: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=al
| l&page=0&prefix=true&que... - just forgot to do it in this
| case.)
| [deleted]
| _cs2017_ wrote:
| Maybe I misunderstand what flat hierarchy means, but I don't
| think it is the same as "design by committee". It can still
| involve a single person making all important decisions; only
| that person isn't the one with the official title but rather
| whoever wins the most respect, has the most persuasive vision,
| etc.
| eternalban wrote:
| "Can" is the key word here. What is the likely outcome:
| design by committee or merit worthy lead.
|
| Also there is stability in organizational structure. This has
| obvious +/- points, with feature of e.g. 'Ives is leading the
| design' gives high probability that product line will remain
| consistent per a known standard, with the (equally high
| probability) bug of e.g. 'Ives is leading the design' gives
| high probability it will be more about the object than the
| user.
|
| Both of the above are really manifestations of an increased
| degree of _non-determinism_ in team operation. I think flat
| and /or dynamic order (per project) are still well worth
| considering, but imo this approach raises the bar on hiring.
| Before, you would need to trust the judgment of a few key
| employees, and now you must hope for the good judgment of
| nearly all of them.
| jleyank wrote:
| If it was the left wing driving Facebook it would not collect
| so much data. They're the ones who wrote about big brother, not
| the other guys.
| ralusek wrote:
| 1984 is a criticism, first and foremost, of authoritarianism.
| poszlem wrote:
| As far as I am aware Orwell's big brother was created after
| the left wing totalitarianisms, so I have no idea what are
| you on about.
| jleyank wrote:
| Well, he fought the fascists in Spain (you can read homage
| to Catalonia) so he knew about them. Animal farm is his
| description of the Russian revolution and after. Ww ii saw
| two right wing, one left wing and Japan as the totalitarian
| states.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Depends on whether you see the Stasi and KGB as "left" or
| "right" organizations. It doesn't take a _whole_ lot of
| thought to convince yourself that these are the wrong terms
| to use when discussing the problem of large-scale data
| collection and misuse.
|
| As for Orwell, he was a socialist, for what little that's
| worth.
| poszlem wrote:
| Especially since KGB was created to supercede Cheka, which
| was created by a hardcore Bolshevik.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Yes Orwell was a leftist, but he also wrote Animal Farm, a
| criticism of leftists for becoming hypocrites after gaining
| power.
| [deleted]
| turbobooster wrote:
| abraxas wrote:
| I think he probably just watched his own keynote that he was
| forced to give through that Metaverse avatar. It was a much
| better experience as pure audio.
| [deleted]
| krisoft wrote:
| I think Carmack is a great engineer. Part of that is being great
| at communication.
|
| And he is! Usually. But this paragraph is quite hard to follow:
|
| > If I am trying to sway others, I would say that an org that has
| only known inefficiency is ill prepared for the inevitable
| competition and/or belt tightening, but really, it is the more
| personal pain of seeing a 5% GPU utilization number in
| production. I am offended by it.
|
| I think what he means is that he is offended by inefficiency in
| itself. Not because of any secondary ills inefficiency causes but
| just because he is that way.
|
| He must know that hist last post will be read by many. Even if it
| would not leak, and only circulate inside facebook many non-
| developers would read it. And even if you are a developer "seeing
| a 5% GPU utilization number in production" might mean nothing to
| you. I assume it is bad from the way he phrases it. Maybe it
| should be higher? Probably. But honestly who cares about the GPU
| utilisation if the app does what it should in a performant way?
|
| He could have just wrote. "... pain of seeing an application
| waste resources in production." And then nobody has to spend
| mental cycles trying to guess what does 5% GPU utilisation means
| for him.
|
| (And it is absolutely a guesswork. I'm myself working in a team
| responsible for the performance of a performance critical
| application and I love to see 5% gpu utilisation. My job is not
| to fill up the GPU, but to do something useful for the business.
| If an app can do that with only 5% of the GPU all the better!)
|
| And then in the next paragraph in an edit he tried to explain
| himself. Probably because people complained that they don't
| understand what he is saying. As if you can alleviate confusion
| by explaining more. Instead of you know, fixing the source of
| confusion.
|
| I'm a bit sad that he didn't had anyone help him edit such an
| important announcement before he posted it.
|
| > Make better decisions and fill your products with "Give a
| Damn"!
|
| Now that I love! I want that printed on a t-shirt. :)
| Nimitz14 wrote:
| Changing the source instead of adding an edit would make
| previous comments that were asking about the unclear part not
| make sense anymore.
|
| The 5% figure is kinda shocking, that's why he put a number.
| And it's I think why people appreciate him, because he gets
| specific instead if writing a vague statement like "pain of
| seeing an application waste resources".
|
| I really don't understand how it can be unclear that 5% is bad.
|
| The thing that was actually unclear was people not
| understanding it was analogy for organizational effectiveness.
| krisoft wrote:
| > And it's I think why people appreciate him, because he gets
| specific
|
| But he is not specific. As you write the specific problem he
| has is with the efficiency of the organisation. He is not
| quitting Meta because someone shipped a build with 5% GPU
| utilisation. The gpu utilisation thing is an example and the
| number is pulled out of thin air. And as an example it
| doesn't do a good job. It confuses people instead of
| illuminating what he is trying to say.
|
| > I really don't understand how it can be unclear that 5% is
| bad.
|
| Because it is not bad? I'm writing here this comment, and my
| browser is barely utilising a single percentage of my GPU.
| Should the browser's developers rewrite their code to burn
| more GPU? Obviously not.
|
| But there is a bigger problem with the analogy. It tries to
| explain something quite simple (Carmack sees the organisation
| is inefficient. He has a dislike to inefficiency because his
| job is to make computers more efficient.) And to illustrate
| this simple concept he brings in the vocabulary of a
| specialist field. (performance optimisation, and graphics
| programming) Thus reducing the audience who can understand
| his point for no good reason whatsoever.
|
| > The thing that was actually unclear was people not
| understanding it was analogy for organizational
| effectiveness.
|
| Yes. And it is the direct result of his writing being
| confusing.
| [deleted]
| snovv_crash wrote:
| Low GPU utilisation is a serious issue.
|
| Either you massively over-specced your hardware and should have
| chosen something cheaper and with less power consumption, or
| your graphics quality is far below what it could be.
|
| Let's not beat around the bush: wasted resources are expensive,
| in some way or another.
| krisoft wrote:
| > Low GPU utilisation is a serious issue.
|
| Maybe? Maybe not? If you have a low GPU utilisation while
| loading a new level and only displaying a loading bar, that's
| not a serious issue. If a CAD software has a low GPU
| utilisation after loading that's not a serious issue. (It
| just means that the software GUI is written efficiently and
| can handle complicated assemblies.) If a chat application has
| a low GPU utilisation that is not a problem, it is simply not
| the application which calls for full utilisation of the GPU.
| If your inside-out-tracker has a low GPU utilisation that is
| not a problem, it just means that you are leaving more space
| for the user's applications.
|
| But this is not the issue with the analogy. This conversation
| between you and me, whether or not 5% gpu utilisation is bad
| or good, or it-depends doesn't just happen here. It happens
| in everyones head who reads his post. He wants people to
| think about the organisational inefficiencies of Meta. And a
| significant portion of his audience is thinking "what is a
| GPU?". Because you can absolutely be a useful member of the
| Meta company without knowing that. And then a smaller portion
| of the audience is thinking "Is 5% GPU utilisation bad?" You
| could totally understand his points about organisational
| inefficiency without having to have any understanding of GPU
| performance metrics.
|
| He lost clarity, for no good reason.
| snovv_crash wrote:
| Meta has been heavily criticized on the poor quality of the
| graphics in VR. In this context poor GPU utilisation is a
| Very Serious Issue.
|
| Carmac has been working with GPUs at a low level for 25
| years. He's going to make a GPU analogy . Frankly, based on
| organizational dynamics, GPUs map fairly well. Work
| distribution, caches, warp fronts (aka 'sprints'),
| instruction sets.
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| Yeah this was really odd to read?
|
| 5% gpu utilization on your battery hungry mobile device? That's
| not bad it's good/bad??
| modeless wrote:
| He just founded a new company called Keen Technologies to work on
| AGI. Not surprising that he wants to focus on that now. He's been
| part-time at Meta for years. I'm interested to find out what kind
| of business model he's planning for an AGI company.
|
| Edit: he posted his leaving message publicly here:
| https://www.facebook.com/100006735798590/posts/pfbid0iPixEvP...
|
| Additional public comments on Twitter here:
| https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1603931901491908610
|
| > As anyone who listens to my unscripted Connect talks knows, I
| have always been pretty frustrated with how things get done at
| FB/Meta. Everything necessary for spectacular success is right
| there, but it doesn't get put together effectively.
|
| > I thought that the "derivative of delivered value" was positive
| in 2021, but that it turned negative in 2022. There are good
| reasons to believe that it just edged back into positive
| territory again, but there is a notable gap between Mark
| Zuckerberg and I on various strategic issues, so I knew it would
| be extra frustrating to keep pushing my viewpoint internally. I
| am all in on building AGI at Keen Technologies now.
|
| @dang can you change the link to one of these?
| surfsvammel wrote:
| Keen Technologies. That's a great name.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| I think it is based on id Software's Commander Keen[0] game.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commander_Keen
| fallingknife wrote:
| If you solve AGI, all business is your plan.
| faitswulff wrote:
| +1 to changing the post to Carmack's published post on Facebook
| or Twitter without the Business Insider fluff.
| rvz wrote:
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| Is AI really grifting? It's not like mom and pop can sink
| their savings into AI tech and lose it all to scams, etc.
| like they can with crypto. At worst some big investors sink a
| big seed round in and never get it back from a 'grifting' AI
| company--IMHO no real harm done, if you're an angel investor
| you're mature enough to deal with getting burned it's just
| part of the risk (and no one is going to cry for someone rich
| enough to gamble millions and lose it all).
|
| I suspect his AI company will be like his previous rocket
| company, Armadillo Aerospace, that tried to go after the x
| prize for space. A purely passion project that bootstraps
| itself from the start and either sinks or swims. I can't see
| Carmack 'grifting' by courting huge seed rounds from tons of
| investors, expanding quickly into an enormous company to
| steamroll into series rounds with no solid business plan,
| etc.
| dinobones wrote:
| AI in its _current_ form is grifting. Trying to actually
| productionize anything with GPT3 for example is a
| nightmare, it can actively lie to you, the embeddings are
| pretty sub-par, and inference is pretty expensive. But you
| hear nothing but praise from it here on HN, and people act
| like the 30 minute web app they built and charge $15 /month
| for is going to change the industry.
|
| But it's getting better. GPT3.5/InstructGPT and now ChatGPT
| are showing incredible leaps in performance. Less
| hallucination, more coherence, it's getting better over
| time.
|
| So guess who wins and profits once the tech catches up? Is
| it the people like me sitting on the sidelines and poo-
| pooing the tech? Or is it the people who have been in the
| space for a while?
|
| Just the act of being "in proximity" to a technology can be
| so valuable. I know first-hand, I was an Objective-C
| developer for pure passion, because I loved clean MacOS
| apps and wanted to build myself tools. Well guess what?
| That proximity to Objective-C, familiarity with Xcode, and
| knowledge of Apple API patterns paid handsomely when the
| iPhone came out and I became an iOS developer. The same
| happened for WatchOS.
|
| You see this pattern in technology over and over again. And
| I have no reason to think that AI/large language models
| will be an exception.
|
| TLDR: It's kind of a grift. Carmack likely won't advance
| the field of AI or make a major breakthrough. But I have no
| doubt the infrastructure and talent he surrounds himself
| with will be able to manifest something profitable when the
| time comes.
| nomel wrote:
| > AI in its current form is grifting.
|
| Could you give some actual examples of projects or
| companies that you see as "grifting"?
|
| Most companies are clearly communicating that they're in
| the R&D phase of the tech. R&D definitely isn't grifting.
|
| The problem spaces where people find value and pay for AI
| isn't grifting either, like the bulk of content
| moderation happening now, recommendation systems, text to
| speech, speech to text, etc. The camera on my phone uses
| neural networks, with great success. I use ChatGPT daily,
| at this point.
|
| What do you see as clearly being "grifting" (ok, lets try
| to keep Elon Musk related projects out of this)?
| wpietri wrote:
| Your theory is that it isn't a scam if the people can
| afford to lose the money? That is certainly not how I think
| of them.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| A scam implies malfeasance or fraud. There can be scam
| companies anywhere. What I'm saying is that AI is not
| inherently full of scammy companies, unlike say crypto.
| Sure AI tech is over-hyped but it isn't designed to
| defraud people.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Over-hyping is defrauding people.
| Kiro wrote:
| Why would he change the link? We're discussing this article.
| hajile wrote:
| I suspect he's going to get smacked hard by the AGI problem and
| ultimately concede defeat on his biggest goal while achieving
| some success in the current less-than-general ML stuff.
| mhh__ wrote:
| I also think he's going to lose it massively (technical
| background aside, i.e. he's not an applied mathematician,
| it's a huge problem) BUT the AI industry is currently run
| with a very childish approach to software and programming, if
| his company can attack the infrastructure wisely they could
| really improve the industry. No idea how to make that money
| money though.
| motoxpro wrote:
| Have a listen to some interviews. Doing it out of love for
| the problem more so than anything else.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I845O57ZSy4
| marvin wrote:
| It's not exactly a bold predction that someone will fail to
| solve a grand, millennia-old problem of philosophy and
| science.
| c3534l wrote:
| Honestly seems like a better fit for him than VR. VR may be
| games, but everyone is saying his strengths are technical,
| not organizational. Seems like he wants to work on hard
| technical problems and thats what he's good at.
| worldsayshi wrote:
| If you solve a few more problems with chatgpt it's going to
| become useful enough that people are going to stop caring so
| much about the AGI label. It's going to quack like a duck
| enough to change a lot of industries.
| methodical wrote:
| > "If you solve a few more problems"
|
| The amount of work done by these 7 words is incredible.
| ChatGPT is far from changing a "lot" of industries. Still
| pathetic at programming (which isn't its purpose, but is
| AlphaCode's purpose; which also sucks), use of it for copy
| writing is nullified since it seems Google will crack down
| on AI generated copy writing. DALL-E is also a nice party
| trick but far from being particularly useful.
|
| I'd certainly love to have a useful AI but I think we're
| experiencing a 80-20 rule situation right now, and that
| it'll be a few years before we see anything that makes
| significant improvements on current solutions.
| Keyframe wrote:
| My sweet dude, it's a prototype literally released as a
| CHAT bot to public to tinker with seventeen days ago.
| cauthon wrote:
| The forever relevant xkcd
|
| https://xkcd.com/1831/
| worldsayshi wrote:
| It's worth it to try with fresh eyes though right? Maybe
| you get lucky?
| lovecg wrote:
| It boggles my mind that people are now dismissive towards
| technology that would have been literal science fiction
| _a year ago_ while at the same time being pessimistic
| about future progress.
| lambdatronics wrote:
| Just going back and look at GPT-2's output, it's amazing
| how much better this system is. It still doesn't
| "understand" anything, but the coherence of what it spits
| out has gone up drastically.
|
| https://thegradient.pub/gpt2-and-the-nature-of-
| intelligence/
| woeirua wrote:
| The world is full of compelling tech demos that fail to
| make much of a splash.
| scrollaway wrote:
| You're still calling ChatGPT a tech demo?
|
| Buddy, it's not a demo, it's a warning of what's to come.
|
| Stay behind, it makes no difference to anyone but
| yourself. As for me, I have integrated ChatGPT into my
| daily work. I have used it to write emails that
| negotiated a 30k usd deal, write stories, prototype an
| app, send a legal threat, brainstorm name and branding
| ideas, scope a potential market and this is just some of
| the stuff I used for actual productive work.
|
| I can't begin to tell you how much I have played with it
| for fun and intellectual curiosity.
| kfarr wrote:
| We are mistaking this for a splash when instead it is the
| ripple before the shock wave
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| No. "AI" isn't creating new information complexity. (In
| fact it's making the world simpler, by regurgitating
| smooth-sounding statistically average statements.)
|
| Information complexity is the true test of intelligence,
| and the current crop of "AI" is actually making computing
| dumber, not smarter.
|
| But yes, "dumber" is often more useful. But the
| industries "AI" will revolutionize are the kinds of
| industries where "dumber" is more profitable (e.g.,
| copywriting spam, internet pornography, casual games,
| etc.) so the world will be poorer for it.
| TapWaterBandit wrote:
| Users of chatgpt went from 0 to 1 million in five days.
|
| Show me the compelling tech demo that did that without
| being a big deal.
| 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
| i want to see the actual use cases for these less than
| perfect AIs. only recently they've become useful enough
| to actually assist with coding, which is indeed
| impressive, but what else can they really do?
|
| they can answer questions, yes, but it's tough to tell if
| it's telling the truth or making stuff up which is kind
| of a problem. code at least compiles or doesn't so its
| easy to verify.
| tome wrote:
| Dwarf Fortress shipped 160k units in 24 hours, and
| moreover people paid money for it. That won't make a dent
| on the course of history.
|
| https://cogconnected.com/2022/12/dwarf-fortress-
| sells-160000...
| scrollaway wrote:
| The first iPhone forever changed how people use and
| perceive smartphones as well as how they are built. It
| only sold 6 million units over the course of 13 months,
| an average of 15k units / day.
|
| I too can pull up completely irrelevant statistics.
| tome wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand. TapWaterBandit asked for a
| fairly specific example of something and I gave one.
| Could you elaborate on what your disagreement is?
| scrollaway wrote:
| I misunderstood the intent of your post. But also, DF is
| not a tech demo... it's been around for two decades. And
| it's not _new_ technology.
| davewritescode wrote:
| I think you're exaggerating quite a bit. Language models
| have been evolving for years.
|
| The problem I have with GPT is that is wonderful at
| confidently writing things that are completely incorrect.
| It works wonderfully at generating fluff.
|
| I'm not a pessimist I love this kind of thing. I just
| understand the delta between impressive demo and real
| useful product. It's why self driving still isn't
| pervasive in our lives after being right around the
| corner for the better part of a decade.
| Twisell wrote:
| Maybe you think it's a revolution but older folk see that
| as an evolution.
|
| It remind me of the alice bot hype of my youth, which in
| retrospect was just an evolution fromthe ELIZA hype of
| 1966. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA
|
| We are actually far from sci-fi where is my flying
| delorean and clean fusion energy for humankind? An as far
| as AI is concerned where is HAL 9000?
| edanm wrote:
| > Maybe you think it's a revolution but older folk see
| that as an evolution.
|
| I don't know what you consider "older" folk but I highly
| doubt you speak for every member of that group.
|
| Also, I don't think the distinction here between
| "revolution" and "evolution" is so clear cut (or
| important.)
| valdiorn wrote:
| > ...and clean fusion energy for humankind
|
| Well, we did just produce the world's first clean fusion
| energy this week.
|
| https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/nuclear-fusion-power-
| plan...
| methodical wrote:
| This once again represents a sentence which omits a lot
| of important details.
|
| This happened in an experimental setting, not an actual
| production setting. It was a net positive energy output
| when ONLY accounting for the energy input of the actual
| lasers, not when accounting for the mechanisms which
| fired the lasers (which had an energy efficiency of about
| 1%, although this efficiency could be higher if they used
| more advanced laser generator/whatnots). It was generated
| in a way that in no way resembles what current attempts
| at a production ready, maintainable, fusion reactor look
| like (tokamaks), and was instead, as stated before,
| essentially a design meant for experiments where fusion
| occurred (basically by shooting a pellet of fusion
| material into the central focus of a bunch of powerful
| lasers).
|
| The LLNL is, and always has been, a experimental
| laboratory meant for primarily nuclear weapons testing
| and maintenance, and as such, have the ability to test
| nuclear fusion (via this inertial confinement setup), as
| fusion occurs in thermonuclear bombs, of which the US
| certainly has many in its stockpile.
|
| This test, while a big "milestone", is the equivalent of
| building a specialized fuel efficient vehicle which gets
| 500 miles to the gallon by sacrificing almost everything
| that makes a car a car, and then equating that as to say
| that every car on the road will be getting 500 miles to
| the gallon any day now. When in fact, the only thing
| achieved was the ability to say that we've made a car get
| 500 miles to the gallon.
| eddsh1994 wrote:
| 3 whole energy for the low cost of 300 energies!
| LASR wrote:
| I don't think you'd need to be alone in solving the AGI
| problem.
|
| Carmack is an engineer at heart. I am sure there are some yet
| undiscovered technical blockers in that space that he will
| solve.
| dqpb wrote:
| I believe we're still 15 years out from AGI, but I also think
| we could start creating autonomous agents right now that make
| people feel like it's almost AGI. I think Carmack could get
| something out the door that feels like that.
| wpietri wrote:
| It's very interesting to me that he's giving up on VR entirely.
| If he thought it was just an issue with Facebook, presumably
| he'd jump in somewhere else and get the impact he was looking
| to have.
|
| That's another sign to me that VR is once again not going
| anywhere. Or rather, half of it isn't. Oculus-style VR is two
| best in one: 3D persistent virtual worlds and stereoscopic
| facehugger interfaces. The former has had great success, mostly
| in games, but the latter has spent decades as the thing that
| people are supposed to want but don't actually use much when
| they get the chance.
| [deleted]
| theptip wrote:
| I'd wait and see how Apple's device is received before making
| any long-range pronouncements.
| uplifter wrote:
| >That's another sign to me that VR is once again not going
| anywhere
|
| Maybe it's just a sign of how hot AI is right now.
| Salgat wrote:
| His goal is artificial general intelligence, something that
| seemed to grab his attention after he was already actively
| working on VR. My guess is that when he started teaching
| himself machine learning, he realized that he needed to
| focus all his attention on it if he was going to take it
| seriously. Facebook's failings just accelerated this for
| him.
| criddell wrote:
| I think the truth is that VR is there. They've sold lots of
| headsets and people who love it, really love it. Expecting
| it to sell at iPhone levels was never going to happen.
| wpietri wrote:
| So by "there" you mean that the tech is good enough to
| provide a good experience, and so they've basically
| plateaued? That's my guess too. I rented a Quest for a
| couple of weeks and it was pretty neat. It just didn't
| fill any needs we actually had. I was thinking of it as a
| try-before-I-buy situation, but when I sent it back at
| the end of the two weeks, nobody cared. The kids were
| already back on their Switches and the Playstation for
| gaming.
| criddell wrote:
| Yeah, that's pretty much what I mean. They aren't some
| new thing that either has to launch into orbit or crash
| and burn. The likely path is in between.
|
| VR headsets have improved immensely since I first tried
| it in 1991 (Dactyl Nightmare) and I suspect they will
| keep improving. Where we are at today is not necessarily
| a plateau but it might feel like one if you were
| expecting a growth curve that looks like a hockey stick.
| JohnFen wrote:
| It wouldn't surprise me if he has a noncompete in play that
| prevents him from continuing his VR work for a few years.
| sp332 wrote:
| They don't exactly need a non-compete (those are hard to
| enforce in CA anyway), they can just buy any up-and-coming
| VR companies. And they do.
| bombcar wrote:
| You don't need a noncompete when any investor is going to
| be scared that a major company will sue over "pilfered
| secrets".
|
| Combine that with being burned out and I can see trying
| something else.
| slimginz wrote:
| Oh Meta 100% has some sort of non-compete in writing,
| especially after his lawsuit with Bethesda when he left Id
| to work at Oculus[1].
|
| [1] https://www.pcgamer.com/zenimax-accuses-john-carmack-
| of-thef...
| astrange wrote:
| There is absolutely no such thing as a non-compete in
| California.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| There is when equity changes hands, which will have been
| the case with Carmack.
| jahewson wrote:
| No. Everyone is given equity in Silicon Valley.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| See x3n0ph3n3's comment upthread.
| jahewson wrote:
| There is for C-suite employees.
| x3n0ph3n3 wrote:
| They are actually permissable in circumstances similar to
| John Carmack's:
|
| > California employers can sidestep non-competes in the
| following instances:
|
| > EXCEPTION 1: If the employee sells business goodwill
|
| > EXCEPTION 2: If the owner sells his or her business
| interests
|
| > EXCEPTION 3: If the owner sells all operating and
| goodwill assets
|
| > Upon the business' dissolution, a member of the company
| may agree to a non-compete if operating a similar
| business in the geographic area. Goodwill is the
| company's name and brand reputation. Employees with stock
| options are not considered company owners for purposes of
| non-competition agreements.
|
| https://www.contractscounsel.com/b/non-compete-california
| zactato wrote:
| He lives in Texas still
| schrodinger wrote:
| I really doubt Carmack would decide his life based on
| NDAs or non-competes.
| _the_inflator wrote:
| Try it yourself. Strap something 8 hours or longer around
| your head, don't move, because every small tremor distorts
| the vision of the device.
|
| VR in its current form is eye cocaine, nothing more. Why
| watch poppy avatars hop around in a virtual reality, while
| you are bound to do nothing?
|
| In every way, VR should be restricted to very few use cases,
| not to - hello Zuck - rebuild reality completely and hereby
| track everything you do or see to deliver even more addictive
| material to your eye vision.
|
| It sounds cool, some use cases look cool, but the very fact
| that hardly anyone at Meta uses their own device/creature,
| speaks volumes. I am glad, JC takes consequences and abandons
| this experiment.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| I only use Abe for fitness apps about 1 hour a day and
| frankly the weight isn't a problem for that period of time
| with intense movements.
|
| In fact I think the other use cases are bogus, everything
| else is unimpressive to me except the ability to have a
| decent fitness experience with FitXR or Beatsaber.
| kennyadam wrote:
| Don't move? Have you ever played Superhot VR or Beat Sabre
| or Pistol Whip or... etc.? You're jumping around all over
| the place for some VR games and it's extremely fun and the
| experience can't be reproduced on a monitor.
| chimprich wrote:
| > That's another sign to me that VR is once again not going
| anywhere
|
| That's not Carmack's opinion. To quote from his post:
|
| "Despite all the complaints I have about our software,
| millions of people are still getting value out of it. We have
| a good product. It is successful, and successful products
| make the world a better place."
|
| "the fight is still winnable! VR can bring value to most of
| the people in the world"
|
| The main problem with VR in my opinion is a lack of software.
| Most of the games produced have been either toys that are
| little more than a tech demo, or ports of other games not
| designed around VR. There haven't been many serious attempts
| to harness VR for non-game playing purposes.
|
| I think the future is still bright for VR. We're currently in
| a bit of a local hype-cycle trough, but the tech is only
| going to improve.
| mjfl wrote:
| The main problem with VR is that it is a gimmick that
| people don't want to use as their main medium of
| interaction whether with games or job communication.
| wpietri wrote:
| I see you're getting downvoted, but that's my suspicion
| as well. Since the 1850s, stereoscopic 3D has had many
| waves of short-term popularity but has produced no
| lasting impact. From the Brewster Stereoscope to the
| Viewmaster to multiple tries at 3D movies and TV, to 30
| years of "VR will break out once we improve the tech",
| each time people get very excited about the novelty and
| think it will change the world. And each time it doesn't.
|
| The simple answer here is that people's brain hardware is
| already quite good at turning flat 2D representations
| into 3D mental experiences, so stereoscopy doesn't add
| much. Making it, as you say, a gimmick. The historically
| cyclical interest in the gimmick suggests that it's
| mainly appealing as a novelty.
| wpietri wrote:
| When people say one thing with their words and another with
| their actions, I tend to believe the actions. And "we made
| cool hardware that doesn't have much practical use" is not
| the most ringing of endorsements.
|
| Also suspicious to me is the way that Meta still isn't
| releasing actual use statistics. They're happy to release
| DAU numbers for Facebook. Where are the equivalent numbers
| for Oculus? What Carmack says is consistent with my
| suspicion that a lot of people bought the Quest to try it
| but don't use it regularly. Which would explain why they
| keep those numbers very quiet.
| modeless wrote:
| I think it's less of a judgement about VR and more of a
| judgement about AI. If you believe AGI is within reach (as he
| does and I agree), working on literally anything else seems
| like a waste of time. It's impossible to overstate the impact
| it will have.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Wouldn't be surprised if SD, GPT-3, and other recent
| releases were what pushed him over the edge and prompted
| him to leave. He must have felt like he was watching a lot
| of cool things happen without him.
|
| If I had another 30 IQ points I'd be climbing over walls
| and sneaking into buildings at night to work on this stuff.
| badpun wrote:
| It's good to have a $50k mini-supercomputer at home
| though, so you can actually try out your ideas in a
| reasonable time.
| modeless wrote:
| I believe he talked about starting work on AGI at the
| time he went part-time at Meta, long before GPT-3.
|
| I encourage anyone to try out some AI related stuff,
| genius IQ not required. It's still a young field so there
| aren't yet huge towers of knowledge to climb before you
| can do anything. The core ideas are actually super
| simple, requiring nothing more than high school math.
| [deleted]
| akomtu wrote:
| It's the mainframe era for AI: ideas are simple, but
| access to mainframes isn't.
| modeless wrote:
| The hardware is fairly accessible. You can start for free
| with Colab, try a subscription for $9.99/mo, or use the
| gaming PC you might already have. The hardest thing is
| data, but again there are lots of free datasets available
| as well as pretrained models you can fine-tune on a
| custom smaller dataset that you make yourself.
| TechnicolorByte wrote:
| Any specifics for trying out AI stuff? Take some online
| courses? Play around with some simple models in DL
| frameworks?
| Salgat wrote:
| Andrew Ng's online courses are great to get your feet
| wet. You use Octave/Matlab to implement the basics of
| many machine learning models from scratch, and build
| yourself up to using python to design several popular
| deep learning models including convolutional and
| transformers. It's not required, but a good idea to
| understand at least the basics of linear algebra and
| calculus.
| monkeyshelli wrote:
| I think the course just got updated during the past year
| and now they use Python instead of Octave/Matlab
| Salgat wrote:
| Interesting. To be honest I really appreciated how they
| started with Matlab; it gave a very math-centric focus to
| the fundamentals, although of course you can do all of
| that with Python too. And I say this as a professional
| developer.
| theptip wrote:
| FastAI gets recommended a lot I think, if you can already
| code - focuses on hacking with frameworks instead of
| starting with the boring linear algebra stuff.
|
| https://course.fast.ai/
| Reimersholme wrote:
| emrah wrote:
| Or maybe you know he is simply a lot more excited about AI
| than VR now and that's it. No need to stick with something
| that doesn't excite you any more just because you were
| excited about it at one point and spent several years working
| on it :-)
| ww520 wrote:
| He believes that AGI is an engineering problem because of the
| vast compute resource required for it. Being an engineering
| problem he believes he can make an impact.
| tgv wrote:
| That would be utterly wrong.
| Kuinox wrote:
| GPT-3 happened and showed that by throwing more computation
| at the problem you have better results.
| tgv wrote:
| As one of my AI profs said: it's like trying to teach
| pigs to fly, and say you're progressing because you're
| building higher towers.
| musha68k wrote:
| Chomsky and Gary Marcus predict that the current approach
| will not be sufficient; is and will increasingly be
| detrimental to society because of that "almost right at
| best" reason. Chomsky only has hopes in a combined
| approach that integrates "old AI" with the engineering /
| data / GPU driven one. See also discussion here for
| anyone interested:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33857543
| WheelsAtLarge wrote:
| Whatsapp's developer had a similar frustration. Why are they
| selling to big companies and expect to have complete control?
| They aren't being realistic. Big companies are going to do what
| they feel is best for them not the the other way around. There's
| nothing new about that. I guess it's too hard to reject the big
| payday.
| knighthack wrote:
| Given that Facebook accounts are now to suddenly be converted to
| Meta accounts, I am almost inclined to assume that it has
| something sinister to do with this.
| telotortium wrote:
| Updated archive: https://archive.vn/TQg2r
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| "During Meta's developer conference in October, Carmack hosted a
| solo hour-long talk about the company's Oculus or Quest headset.
| He admitted he had many things to be 'grumpy' about, like the
| company's rate of progress on technological advancements and the
| basic functionality of the headsets. He said it was frustrating
| to hear from people inside Meta who found the Quest 2 headsets so
| unreliable that they refused to use them for work or demo them
| for people outside the company."
|
| Has anyone tried accounting for the tens of billions of dollars
| Facebook is spending on this? This pattern--massive outlays
| followed by poor, possibly-rushed possibly-underpowered
| workmanship--sounds remarkably like corruption.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| If I understand the situation correctly, there are different
| headsets aiming to solve different goals, and there are
| projects to integrate each headset into a headset that has all
| the desired features.
|
| I think it's a push to be first to market with a headset that
| serves as the foundation for a monopoly on metaverse-like
| platforms.
| rhizome wrote:
| Like Tesla FSD, it's a knob for the company's share price. All
| VC-adjacent moonshots are. They're the encroachment of
| symbolism into capitalist systems of value.
| MikusR wrote:
| In that talk he was talking about Horizon specifically and not
| Quest 2.
| joenathanone wrote:
| All the money in the world can't buy talent. If the talented
| people don't want to work for or with you, then you end up just
| burning through cash while the untalented/less talented deliver
| a subpar product.
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| This is false. A shit ton of money can buy a ton of talent.
| Not Carmack level talent though, he made Doom and Quake so
| he's already a multi-millionaire. You need a metric ton of
| money to buy out Carmack, which is exactly what they did.
|
| The problem with Meta is the same as the problem in any mega
| corporation at that scale -- warped incentives.
|
| The incentive to spend all your time politicking your way up
| the massive corporate ladder outweighs the incentive to
| improve the actual product:
| https://mentalmodels4life.net/2021/01/04/safi-bahcalls-
| innov...
|
| There's even an equation that describes this phenomenon
| Trex_Egg wrote:
| Hey, the equation described in the post does seems to fit
| the expectations for some scenarios, but as the author
| mentioned it would be good to work around with much more
| real world data.
|
| Thanks for the link, it is a good read.
| abraxas wrote:
| This is tangential to your post but from the rumours I read
| Carmack is not the Rockefeller of tech you'd expect given
| the contributions and the impact he's made on the entire
| industry. While it's not plainly stated his fortune is
| believed to be far less than $100M. Likely less than $50M.
| Which is mind boggling to me given that Palmer Luckey
| walked away with something in the vicinity of a billion
| dollar windfall. It looks like Carmack always received the
| short end of the stick whenever he went to work for
| somebody else.
| JohnFen wrote:
| If the only solid reason for people to work for a company
| is money, that restricts the available talent pool to a
| specific subset of people. And those people are wanting to
| maximize their pay, not the quality of their work.
| kweingar wrote:
| > And those people are wanting to maximize their pay, not
| the quality of their work.
|
| Nobody is able to hire very many people who want to
| optimize for the quality of their work. Few people put
| 110% effort into executing someone else's vision for
| someone else's profit.
| a9h74j wrote:
| > warped incentives
|
| Has anybody suggested "term limits" as a solution? Not that
| I assume they would be.
| sgrove wrote:
| "Up or out" is perhaps a form of this - keep a stream of
| pressure over the org so you don't have any careerist
| settling in and (eventually) clogging up the
| productivity.
|
| I don't know that it's actually effective at that (or if
| it is, that the inherent costs are worth it), but it's a
| bit of the reverse of most recent thinking: keep people
| for as long as you can if they're sufficiently useful.
| Tool_of_Society wrote:
| That provides motivation to relentlessly promote yourself
| or you risk being cut...
|
| The 'FAANG problem"...
| michaelteter wrote:
| > "Up or out"
|
| This is what another commentor said was a likely cause
| for the intense focus on self-promotion and blame-
| dodging, since head down actual work wouldn't necessarily
| lead to Up, so one could end up Out.
|
| Don't hate the player; hate the game. Personally I could
| not work at a place like this, as my tolerance for
| bullshit, politics, and wasted energy/talent is very low.
| srajabi wrote:
| Or the typical poor execution at extremely large tech
| companies. Where various people have incentives that aren't
| aligned with the overall objective of making a good product.
| Instead people are incentivized to empire build and be self
| serving.
| Razengan wrote:
| After all, isn't this how every action within any corporation
| is set into motion? -
|
| "We want to make more money." - "How can we make more money?"
| - "These are the ways we can make more money." - "Which of
| these ways is the cheapest to execute now / maintain later?"
| - "Make this."
|
| It's only coincidental if an action aligns with the interests
| of anyone outside the corporation.
|
| In fact, this is how it works within any _group_ in human
| civilization, sometimes substituting "money" with "power".
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| As a small company veteran -it absolutely happens at that
| level as well.
| worldsayshi wrote:
| Company politics makes me amusingly think that tech
| building would be so much more efficient if we had basic
| income. Then perhaps people would be deincentivized to show
| up for work where they didn't care about the output. And
| everyone who did show up are there to get something very
| specific done.
|
| You get less people but you might get people who are there
| for the right reasons. Kind of like OSS.
| thewebcount wrote:
| I have a more cynical take on it. I see 2 likely
| outcomes:
|
| 1) You would end up with people showing up for whom it
| was important to those people regardless of their ability
| to perform the job. This is sort of like what happens
| with community theater. Someone who "loves the stage" but
| sucks at actual acting shows up at every audition and
| rehearsal. They never improve at acting but they always
| show up.
|
| 2) Things would break down into different factions with
| barely discernible differences of opinion making
| incompatible systems. You get smart capable people who
| can't get along with others making essentially the same
| thing in multiple incompatible ways.
| johnwheeler wrote:
| I have a quest pro, and it's pretty awesome. Zuckerberg made
| the argument that Microsoft spent about 10 billion on
| development of the first Xbox, and that turned out to be a good
| bet.
| muglug wrote:
| But in the case of the Xbox they knew there'd be an appetite
| for a gaming console, because gaming consoles had been
| selling like hot cakes for over 15 years.
|
| VR is a very differently-sized market.
| johnwheeler wrote:
| What are you talking about. They sold 100M quest 2s. People
| like it. Have you tried it? Most naysayers haven't even
| tried it.
| dmarcos wrote:
| Published meta revenue numbers don't add up. Do you have
| a source for the 100M Quest 2 sold?
| ablatt89 wrote:
| Indeed, it's an amazing gaming platform. I love Thrill of
| the Fight and Pro Era!
| acdha wrote:
| Do you have a source for that number? Most of the figures
| I've seen have it around 15M units globally as of this
| summer.
| [deleted]
| ggm wrote:
| What is the ROI of the xbox series over time?
| Kranar wrote:
| To the best of my knowledge it's negative so far but it's
| very hard to tell since MS only reports revenues but not
| the expenses. I'm guessing Xbox's main purpose right now is
| to serve the purpose of keeping MS relevant to home users
| and preserving brand awareness, but in terms of direct
| profitability Xbox is likely an overall loser.
| ggm wrote:
| So $10b (conjectured by OP I am responding to) dug a
| defensive moat, didn't bring in > $10b income
| Kranar wrote:
| The $10B was the development of the very first XBox and
| no, MS never made 10B in income on that console, on the
| contrary MS lost 4 billion dollars on the first Xbox [1].
|
| The total revenue for the entire Xbox division as a whole
| is currently about 16 billion dollars per year and does
| grow year over year by about 5-6% [2]. But it's worth
| noting that MS sells the Xbox at a loss and tries to
| recoup expenses through accessories and licensing. With
| that said MS stopped giving enough detailed information
| about Xbox's costs in order to deduce its profitability,
| but all the articles I find say that it continues to be
| an overall loser for MS.
|
| [1] https://www.engadget.com/2005-09-26-forbes-xbox-lost-
| microso...
|
| [2] https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/xbox-closes-
| its-fis...
| dv_dt wrote:
| Its difficult to tell as it may be advantageous for the
| Xbox division to lose money in one set of accounts and
| tax area while profits could be recognized in a different
| tax area.
| bombcar wrote:
| I bought an Xbox something as a Blu-ray player. So far I
| haven't attached any other money to it but I do play a
| free racing game so there's that.
| wpietri wrote:
| > sounds remarkably like corruption
|
| In the sense of external entities illegally hoovering up cash,
| I doubt it. For me this seems more like Soviet central
| planning, where real-world success is secondary to conformance
| to big ideas imposed from top personalities. It can work when
| the idea is correct, useful, and resonant with the people
| implementing it. But when the idea's off, political realities
| prevent honest feedback from rising up to the level where it
| can have an effect, so everybody just goes through the motions
| and things slowly fall apart. A reality explained by the
| ancient bit of capitalist samizdat, "The Plan":
| https://web.mnstate.edu/alm/humor/ThePlan.htm
| [deleted]
| didericis wrote:
| The more I understand about how many risks and problems are
| involved in running an organization as large and with as high a
| social profile as Meta, with all the accrued obligations and
| entrenched loyalties and overpromising managers that glom on
| over time, all while building new unproven technological
| infrastructure, the more sympathy I have for how blurry the
| line between corruption and implosion is.
|
| I don't think anybody trusts Facebook at this point, and the
| idea of being forced into a pay for play virtual world
| controlled by a single company is understandably scary and
| deserving of criticism, but at the same time I've done social
| VR and I truly and honestly believe it's a _vast_ improvement
| over any other existing kind of remote interaction. I actually
| get and believe in the vision, it just seems like the execution
| is really bloated /bad and they tried to way over abstract
| things/make things way too big way too early. I could see how
| spending that amount of money would be easy to do if you're
| trying to create universal abstractions for making, selling,
| creating, stitching services for an interactive set of 3D
| environments together that is easy for people to make "apps"
| for, building data centers, accounting for latency, building
| out supply chains, subsiding hardware, doing R&D on tracking,
| doing social research, and dealing with entrenched employees
| and middle managers accustomed to "the cushy tech worker
| lifestyle".
|
| You really have to try social VR to understand how much better
| it is than video chatting or text channels. There's absolutely
| something to it. There's _so much more_ information in the way
| people interact about what their intentions are, how they feel
| about what you 're saying, what they're interested in, etc when
| you're interacting in VR with a 3D avatar.
|
| All that being said, the virtual real estate and clear
| corporate "branding" angle is really gross, regardless of
| whether the money gets shady/you could really call that
| "corrupt". I prefer the wide range in quality but genuine
| effort and creativeness you get with a free and open ecosystem
| like VRChat.
| ggm wrote:
| IT projects fuck up all the time. Poor execution is baked into
| the human DNA. It doesn't take malice or crime to fail to be
| excellent. Neither the Newton nor Google glasses failed on
| corruption. Carmack is smart but he also failed to make his
| rocketry mark. Maybe individual brilliance in code is less
| important to execution of things than we (he?) thinks? Or maybe
| he only picks targets with hard end-goals versus the easy
| marks?
| ilyt wrote:
| He's one man. Could be him, could be the team, could be the
| overall management structure pushed the team into wasting
| time on dead-end pursuits.
| ggm wrote:
| Completely agree. Some fundamentals about VR aren't going
| away either. Headset weight for instance
| mentat wrote:
| Saying this seriously a few decades after computers were
| room sized is I think a bit short sighted. Betting
| against technical progress especially in density /
| materials / weight is not a good bet.
| acdha wrote:
| I don't think that comparison works: the size of a
| computer wasn't a direct blocker for it being useful at
| all -- it's great that I can use my MacBook Pro on the
| couch for a day or two but I could do just about
| everything sitting in front of a desk with a computer
| which was too big for my lap (or, a generation earlier,
| too big for the desk) because I didn't need to carry the
| computer around on my body.
|
| VR is different in that the experience is worse until you
| reach a number of hard thresholds: the headset has to be
| light, yes, but you also need good display and sound
| quality, sensor tracking & lag has to be tight enough
| that you don't get nausea, input tracking has to be
| detailed enough to make behaviors feel realistic, etc.
| You also have practical problems for many applications --
| I can't move in VR without trashing my living room
| without even more hard problems unless you're doing
| something like making flight simulators.
|
| That's not a hard problem but rather a collection of them
| and the problem is that the alternatives good enough for
| most people -- i.e. few people are going to pay a
| significant premium for it, and even the people I know
| who have VR setups mention not using them much when the
| novelty wears off -- and there's a real chicken-and-egg
| problem with needing high quality content to be worth all
| of that extra expense & hassle but not having sales
| volume to support it. I certainly wouldn't bet against it
| happening eventually but I think the trajectory is going
| to be more like "electric car" than "personal computer".
| pantalaimon wrote:
| > It pains me to hear people say that they don't even get their
| headset out to show off at the company because they know it's
| going to be a mess of charging and updating before they can
| make it do something cool.
|
| He has a point. The tens of billions of dollars seem to be
| mostly dedicated to adding invasive crap that makes the
| experience worse.
|
| After the last update I had to "sync my Meta account" before I
| could do anything. I had to log in on the PC (with my headset
| on) and enter a code shown on the headset on my PC. Yea, that's
| fumbly.
|
| Oh and after the latest update may play area is apparently too
| small for room scale mode, it always forces me back to
| stationary mode. What a mess.
|
| This was after using the device just fine for two years without
| such boondoggle.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > This pattern--massive outlays followed by poor, possibly-
| rushed possibly-underpowered workmanship--sounds remarkably
| like corruption.
|
| I worked at a medium-sized company that went through a phase of
| hiring ex-FAANG people, thinking we'd improve our quality by
| implementing FAANG practices.
|
| It did the opposite: The ex-FAANG people were absolutely
| masterful at self-promotion, office politics, and collecting
| wins for themselves while shifting blame for anything that
| didn't work.
|
| The strange thing was that many of them were actually good
| programmers when it came down to it. It seemed like they had
| been conditioned by their FAANG employers to put self-promotion
| and survival above everything else, which turned into an
| extremely toxic trait once they were removed from FAANG
| managers who were playing the same game. The company had to
| steadily ratchet down the levels of trust and independence
| granted to teams, while steadily increasing the amount of
| management oversight and process to keep them within bounds.
|
| Now whenever I see famous builders and founders leave FAANG
| companies out of frustration, I get it. The big tech company
| game has deviated very far from execution.
| chubot wrote:
| I wish Elon didn't get sucked into culture wars, because
| slimming down Twitter's workforce wasn't a bad idea
|
| I fantasized about someone buying Google and slimming it down
| too, because it used to be a great place to work (I worked
| there for over a decade). There were lots of great builders
| but they got drowned out by careerists
|
| In fact I worked in the SF office around "fail whale" times
| at Twitter (2009), and there was a steady trickle of
| coworkers over to Twitter. Though from what I hear the
| leadership there was the real problem, and allowed the other
| problem to fester
| philistine wrote:
| Slimming down Twitter's workforce is indeed a valid choice.
| But perhaps Elon should have spent six weeks meeting every
| team and asking what they did before acting, like Steve
| Jobs did at Apple.
|
| As it stands, it didn't seem like it helped focus the
| company in any way shape or form.
| ipaddr wrote:
| At least we know what social media would say about Jobs.
| dinvlad wrote:
| > Though from what I hear the leadership there was the real
| problem
|
| It almost always is.
| rhaps0dy wrote:
| > fail whale
|
| do you mean "whale fall"?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale_fall
| borkt wrote:
| No, op didnt
| vedran wrote:
| https://www.techopedia.com/definition/1987/fail-whale
|
| > The fail whale is a graphic that appears when the
| social networking website Twitter.com is experiencing
| technical difficulties. The image is of a whale being
| lifted by 8 orange birds and was created by Yiying Lu.
| chrisbaker98 wrote:
| Back in the day, Twitter's error page showed a cartoon
| picture of a whale, which became nicknamed "the fail
| whale". The fail whale was a common sight on Twitter
| circa 2009 because the site couldn't scale fast enough to
| match the demand and errors were frequent - that's the
| era GP is referring to by the fail whale times.
| neilv wrote:
| The SuperNews documentary on Twitter elaborates:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5Ff2X_3P_4&t=168s
| croes wrote:
| https://www.techopedia.com/definition/1987/fail-whale
| diab0lic wrote:
| The commenter likely meant "fail whale"[0]
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter#Outages
| makeitdouble wrote:
| I'm not sure we've ever seen a giant company successfully
| "slimming down" ?
|
| Sure, some go though catastrophic downfall and miraculously
| rebound from there, but that feels more like throwing
| someone down a mountain with a only a bottle of water and
| see if they can make it back to civiliation.
|
| The more natural cycle would be frustrated workers moving
| out to make their own company and build something better
| from there. In the current climate that doesn't work
| because of mono/duopolies and corruption, but that should
| be the thing to strive for IMHO.
| chubot wrote:
| Yeah I was thinking about this thread about Apple in 1996
| or so:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33289954
|
| A few people including myself remarked how it sounded
| like Google now
|
| And I noted that I don't think Google will "ever" slim
| down, because they're making money and Apple wasn't
|
| i.e. there's not enough justification for a leadership
| shake-up. Twitter had more justification -- there were
| many CEO changes and the board wasn't happy with the
| leadership
| makeitdouble wrote:
| I would see a world where the ad business gets seriously
| impaired and Google struggles enough to keep up with the
| enterprise market that they lose out to MS.
|
| In that fantasy world something like Salesforce could get
| bought by Google and they'd reshape the whole Google's
| product tree to solely focus on enterprise money, and a
| landslide of redundant engineers would probably be let
| go.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| > I'm not sure we've ever seen a giant company
| successfully "slimming down" ?
|
| We have. That company is called Apple after SJ's return.
| nequo wrote:
| > I'm not sure we've ever seen a giant company
| successfully "slimming down" ?
|
| There was this case in 1996 and 1997 but this seems more
| the exception than the norm:
|
| https://money.cnn.com/1997/03/14/technology/apple/
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Apple is I think a different case as it comes after a
| (reverse) merger, in particular as the main product (the
| OS) was rebased from Next's stack and not Apple's legacy
| one.
|
| Laying off redundant people after a merger is basically
| part of the plan, and it's more akin to cutting off the
| bits that don't fit in the new org (they're bringing in
| 500 Next people at the same time), than "slimming down"
| in the sense of making the same org leaner and more
| efficient.
|
| Or if we take that definition, car manufacturers merging
| and getting rid of thousands of workers as a cost saving
| measure would also count as successful slimming downs,
| and we'd have many more example of it. That would work as
| well.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _as it comes after a (reverse) merger_
|
| The answer to almost every modern financial wizardry is
| M&A. Sure, a DCF yields the theoretical value of a
| stock's stream of cash flow. But in reality, M&A secures
| that lower bound. Yes, an efficient firm may reduce
| headcount willingly. But in reality, M&A provides the
| culture shock.
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| > I wish Elon didn't get sucked into culture wars, because
| slimming down Twitter's workforce wasn't a bad idea
|
| I don't know how you're relating those two things, but it's
| funny you should say that. At the time he was firing
| people, throngs of self-proclaimed "experts" started
| pontificating about how Twitter was going to implode and
| crash and burn. There was about two weeks of non-stop posts
| from various acquaintances on social media about it.
| They've all been very quiet lately.
| krainboltgreene wrote:
| A lot of experts also said it would be a slow fall over
| with things not working over time.
|
| They were right.
| drstewart wrote:
| What's not working?
| spoils19 wrote:
| Spaces, for one.
| delecti wrote:
| Spaces "coincidentally" shut off while Elon was in one
| and getting grilled with questions about banning
| journalists. Also, about 7 hours ago he tweeted "Spaces
| is back"
|
| To me that's convincing circumstantial evidence that
| Spaces didn't break, he turned it off.
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| Yes, I remember these self-proclaimed experts' timeline
| for failure being continually pushed out. First it was
| currently imploding, then a few days, then weeks, then
| some vague unfalsifiable time in the future, and then
| they just gave up talking about it.
|
| Makes you wonder if maybe they're the dead weight in
| their organizations, and therefore are unable to see how
| much of it is around.
| krainboltgreene wrote:
| You're right, a few people being wrong about the timeline
| means things are going well.
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| Dang, man. Where do you work that this ruthless self
| promotion (and denigration of all else) is not the norm?
| That's been my experience throughout my 27 years, in 3
| Fortune 250's AND 2 mom-and-pop's.
| doktorhladnjak wrote:
| Same. I've been at companies that paid really well and ones
| that only paid ok. We still had to go through all these
| hoops. All things equal, I might as well get paid better.
|
| Moreover, it wasn't better than the smaller startups I've
| worked at either. There was little self promotion because
| your connections mattered more than what you did or your
| impact. If you weren't in the club with founders and other
| early employees, you were a have-not.
| eternalban wrote:
| This closely matches my experience as well.
| philwelch wrote:
| It makes a certain kind of sense. Many FAANG companies are in
| such a dominating business position due to network effects
| and the like that they capture a massive economic surplus,
| and when organization capture huge economic surpluses, the
| employees are less incentivized to help the company succeed
| (since that's going to happen anyway) and more incentivized
| to extract what they can personally.
| zrail wrote:
| The entire incentive structure and cycle at FAANG and FAANG-
| like companies requires relentless self-promotion and buck-
| passing not just to move up but to _not get fired_. Many of
| these companies have levels with a clock attached, where if
| too many quarters pass while you're at that level you're
| automatically managed out. If you don't get promoted you get
| fired, and the way to get promoted is to get relentlessly
| good at the perf cycle metagame.
| skirmish wrote:
| Only entry levels are "up or out". Once you are a senior,
| there is no expectation to get promoted to staff.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| In fact Google got rid of the 'up and out' for L4. And
| from L3 (many new hires) to L4 is a pretty easy jump.
|
| Promo at Google was still toxic AF when I left, but it
| wasn't as bad as when I started when there was a clear
| 'L4 -> L5 within 3-4 years or bye' thing going on.
|
| When you read the job description for L4 it's absolutely
| baffling that they figured people had to 'move up' from
| that. It's basically "solid and competent individual
| contributor." You'd think companies would want to fill
| their benches with that.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| I did Google for ten years and I'd say this: SRE culture at
| Google is solid, with excellent skills and knowledge about
| how to build and run services at scale. Unfortunately it's
| mostly their own custom bespoke stuff, so those skills don't
| immediately translate into a new org. But they can.
|
| SWE is more of a mixed bag. There are obviously incredibly
| bright people doing cutting edge software development at
| Google. But on the whole must of us were just doing very
| modest and incremental changes on protobuf shuffling super
| yak-shaved services that someone else had built the
| foundation of.
|
| The transferrable and useful skills one gets out of someone
| trained in a FAANG is the ability to produce well explained
| tested well documented code incrementally and in a respectful
| and well discussed code review process.
|
| The workplace culture stuff, again, mixed bag. Certainly to
| survive and thrive there, you needed to be thinking what to
| write about in perf twice a year, and it's such a constant
| that there were seminars and "how to get promoted" sessions
| where the whole self-promotional side of things was discussed
| in depth.
| lukasb wrote:
| Underrated comment.
| jmacd wrote:
| That's a lesson we all learn, and most of us learn it the
| hard way.
| ablatt89 wrote:
| Working for 2x FAANGs, management incentives engineers to
| work on new features and not on integration testing and
| optimization. Quality, testing, automation are highly looked
| down upon and generally don't give huge refreshers come
| review time. However QA, automation, and testing are not only
| looked down in FAANG, but the majority of companies and
| engineers. How often do you see engineers in any company call
| themselves test engineers? How often do you find a software
| engineer who wants to work as a test engineer? There's a
| hidden snobbery in the industry against quality, testing, and
| automation engineering.
| schrodinger wrote:
| I work for a European unicorn and that's definitely not the
| case. We explicitly reward quality, testing, automation,
| etc--partially it's on your manager to explain the value of
| non-product work. We are literally having a pause on
| feature work right now to focus 100% on QA, automation and
| testing!
| monksy wrote:
| It's amazing how some engineers will try to politic their
| way out of doing unit tests and will do as much as they can
| to avoid testing.
|
| It feels like any process that requires discipline, they'll
| run away from. Theres even tribes of people who will
| intentionally group all tests as "unit tests." There are
| other tribes who will try to write all integration or
| feature tests as "their unit tests". It's pretty
| frustrating to see a ridged and very well defined group of
| tests get ignored.
| kentm wrote:
| You see it on Hacker News quite frequently too. Quite a lot
| of people here silo people into "builders" and
| "maintainers". They then exalt the builders and talk down
| the maintainers.
| Matthias247 wrote:
| I've worked as a principal engineer at Amazon before, and I
| can tell that testing and quality there isn't looked down
| upon. You can definitely get promoted just for improving
| products and never building any new feature.
|
| However it will matter a lot on where you spend your effort
| on, and whether your environment understands why it
| matters. If you just mention "I'm writing integration
| tests" - and nobody knows why it's important to do that
| right now - it will likely not go too far. However if it's
| along "we have this regular operational issue that everyone
| in my org including the director was aware about, I fixed
| it, added integration tests, and made sure I added
| automation that will catch further regressions before our
| customers will observe them" - it will go a long way.
| throwabayhay wrote:
| That is a bit too much of a generalization. I mean, sure,
| what you describe does in all likelihood exist somewhere in
| some capacity in any company that is large enough (and likely
| many smaller ones as well), because "humans", but to pretend
| that this trait is so endemic to work in a large organization
| is just wrong.
|
| Because meanwhile, HN thread after HN thread was, for
| example, fawning over (very real) gains that some new
| technology brings (be it, say, the monitor you're staring
| at), while generally using a staggering amount of products
| coming out of large organizations. And before you think that
| there is a lot to complain about those products sometimes,
| there is also a very large amount of stuff that you don't
| complain about, that just works, and so you don't consciously
| think about it very much.
|
| This work is put together by many passionate people at those
| organizations. Some of them are very passionate, and some of
| them feel that a small company would not have the resources
| to do the same level of work with the same impact.
|
| Incidentally, I never cared about promotion at all, I just
| did the work that I wanted to held up to my own standards and
| those formed by my peers, and I got promoted because of the
| outcomes. I am honest when I say that it came as a pleasant
| surprise each time. And I do have quite a number of peers who
| seem to think and work similarly around me.
| DantesKite wrote:
| Man that's such a common story in big organizations. I wonder
| if there's any way of creating a culture that fights against
| this.
| wpietri wrote:
| > self-promotion, office politics, and collecting wins for
| themselves
|
| A pal who was a manager at a FAANG said, "If you give people
| one game to play, they're going to play it very
| energetically." He was speaking of the promotion game, of
| course.
| koudelka wrote:
| "You show loyalty, they learn loyalty. You show them it's
| about the work, it'll be about the work. You show them some
| other kind of game, and that's the game they'll play."
|
| -- The Wire
| operatingthetan wrote:
| I often find it interesting how many people think the
| game is just whichever one they learned first, and don't
| grasp that the _actual game_ is recognizing and learning
| how to play new ones.
| Anthony-G wrote:
| Great quote and I think Daniels' advice really had an
| impact on Carver. His character development over the
| course of the five seasons was one of the many excellent
| aspects of the show.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| My impression when I was there was that most people _hated_
| the game. But one still had to play it. Well, I didn 't,
| but that wasn't to my advantage at all.
| sublinear wrote:
| For what it's worth this also happens at smaller tech
| companies where the product is highly profitable and every
| department is siloed.
| alostpuppy wrote:
| This is an interesting thought.
| time_to_smile wrote:
| > The big tech company game has deviated very far from
| execution.
|
| This is yet another reason why I'm certain the whole
| metaverse project will fail.
|
| If this moonshot had any chance of succeeding, the only way
| is to give this project entirely over to a someone who is
| passionate about the vision and has an incredible track
| record of execution.
|
| Even if it where the case that Carmack where being ignored I
| would feel like that's a bad sign, but him being driven out
| by the culture means that nothing of substance will really
| happen. Certainly not the industry changing break through
| they're hoping for.
|
| In the last decade Meta has had no impressive, game changing
| releases (unlike say Apple that has several), clearly the
| current culture is not great at solving hard problems.
| Sticking with that culture to see something like the
| metaverse through is hopeless.
| mhh__ wrote:
| There's a very real "We used to do xyz at Facebook" issue
| sometimes.
|
| Just because it worked for them (if that even) doesn't mean
| it's automatically a good idea.
| mesozoic wrote:
| I wonder if I work at the same company you describe.
| bravetraveler wrote:
| Just here to echo a similar experience
|
| - FAANG competitor that is (thankfully) left out of the
| acronym
| [deleted]
| jackosdev wrote:
| I worked for the three largest mining companies in the world,
| and a much smaller miner before that. The small company had 1
| geologist, 1 mining engineer, 1 general manager and an office
| admin person. The next place I went to was a similar sized
| mine with about 200 people in the office, and many more
| support people in the city. The resource was 1:1 coal to dirt
| and much higher quality, compared to the previous place which
| was 1:13 coal to dirt and way harder to mine. The large
| miners have the best resources in the world so they can
| afford to over-hire, those people don't actually do anything
| but make things worse doing "improvement projects", and then
| use bullshit charts to show why it's better. We had a huge
| downturn in mining about 15 years ago and they fired about
| 15,000 people across Australia, and overall production
| improved! I only work for startups now where I can be a core
| engineer, I had a role before where I knew I wasn't doing
| anything valuable and it's soul crushing, I feel sorry for
| those FAANG engineers who can't break free from the golden
| handcuffs and actually do something valuable with their time.
| [deleted]
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Sure they can. They choose not to do so.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| Ultimately, yes - nobody should feel bad for FAANG
| employees or anybody else who has chosen the golden
| handcuffs of the "cushy IT salary life." It was a choice
| and we are all responsible for our own choices... and in
| a world where people are starving, we shouldn't feel bad
| for somebody making a cushy living.
|
| But it gets complicated.
|
| A typical scenario is somebody choosing that life and
| after X years realizing it's not for them. But by then
| it's too late. You've got a partner, mortgage, pets,
| kids, whatever. And even if you haven't chosen any of
| that baggage, maybe you have a few hundred grand in
| student debt.
|
| Yes, these were all _choices._ But it 's awfully tough to
| know how you'll feel X years later when you are making
| those choices and by then there's no escape.
|
| (FWIW, I have not worked at a FAANG. Just your average HN
| engineer type in a less glamorous part of the country.)
| zx8080 wrote:
| > I feel sorry for those FAANG engineers who can't break
| free from the golden handcuffs and actually do something
| valuable with their time.
|
| Maybe they just don't want to?
|
| Anyway. Don't be sorry. They get lots of money for almost
| nothing (in an engineering sense). And they have free time,
| so some of them they can do something valuable (incognito,
| of course. Otherwise faang lawyers come).
|
| It's the big enterprise management who creates all these
| broken incentives leading to increase in politics instead
| of engineering.
| [deleted]
| throwabayhay wrote:
| > I feel sorry for those FAANG engineers who can't break
| free from the golden handcuffs and actually do something
| valuable with their time.
|
| I bet there is a lot of jobs where you don't feel (and
| probably don't do) anything valuable with your time, but
| that is not necessarily tied to large organizations. There
| are a lot of engineers who make computers, cars, civil
| infrastructure components, smartphones, computers, game
| consoles, test equipment, appliances, power plants,
| industrial processes... at large organizations that feel
| that they are doing something valuable, and something that
| they could not do in this manner at a smaller company.
| [deleted]
| beambot wrote:
| > I feel sorry for those FAANG engineers...
|
| Imagine that you're paid 2-3x, the work is confined to 9-5,
| gourmet meals on the 2x days you're not wfh, generous
| vacation policy, world-class benefits, and ample time to
| pursue side hobbies or family.
|
| I know so many exceptional engineers that went this
| route... after they got over the perfectionism, imposter
| syndrome, and wild ambitions to just accept the status quo.
| Now, their lives are comparably stress-free compared to
| their startup brethren, and many of them live vicariously
| through angel investments using the delta in comp.
| percentcer wrote:
| > the work is confined to 9-5
|
| tell me you haven't worked in FAANG without telling me
| you haven't worked in FAANG
| beambot wrote:
| Ironically, I did work at FAANG. I was a delusional
| youngster who was a perfectionist & workaholic like many
| of my peers.
|
| The people I'm referencing who stuck around: they're now
| in their late-30s and early-40s. They eventually shunned
| ladder climbing and realized that their L6 positions
| could ultimately be sustained with much less grind while
| steadily maintaining "meets expectations" on perf.
| stuven wrote:
| Depends on the team. It can be.
| jakevoytko wrote:
| Totally. My team often had people working past 8pm. But
| you could take a walk around the office at 6pm and find
| whole open floor plan areas that were completely empty.
| And you'd hear rumors that some other teams were expected
| to work 70 hour weeks. It just depended on your part of
| the company.
| carabiner wrote:
| There's a strong bias for "just world hypothesis" stories
| like this one. Someone wealthy has to be poor in other areas.
| Someone smart must also be dumb. In fairness, to strive for
| anything you _must_ have faith in a just world, that your
| efforts won 't just be dashed by bad luck or a cheater. That
| doesn't mean it reflects reality though. It's just a story to
| help us sleep at night.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| This isn't something limited to big tech companies - this is
| ubiquitous. Humans automatically optimise for the greatest
| reward for the least effort. It turns out, office politics
| and self-promotion are a _lot_ better for your career than
| being good at what you do.
|
| Therefore, everywhere you go, people are usually where they
| are not because of competence in their professional domain,
| but due to competence in the social arts. You see true
| creativity, throughout history, from tiny enterprises (a
| fistful of people, no hierarchy to compete for, an actual
| shared goal) and from individuals. Never corporations. They
| just do more of the same, at scale, which makes up for their
| aching inefficiencies.
|
| I watched my business grow from a fistful of coders to a
| political hellscape. Even no hierarchy has a hierarchy. Us
| apes just can't be without it.
|
| Many labour under the misapprehension that hard work will be
| noticed and rewarded. This is not so, and never will be, as
| long as humans are involved.
| musha68k wrote:
| I always wonder how "old silicon valley" work culture would
| compare to the current one? How was it like working for Sun
| Microsystems in the 90s? Digital in the 80s?
| mrtksn wrote:
| IMHO, that's almost natural in large organizations, it's just
| a function of the structure and worker KPI.
| kentm wrote:
| I left FAANG basically because you had to play the politics
| and self-promotion game to get promoted. Woe be unto you if
| you worked on a "leaf" system -- something that consumed
| internal services but did not expose services to other
| engineering teams. You would have no internal engineers
| willing to vouch for your promotion because they weren't
| using your service or codebase. I really wanted to just
| execute and be rewarded without having to invest excess
| energy in marketing myself internally in the company.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Their counter-argument is that leaf services like that
| without measurable impact aren't things the company should
| be investing in and it is up to the individual to recognize
| that and re-allocate themselves onto something that's
| actually aligned with the company's goals.
|
| You simply working on a project isn't useful to a company,
| what's useful is working on the _right_ project.
|
| You get promoted and compensated more if your work aligns
| with the company, and less (or none) if it doesn't. It's
| your job to figure it out. Just as it's the company's job
| to figure out what the market needs. Yeah, projects that
| are most valuable to a company will be competitive. If you
| don't want to compete, you'll have to figure something out
| on your own that isn't as sexy but still provides value.
|
| This becomes especially true as you become more senior at
| this kind of company.
|
| If you don't want to work in that environment that's fine,
| maybe that's not the right corporate culture for you. I
| hope you found somewhere that was a better fit!
| nequo wrote:
| > You get promoted and compensated more if your work
| aligns with the company, and less (or none) if it
| doesn't. It's your job to figure it out.
|
| I have never worked at a FAANG. Wouldn't it be the
| manager's job to figure out what I should be working on?
| What is the manager's job at such a company?
| GoOnThenDoTell wrote:
| > What is the manager's job at such a company?
|
| Figure out how to argue for more headcount, by expanding
| the scope of the team or by asking reports to narrow the
| breadth of their work to create headcount gaps.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Exactly, and provide mentorship, guidance - and
| accountability - to ICs.
| thomasahle wrote:
| Are you saying that people should only focus on building
| infrastructure for other engineers and never actually
| make a product?
|
| Because it sounds like OP was doing that: making
| something useful for the customers, just not for the
| other engineers. Hence the engineers couldn't vouch for
| the system and secure OP a promotion.
|
| That being said, bad projects definitely exist within big
| companies, and it's not always easy for (junior in
| particular) people to know if they are working on
| something useful or not.
| sobkas wrote:
| > Because it sounds like OP was doing that: making
| something useful for the customers, just not for the
| other engineers. Hence the engineers couldn't vouch for
| the system and secure OP a promotion.
|
| For internal customers. Not real customers. Because they
| are captive audience. What they are going to do if
| generating a report takes 10hr? Purchase* different tool?
| Force devs to make w better one? Not their pay grade.
| They aren't even allowed to set requirements for
| features/functionality.
|
| *That's when consulting firm swoops in to make great
| promises about how tool that they will make will solve
| all the problems. But because people who are using such
| tools can't set priorities for features/functionality,
| reports will generate in 9hr, but they will have to click
| ok every X minutes.
| arcticbull wrote:
| > Are you saying that people should only focus on
| building infrastructure for other engineers and never
| actually make a product?
|
| Sorry, maybe I was unclear. I wasn't intending to opine
| on that aspect. I think product and infrastructure are
| both super valuable. You're goaled on impact not
| necessarily on whether you build infra or product per se.
| Infra you're rewarded based on the impact of the product
| teams leveraging your infra - and product teams you're
| goaled on moving specific metrics.
|
| I've worked at 2 FAANGs - on product teams - and my
| experience has been that if your product moves metrics
| that your org has decided are important then you will be
| rewarded.
|
| What I meant when I said "leaf services like that" was
| "leaf services whose measurable impact doesn't align with
| org goals."
|
| > That being said, bad projects definitely exist within
| big companies, and it's not always easy for (junior in
| particular) people to know if they are working on
| something useful or not.
|
| Yeah, that's basically what I was trying to say.
| kentm wrote:
| > Infra you're rewarded based on the impact of the
| product teams leveraging your infra - and product teams
| you're goaled on moving specific metrics.
|
| This was not the case for me. I was told that my project
| had significant positive impact, and had many product
| teams vouch for me, but it didn't matter because "the
| principal engineers don't know who you are".
| dchftcs wrote:
| No you were perfectly clear.
|
| You just did not approach this constructively. It would
| have been better if you asked first about how the impact
| was and could have be measured. Or at least responded
| more directly when they tried to explain the impact
| better. Instead of making and sticking to an assumption
| that the service wasn't useful.
|
| It may well be that the person misunderstood their
| impact, but your arguments did not address that after the
| person came back with theirs. They could have been an
| edge case, that they are in an unfortunate situation in
| the human process of deciding rewards, where choosing and
| calculating metrics is itself subject to errors in
| judgment, and you tried to generalize your experiences to
| their corner of the world, which normally requires a
| stronger questioning.
| dchftcs wrote:
| Now, it's also perfectly fine advice that if a person
| wants to be rewarded, they should pursue projects that
| move the metrics of what's normally perceived as
| important. But that is also trivial advice.
|
| A common chokepoint in an engineer's career development
| is challenging others' preconceived notion of what is
| important. Often this is with non-technical management,
| but unfortunately this is sometimes needed with technical
| peers too. It's politically convenient to just go with
| the flow and align oneself to the most visible metrics,
| but that way only a limited amount of bottom-up
| innovation can happen, and those can be critical to the
| business.
|
| The best one can do is to establish the importance of the
| project before you do it, but I've seen important
| projects that were initially not supported by management,
| and only got traction when an IC did it anyway and
| demonstrated the value. Sometimes ICs were lucky that the
| impact was measurable and recognized, sometimes not so
| much and were deemed to have wasted precious company
| resources.
|
| The world is not perfect and we often have to choose
| between taking a calculated risk or to conform. It's hard
| to get business processes 100% right, and not easy for a
| person to do things with guaranteed outcome, so we just
| have to live with it and try our best to navigate
| strategically.
| arcticbull wrote:
| That's fair criticism, and I appreciate your sharing it.
| I'm not always mindful that tone doesn't carry well by
| text, and I could have done a better job approaching
| this.
| anonymoushn wrote:
| Maybe you should try having impactful projects assigned
| to you instead of not-impactful ones, haha!
| arcticbull wrote:
| At these companies successful senior folks don't sit
| around waiting to get told what they're working on. It's
| their job to pick or start impactful projects in line
| with their org goals. If they're right they get rewarded
| but if they're not, they don't.
|
| If you're junior it won't really matter. If you're
| senior, and you're sitting there hoping your manager is
| going to give you something meaty you're not long for
| that company - because that is _not_ your job.
|
| This was my experience at two FAANGs and also at one non-
| FAANG company over the last 10 years. Maybe it's
| different at the ones I didn't work at, but your snark is
| neither useful nor interesting. It also gives folks
| considering FAANGs here a false impression of what
| working there is actually like.
| anonymoushn wrote:
| As a senior SWE at Amazon I had the autonomy to do this
| sort of thing as soon as the several years worth of work
| my team had planned was done. Half the senior SWEs at a
| big job board that calls itself a tech company are
| concerned with migrating everything to per-table
| microservices that expose endpoints that do exactly the
| SQL queries other services used to do directly. Thanks
| for your report of your different experience in a
| different org. I'll try not to give people a false
| impression by posting about mine.
| kentm wrote:
| This is a pretty condescending post that assumes quite a
| lot about my work.
|
| > You simply working on a project isn't useful to a
| company, what's useful is working on the right project.
|
| No, my project was measurably useful to the company. It
| wasn't useful for _engineers_ , but it was useful for
| internal, non technical users.
|
| I helped build a team from scratch and launch a product
| with high internal user satisfaction. But I was told that
| I needed, specifically, engineers from outside my
| immediate team to vouch for me. And I met with other
| people with the same problem and they told me "Don't work
| for products for business users."
|
| As an aside the internal tooling for non-technical users
| was atrocious. Wonder why. :)
| arcticbull wrote:
| > This is a pretty condescending post that assumes quite
| a lot about my work.
|
| Sorry if it came across that way, that was not my intent.
|
| > No, my project was measurably useful to the company. It
| wasn't useful for engineers, but it was useful for
| internal, non technical users.
|
| If that's not what the company values, then that's not a
| project the company wants to incentivize you to make. If
| you choose to make it anyways, would you really expect
| them to reward you for it? It sounds like the issue was
| as I was suggesting, that what you were trying to solve
| for wasn't what the org wanted and wasn't what they were
| goaling you on.
| kentm wrote:
| > If you choose to make it anyways, would you really
| expect them to reward you for it?
|
| A healthy organization should reward developers for
| making internal tooling that is deemed necessary for the
| functioning of the org and drives value, yes. You're
| kinda ignoring the part here where I said that it was
| measurably useful to the company.
|
| If you're saying that you need to ignore necessary
| internal tools and get on the big visibility projects to
| get promoted, then _thats exactly optimizing for self-
| promotion._ Companies that ignore vital internal work
| that is not sexy and don 't provide ways for engineers
| working on that vital internal work to advance their
| careers will end up unable to drive revenue due to low
| productivity.
| btown wrote:
| > wasn't what they were goaling you on
|
| This is the problem in a nutshell, no? A company that
| does not value a team that delivers measurable value to
| non-technical teams, and that provides no "alternate
| paths" for its non-technical users to vouch
| quantitatively for the promotability of technical team
| members, is creating a culture that is suboptimal for its
| financial goals. That quantitative bar must be high, of
| course, but if I heard as a C-level that people were
| getting advice "don't work for products for business
| users" I'd clear my calendar and get to the heart of why
| that was, because the very "routing fabric" of the
| company would be at stake. If they're not allowed to
| build i-tools, your technical teams will miss insights
| they need to build the right things, from the users who
| know more about the domain than anyone else.
| roland35 wrote:
| I would love to have some positive XFN feedback! The
| farther away the better!
|
| Unfortunately I was helping out with our hiring process,
| and let's just say with the recent downturn that hasn't
| been the most important work lately :(
| throwawaycrpclt wrote:
| The extra bad part about this is it's propagating into the
| industry as a whole. Much better to be ruthlessly egoistic
| and clear tickets. Demo or go bust. Collaboration? Ah well
| of course as lip service at best, for sure always
| restrained for basic survival. No wonder people are less
| happy than they used to be. And less creative in outcome.
| This is not how humans usually work in groups. Trust and
| camaraderie is prime. I hope at one point we will look back
| and say "Wow that was some silly culture we had going back
| then".
| throwabayhay wrote:
| > I left FAANG basically because you had to play the
| politics and self-promotion game to get promoted.
|
| I have no reason to doubt that in the particular corner of
| your organization that may well have been the case, but you
| cannot generalize this over the whole field. As stated
| elsewhere, I never played any game to be promoted, I simply
| never consciously sought the goal of promotion, and I was
| promoted anyway just because of the real, substantial job I
| did.
| lolinder wrote:
| We have multiple people giving their anecdotes saying big
| tech positions emphasize self-promotion, and one anecdote
| (yours) saying they don't.
|
| So, sincere question: for those of us who haven't worked
| at a FAANG, why should we believe that your experience is
| the norm while the other people's is the "corner"?
| throwabayhay wrote:
| Just look in front of you. The monitor you are using
| right now. That's incredible technology. You think that
| would be possible if people did not care about
| engineering, having a number of peers around them across
| multiple levels of the organization that cared to a
| similar level?
|
| EDIT: What I mean is, you need multiple passionate people
| across many levels to achieve that. If reward culture
| wasn't somewhat healthy, I don't believe this could work.
| lolinder wrote:
| That has absolutely no bearing on the comment you replied
| to or my own. OP didn't say anything about engineering,
| OP said you had to play games to get promoted. That's not
| mutually exclusive with having good engineers.
| throwabayhay wrote:
| I am not sure it is realistic to expect that all the good
| engineers never get promoted and that there would still
| be something good coming out over time.
| sobkas wrote:
| > I am not sure it is realistic to expect that all the
| good engineers never get promoted and that there would
| still be something good coming out over time.
|
| I have heard lots of stories about how the only real way
| to get promotion/real raise was to change company you
| work for. Because getting raise is harder compared to
| hiring someone of the street with hefty premium on top.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| I have heard lots of stories about how the only
| real way to get promotion/real raise was to
| change company you work for.
|
| That's definitely the best way. Here's my take. I am
| ignoring promotions/raises given to junior/intern type
| employees who become regular engineers.
|
| 80% of engineering promotions/raises come from switching
| companies
|
| 10% of engineering promotions/raises come from doing
| greenfield work. If you can find a way to do greenfield
| work you will look great (because you can move fast) and
| multiple other people will be dependent on the mess you
| left behind and they will look bad because they are
| moving at a fraction of your speed.
|
| 10% of engineering promotions/raises come from engineers
| who show obvious managerial talent and are interested in
| a managerial role
|
| 0% of engineering promotions/raises come from maintaining
| somebody else's system
| lolinder wrote:
| You're still putting words into people's mouths. No one
| said _none_ of the good engineers get promoted, they said
| that being a good engineer is not _sufficient_ to be
| promoted. A good engineer who is also good at playing
| promotion games would presumably do very well.
|
| PragmaticPulp specifically said the engineers his team
| hired were actually rather good, just had bad habits:
|
| > The strange thing was that many of them were actually
| good programmers when it came down to it.
| [deleted]
| throwabayhay wrote:
| I said: "I never played any game to be promoted, I simply
| never consciously sought the goal of promotion, and I was
| promoted anyway just because of the real, substantial job
| I did."
|
| And I did see other peers who did not play any games that
| I could see be promoted for merit.
|
| So maybe generalizations over large companies just don't
| work well.
| lolinder wrote:
| Now we're back to where I started: I don't disbelieve
| your experience, but given that you're the only one here
| who shares that experience I asked you to tell me why I
| should believe that your experience is more
| representative than the half dozen other people who have
| shared theirs? To me it seems more likely that you had a
| particularly good corner of the organization.
| int_19h wrote:
| FWIW, my experience is not substantially different from
| the other poster.
|
| I think that this largely depends on how good or bad
| one's immediate management is. Good managers hold the
| line to insulate their teams away from this kind of
| corporate culture to the extent possible. And the
| proportion of such managers varies from company to
| company, and even between different units in the same
| company.
| throwabayhay wrote:
| We're moving in circles, but again, I don't believe a
| company can bring out good products for very long if my
| experience is the exception. And as so often the case,
| the "half dozen" other people might be venting for their
| experience.
|
| If there is no somewhat healthy reward culture, the
| multiple passionate people in the many different levels
| needed would leave.
| kentm wrote:
| I'm not sure where I said that good engineers don't get
| promoted. Of course they do. They either worked for a
| good management team, aggressively self-promoted, or were
| in a visible project.
|
| What I am saying is that there are a lot of good
| engineers _don 't_ get promoted, despite doing important
| work on vital systems, because they don't aggressively
| self-promote and optimize their careers around the
| promotion path.
|
| There are also companies that are good at recognizing
| good yet normally-under-appreciated work, and there are
| companies that are bad at it. FAANG is bad at it, in my
| experience, and the experience of people I've worked
| with. It's an anecdote and not data.
| roland35 wrote:
| I feel like there are a lot more promotions to go around
| in bigger companies though! I've worked in smaller orgs
| and promotions are harder to come by, if there is even a
| career ladder at all that is.
| throwabayhay wrote:
| And in my experience, FAANG are not bad at it, so my
| point is: These generalizations don't work.
|
| I even stated that I don't doubt this may have been true
| for you. But if every large company were really so bad in
| general as is portrayed here, the people who make good
| stuff, and who need to work with each other a great deal
| to achieve that, would leave.
| roland35 wrote:
| I am a staff engineer at meta. I can certainly relate to
| Carmack's pain in getting things done on a large scale,
| there are I think about 9 levels between me and Zuck (so
| a lot of ladder climbing to reach my goal of CEO)!! But I
| don't feel like I have to be good at politics. You would
| probably be surprised at the level of snark which is
| openly published!
|
| I don't see my colleagues self-promote very much at all.
| I am in a very practical and focused team though, there
| is certainly a variety of team cultures. I will say that
| the performance review process is a pain, I feel like it
| is a lot of work documenting everything I have worked
| on...
|
| Literally every single company I've worked at has had
| loads of bullshit to deal with. Some BS was easier to
| handle than others! Overall I feel like things are
| interesting and there are good opportunities to grow in a
| big tech company, so I am happy for now. I've learned
| more in one year at meta than multiple years at other
| places.
| namdnay wrote:
| The performance review process at Meta and Google is so
| exhausting... It eats up a good 50% of everyone in the EM
| structure, without (in my and my colleagues' experience
| anyway) any tangible benefit.
| moosedev wrote:
| That side of the EM role is 50% of why I hesitate to move
| back into management... performance review season is bad
| enough as an IC!
| namdnay wrote:
| It's really specific to certain SV companies. Everywhere
| else I've worked, the "career mgmt" side is maximum 10%
| of your time
| roland35 wrote:
| I'm hoping to keep better records as I go in 2023. Famous
| last words :)
| rossjudson wrote:
| These companies are cities, not villages. You'll find
| every type of experience at them. You'll find some
| incredibly exciting work, some boring work, great
| managers, crap managers, and everything in between all of
| that.
|
| In my case I just find scale...fun :)
| paulcole wrote:
| People who don't get promoted are likely to complain
| about it -- often that the system was out to get them. I
| mean how often do you hear somebody go, "Yeah I was
| passed over for a promotion and you know what, I didn't
| deserve it." People who do get promoted at a FAANG
| (either by self-promotion or not) probably don't want to
| brag about it because of the general sentiment here at
| HN.
| doktorhladnjak wrote:
| That's true. There's also the flip side that those who
| choose the systems are likely the ones who succeeded in
| those systems.
|
| I'm talking about directors, senior managers of
| engineering who worked their way up the corporate ladder.
| The system worked for them, so they think it's a good
| system.
|
| It's essentially a form of survivorship bias.
| spacedcowboy wrote:
| _shrug_ I work at Apple. I 'm fairly senior. I don't play
| politics.
|
| YMMV, just like everywhere else.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| There is an obvious selection bias in who posts. Anyway I
| also never seeked promotion (even tried to avoid it) but
| have been promoted four times now. I never chase glory
| and only focus on quality engineering and I've always
| gotten credit.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I'll state the obvious: FAANG isn't a place. It's 5
| gigantic tech companies lumped into a cute acronym.
|
| Each of the 5 is a huge sprawling organization with 1000s
| of separate teams, working in very different ways.
|
| Anything you can say about "working at FAANG" will be
| true of some parts and untrue of others.
| goostavos wrote:
| >why should we believe
|
| Oh, good lord.
|
| Listen, you're talking about companies with hundreds of
| thousands of employees scattered all across the globe. Do
| you really think there's one homogeneous culture across
| everything? Single orgs can have the population of small
| towns. "culture" is a local phenomenon.
|
| There are promotion oriented people. There are not
| promotion oriented people. There are mutants who work 12
| hours every day and call into meeting while on vacation
| because they want to climb the ladder. There are teams
| which are hyper focused on visibility and self-promotion,
| and there are teams which just quietly churn out good
| tech. There are hundreds of thousands of people. You're
| going to get different experiences. I'm not sure why
| that's such a crazy idea to you.
| patothon wrote:
| I also work at a faang in a senior engineering role.
|
| I agree with what the other commenter is saying. I've
| been in several teams with several managers and xfn
| partners and you have a lot of different cultures. From
| the toxic wasteland to the ultra focused get shit done
| right fast environment engineers love.
|
| To your point about why more people complain than not,
| it's the human condition. Haters hate is stronger than
| non haters happiness and are more than willing to share
| their salt
| Analog24 wrote:
| Because there is a huge selection bias that influences
| the sample of people that comment on these types of
| posts. I will back up the claim that, in my experience, a
| lot of this thread is hyperbole. There is some truth to
| it, sure, but don't make the mistake of thinking these
| anecdotal accounts actually represent the typical
| experience.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| You could have said "in that particular leaf of the
| organisation". Did you work in a leaf?
| throwabayhay wrote:
| I don't understand this question, can you elaborate?
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Did you work on something that no other engineer at your
| org did consume? Like the previous commenter.
| throwabayhay wrote:
| I did sometimes, though it still benefitted _something_
| in the end. After all, my boss and other people further
| up the chain have a say in whether I get promoted as
| well, not just my peers.
| creato wrote:
| > I left FAANG basically because you had to play the
| politics and self-promotion game to get promoted.
|
| So then don't get promoted? I was at two large companies
| for many years in my career, (almost) everyone's obsession
| with promotion was bewildering. A FAANG L5 salary is pretty
| rewarding for just executing IC work, and that's about what
| is expected of that role.
| Abroszka wrote:
| So much this. I might even panic a bit if I got promoted.
| Nowadays I got so used to the work and tools that I can
| finish work in less 8 hours on most days. It pays well,
| I'm having enough free time, low stress because it's the
| same work I have been doing for a number of years
| already. Not much politics at my level. I just enjoy it.
| giantrobot wrote:
| I think a lot of that is the unofficial stack ranking all the
| FAANGs are using. It always pays to self-promote since the
| marginal difference between you and another person on the
| team might be zero. But if you've been promoting yourself to
| your manager and the other team member hasn't, you get
| RSUs/bonus while they get a PIP. You can even have lower
| _actual_ performance but if your self-promotion is better
| than their output you get rewards while they get a PIP.
| yawnxyz wrote:
| it's so wild to me that FAANG has these hiring walls set up
| -- like crazy coding challenges -- only for the best
| engineers to then do work equivalent to what you see at gov't
| or consulting jobs.
|
| Why do they make it so hard to work for them, just for their
| employees to play status games?
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| So FAANG has set themselves up to hire retain sharp STEM
| grads who are savvy at politics.
|
| That's a very small subset of the STEM population.
|
| Small anecdote : I've noticed that Ivy leaguers tend to be
| very polished and particularly good at the game.
| [deleted]
| bambataa wrote:
| Another way of phrasing it is "sharp STEM grass with
| strong interpersonal skills", which seems like a good
| thing?
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| I chose my words deliberately.
|
| Interpersonal skills is a necessary component of playing
| the game, but the end game is power and influence and
| winning.
|
| It's awful when the wrong tool/stack/architecture/etc. is
| chosen due to someone's powerplay.
|
| There are little emperors at every firm trying to lobby
| their influence; then the ones who gain start choking off
| anything that smacks of competition.
|
| I see this as a huge negative.
| glial wrote:
| I've always thought that learning how to play the game
| was the primary value proposition of an Ivy League
| education. You can learn mechanical engineering or
| whatever just as well elsewhere.
| theGnuMe wrote:
| And ivy league liberal arts majors run the country..
| howinteresting wrote:
| The coding challenges are basically IQ tests that have been
| laundered into something tangentially relevant to the job,
| since actual IQ tests for employment are on shaky legal
| ground in the US.
| chihuahua wrote:
| That's the best explanation for Leetcode interviews that
| I've seen.
| howinteresting wrote:
| It's an open secret. Everyone within the FAANGs knows
| what the tests are for, even if many of them won't admit
| it.
| neilv wrote:
| carabiner wrote:
| If they are so bad, why are they so successful? Why hasn't
| anyone disrupted them with superior business practices and
| a better product?
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| They do get disrupted. All the time. And so then they
| turn around and buy the companies that disrupted them,
| and take them apart.
|
| Also they have a firehose of revenue which makes it
| possible to hire hire hire, push compensation levels up,
| and suck the air out of any other interesting companies.
| theGnuMe wrote:
| >Why do they make it so hard to work for them, just for
| their employees to play status games?
|
| "We only hire the smartest folks with the highest GPAs from
| these schools."
|
| That was a hiring strategy that was famously debunked by
| Google itself. Now they hire folks that never went to
| college or were not CS majors. As in they can also be
| physicists, mathematicians, artists.. etc...
|
| However, I guess they still though think leetcode is a
| useful signal to identify talent. Or talent that can be
| trained. So it is more of an aptitude test. Like how a
| college degree is a signal that you completed something.
| And a PhD is a signal that you can do research. It doesn't
| mean other folks can't.
|
| We all know this fails to assess actual work performance
| (which is subjective anyway) but that is presumably proven
| by your work history itself. Work performance is a better
| measure of actual performance than the leetcode proxy any
| day.
|
| It also most certainly does not select for diversity and
| different problem solving perspectives. This is a big blind
| side for any corporation. But you have to be an interested
| and motivated hiring manager to identify those people.
| Those are probably the best to hire though. I imagine YC is
| looking for those types since it is sort of a required
| trait for a startup.
|
| Some of the best software engineering managers and software
| product types I've worked with are not CS majors and cannot
| program.
|
| By now Google has the data to run the analysis for these
| types studies across the board. They may even have natural
| controls (people who've transferred roles internally
| etc...) if they don't have proper randomized controls.
| numpad0 wrote:
| It's just infinitely more profitable to build up social
| capitals and leverage network effects and stage wins in this
| world, where economic utility is determined purely by
| subjective judgements and payments are autonomously
| collected. It makes no sense to construct a municipal road
| bridge when $15 gratuity transaction for 5% conversion from a
| social media post with million Likes pays more. Fortunately
| we are not there yet, but not far away either.
| ugh123 wrote:
| From his tweets..
|
| >I see no reason to expect that Meta could build a better CPU/GPU
| than Qualcomm (at much lower volumes!), and there isn't as much
| opportunity for full custom special units in VR as people think.
| This leads people to propose lots of MR features, which are of
| unproven value.
| https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1603936133632905216...
|
| I wonder if John is just not a believer in MR (mixed reality)
| that this is what actually led to him leaving. I could see him
| advocating strongly for pure VR, as its his bread-and-butter and
| where he probably believes is the most innovation. MR presents
| challenges and ideas he might not be well suited for.
| posharma wrote:
| _" We have a ridiculous amount of people and resources, but we
| constantly self-sabotage and squander effort. There is no way to
| sugar coat this; I think out organization is operating at half
| the effectiveness that would make me happy. Some may scoff and
| contend we are doing just fine, but others will laugh and say
| "Half? Ha! I'm at quarter efficiency!"_
|
| This is true for any large organization, not necessarily Meta.
| Look at Google, Microsoft, Amazon and others.
| daguava wrote:
| cnlwsu wrote:
| Meta is a different company and this has nothing to do with
| Twitter...
| [deleted]
| lerax wrote:
| Too much brain for so bad purpose. I am glad that Carmack makes
| his move to go forward. He is a brilliant programmer.
| baal80spam wrote:
| For those without FB/Reader mode:
|
| I resigned from my position as an executive consultant for VR
| with Meta. My internal post to the company got leaked to the
| press, but that just results in them picking a few choice bits
| out of it. Here is the full post, just as the internal employees
| saw it:
|
| ------------- This is the end of my decade in VR.
|
| I have mixed feelings.
|
| Quest 2 is almost exactly what I wanted to see from the beginning
| - mobile hardware, inside out tracking, optional PC streaming, 4k
| (ish) screen, cost effective. Despite all the complaints I have
| about our software, millions of people are still getting value
| out of it. We have a good product. It is successful, and
| successful products make the world a better place. It all could
| have happened a bit faster and been going better if different
| decisions had been made, but we built something pretty close to
| The Right Thing.
|
| The issue is our efficiency.
|
| Some will ask why I care how the progress is happening, as long
| as it is happening?
|
| If I am trying to sway others, I would say that an org that has
| only known inefficiency is ill prepared for the inevitable
| competition and/or belt tightening, but really, it is the more
| personal pain of seeing a 5% GPU utilization number in
| production. I am offended by it.
|
| [edit: I was being overly poetic here, as several people have
| missed the intention. As a systems optimization person, I care
| deeply about efficiency. When you work hard at optimization for
| most of your life, seeing something that is grossly inefficient
| hurts your soul. I was likening observing our organization's
| performance to seeing a tragically low number on a profiling
| tool.]
|
| We have a ridiculous amount of people and resources, but we
| constantly self-sabotage and squander effort. There is no way to
| sugar coat this; I think our organization is operating at half
| the effectiveness that would make me happy. Some may scoff and
| contend we are doing just fine, but others will laugh and say
| "Half? Ha! I'm at quarter efficiency!"
|
| It has been a struggle for me. I have a voice at the highest
| levels here, so it feels like I should be able to move things,
| but I'm evidently not persuasive enough. A good fraction of the
| things I complain about eventually turn my way after a year or
| two passes and evidence piles up, but I have never been able to
| kill stupid things before they cause damage, or set a direction
| and have a team actually stick to it. I think my influence at the
| margins has been positive, but it has never been a prime mover.
|
| This was admittedly self-inflicted - I could have moved to Menlo
| Park after the Oculus acquisition and tried to wage battles with
| generations of leadership, but I was busy programming, and I
| assumed I would hate it, be bad at it, and probably lose anyway.
|
| Enough complaining. I wearied of the fight and have my own
| startup to run, but the fight is still winnable! VR can bring
| value to most of the people in the world, and no company is
| better positioned to do it than Meta. Maybe it actually is
| possible to get there by just plowing ahead with current
| practices, but there is plenty of room for improvement.
|
| Make better decisions and fill your products with "Give a Damn"!
| bottlepalm wrote:
| Wow can definitely relate to this being in a high level IC
| position, but not having enough influence on management to change
| the direction of the company. You sit on the sidelines knowing a
| decision is wrong, and after having said your piece you watch it
| play out over years, turning out exactly as you expected it to.
|
| Bah humbug.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| The whole message posted to Facebook:
|
| https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid0iPix...
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Could it be a communication or persuasion skill lacking? Usually
| very smart engs cannot convey their point to less Talented ppl
| that usually makes the decisions
| joanfihu wrote:
| This feels particularly relatable as my company has also been
| acquired. I now know how it feels to work at a large company for
| the first time.
|
| I've always thought Big Techs where the best to build innovative
| products because they had resources. It's the opposite due to
| politics and bureaucracy.
|
| Big Tech gets away because of existing products that were made
| when the company was nimble. Plus some products are capital
| intensive like Apple Watch or AI research.
|
| The best organisational setup to make great products are
| startups. Politics tend to be minimal in early days. If the
| company is rapidly growing, there is no time for politics.
|
| I think it was Erik Schmidt who said that when a company stops to
| grow, politics and bureaucracy settles in.
|
| That's probably what's happening at Big Tech.
|
| Ad-powered businesses can project growth by simply adding more ad
| placements in their products.
| [deleted]
| quitit wrote:
| I don't really believe the line about Meta being the right place
| for it to happen. I think he very convincingly proved that it is
| indeed not so. Seems innovation does require some agile
| leadership, and not an entirely flat structure which feels a bit
| like steering a boat.
| srajabi wrote:
| Basically Carmack is frustrated by:
|
| 1. Rate of progress on AR/VR at meta
|
| 2. People within Meta not "Giving a Dam!" / Poor decisions made
| within the org
|
| 3. Poor quality of the execution which I guess is related to #2
|
| Relevant quote: "It pains me to hear people say that they don't
| even get their headset out to show off at the company because
| they know it's going to be a mess of charging and updating before
| they can make it do something cool," Carmack said at the time.
| "VR should be a delight to demo for your friends."
| 2pEXgD0fZ5cF wrote:
| As an early and complete VR adopter I have ranted in the past
| on how fast VR loses it's luster. But for me the reason is not
| setup (charging, updating, putting everything into place, et
| cetera), it's software.
|
| The good VR games are really good, games like HL Alyx. But
| after almost 10 years of VR usage I still can't name more than
| 3-7 pieces of VR Software (games included) I would put into the
| "worth it" category. Anything else is just very short lived,
| feel like tech demos. Fun? Sure, but ultimately worse than
| regular software/games. Gimmicky overhead, so to speak.
|
| Hence why my VR setup is collecting dust most of the time.
|
| Seeing Facebook's vision for VR, which is just rebuilding
| products we had as far back as 2003 (Second Life) and even 2014
| (VR Chat), but worse and riddled with ads and darkpatterns, is
| what has made me lose even more of my interest. I have to add
| that I was an Oculus owner in the past, I am now an Index
| owner, but what Facebook does is still relevant because they
| are the "VR believers", pouring the most money into it.
|
| In short: There is just nothing interesting happening, my VR
| setup is collecting dust. Demoing it to my friends is basically
| the only thing I do with it nowadays but they lost interest
| too. I don't agree that it's a hardware problem, for me it's a
| software problem. Also: too much "vision", too little actual
| determined (software) projects.
| dylan604 wrote:
| This was my gripe about all console games. Real gamers that are
| daily users have their systems kept up to date, but I'm not one
| of those. I'm one of those that plays a few times a month, and
| only when I have nothing else to do. Because of the infrequent
| use of the console, I'm guaranteed to have to do an update on
| every use. The update alone cuts into the time allotted for
| gaming. So I play even less and less to the point that after my
| last move (3 years ago), I never even plugged my console in.
|
| So I totally sympathize with the loss of enthusiasm for the
| delays from forced updates.
| solardev wrote:
| Why don't you just turn on auto updates?
| bombcar wrote:
| I don't know what it is but those don't seem enough. Maybe
| it fights with sleep somehow but my Xbox is supposed to
| keep games updated and if I haven't played in a week I seem
| to have a download. Annoying.
| philistine wrote:
| On Xbox One and Series S/X you can turn on sleep mode,
| which uses far more energy but makes sure the console
| never goes without an update. I'm like you, I can go long
| periods without opening it and this mode keeps my system
| always up-to-date.
|
| https://support.xbox.com/en-US/help/hardware-
| network/power/l...
| bombcar wrote:
| Deep sleep with updates seems to keep the _system_
| updated - it's the games that apparently wait until you
| want to play.
| brundolf wrote:
| OT, but for consoles you just leave it in sleep-mode and
| it'll update things quietly throughout the day. It's more of
| a problem for desktops
| quartz wrote:
| Nintendo seems to be the best at this. I pulled my Wii out of
| storage to play with my 4 year old earlier this month.
| Plugged it in and was off and running having a blast playing
| Wii Sports and Mario Kart.
| dagmx wrote:
| The Wii is barely online. That's a big part of it.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| The PlayStation has had the ability to keep itself up-to-date
| while in sleep mode for almost a decade now.
| Reimersholme wrote:
| Razengan wrote:
| I rarely put my VR headset on because I have to COMMIT to it
| and stop doing everything else; i.e. no host OS's GUI is VR-
| friendly.
|
| Why did smartphones supersede computers in usage? and laptops
| supersede desktops? because of the low _commitment_ barrier:
| something you can pick up and put down at any time without
| necessarily pausing other activities, is always going to be
| preferred by the masses.
|
| So _all_ current VR is sitting behind a user-commitment
| barrier, often collecting dust. Looking forward to see how
| Apple will tackle this problem.
| fudgefactorfive wrote:
| I completely agree with this sentiment.
|
| I think VR has the same issue that smartphones had at the
| start of their cycle, the UI/UX is not designed to
| intuitively mesh with how users actually want to use the
| system. Even things like keyboard inputs are just not quite
| there yet, resorting to clunky index-finger typing at best
| and type-by-laser at worst.
|
| I think we are moving towards a usable version of AR
| eventually (with tech still needing to catch up on
| weight/latency/tracking) but full VR is almost only useful
| for games.
|
| As much as I'm not an Apple-enthusiast, the one thing they
| (used to) get right is the sort of UX where you almost don't
| even need to explain how to do things, they just intuitively
| make sense and you can just let intent directly flow. Given
| their current trends though I'm not convinced their
| alternative AR/VR UI will be that though.
|
| I'm essentially waiting for glasses that go full VR when they
| need to, and otherwise just allow me to overlay a GUI on
| reality with minimal effort.
|
| E.g. a video player following me around while I do normal
| stuff. Helpful, and importantly, optional popups overlayed on
| real objects to enhance my interactions, not completely
| replace them with a crude 3D facsimile.
| Razengan wrote:
| Yes, AR+VR should converge into something similar to the
| differentiation between windowed- vs fullscreen-mode today:
| AR should be translucent, non-intrusive visuals overlaid
| atop your vision of meatspace, and when you need to sit
| down and fully immerse yourself into a game or movie, you
| would temporarily switch to VR, on the same device.
|
| So until we have lightweight and powerful-enough _glasses_
| -- not bulky headsets -- everything else is just a public-
| funded prototype on the way to the real goal.
| Geee wrote:
| One cool thing Apple can do is display mirroring from all
| your devices into VR. They also have 3D models of all their
| products, so they can redraw your devices inside VR without
| needing to use see-through AR. Keyboard, mouse and display
| with mirrored UI. iPhone and Watch too.
| xixixao wrote:
| That's the correct quote. The Quest Pro with its wireless
| charger actually largely solves this problem. Try not using an
| Android phone for a month, and then use it. It's the same
| nightmare (after all the headsets are Android devices with
| internal batteries).
|
| It's an important gripe, but it will be solved. I think there
| are more fundamental issues. It's hard to explain, but even
| with superphysical level of improvement I don't see people
| enmass wearing VR or MR headsets the way we use phones,
| airpods, and to lesser extent watches.
| greazy wrote:
| I manually update every few months. It's fine?
| FormerBandmate wrote:
| The whole metaverse concept Facebook is doing honestly reminds
| me of Neom. Unaccountable god-king has a wild idea based on
| very real trends, has no real idea how to do it but a limitless
| supply of money from other things, and the whole concept gets
| taken over entirely by corruption
| DSingularity wrote:
| Has neom fallen already?
| DonHopkins wrote:
| The real world welcomes you back, John!
| quakeguy wrote:
| Zeitenwende.
| Patrol8394 wrote:
| It is just impossible to innovate and deliver at mega corp like
| FB. That's why acquisitions become the only mean through which
| they can "pretend" to grow.
|
| Mega corp are good to rest and vest. If you wanna build stuff you
| should work at small innovative companies.
| macrolime wrote:
| Read Carmack's full memo:
|
| This is the end of my decade in VR. I have mixed feelings.
|
| Quest 2 is almost exactly what I wanted to see from the beginning
| - mobile hardware, inside out tracking, optional PC streaming, 4k
| (ish) screen, cost effective. Despite all the complaints I have
| about our software, millions of people are still getting value
| out of it. We have a good product. It is successful, and
| successful products make the world a better place. It all could
| have happened a bit faster and been going better if different
| decisions had been made, but we built something pretty close to
| The Right Thing.
|
| The issue is our efficiency.
|
| Some will ask why I care how the progress is happening, as long
| as it is happening?
|
| If I am trying to sway others, I would say that an org that has
| only known inefficiency is ill prepared for the inevitable
| competition and/or belt tightening, but really, it is the more
| personal pain of seeing a 5% GPU utilization number in
| production. I am offended by it.
|
| [edit: I was being overly poetic here, as several people have
| missed the intention. As a systems optimization person, I care
| deeply about efficiency. When you work hard at optimization for
| most of your life, seeing something that is grossly inefficient
| hurts your soul. I was likening observing our organization's
| performance to seeing a tragically low number on a profiling
| tool.]
|
| We have a ridiculous amount of people and resources, but we
| constantly self-sabotage and squander effort. There is no way to
| sugar coat this; I think out organization is operating at half
| the effectiveness that would make me happy. Some may scoff and
| contend we are doing just fine, but others will laugh and say
| "Half? Ha! I'm at quarter efficiency!"
|
| It has been a struggle for me. I have a voice at the highest
| levels here, so it feels like I should be able to move things,
| but I'm evidently ot persuasive enough. A good Fraction of the
| things I complain about eventually turn my way after a year or
| two passes and evidence piles up, but I have never been able to
| kill stupid things before they cause damage, or set a direction
| and have a team actually stick to it. I think my influence at the
| margins has been positive, but it has never been a prime mover.
|
| This was admittedly self-inflicted - I could have moved to Menlo
| Park after the Oculus acquisition and tried to wage battles with
| generations of leadership, but I was busy programming, and I
| assumed I would hate it, be bad at it, and probably lose anyway.
|
| Enough complaining. I wearied of the fight and have my own
| startup to run, but the fight is still winnable! VR can bring
| value to most of the people in the world, and no company is
| better positioned to do it than Meta. Maybe it is actually
| possible to get there by just plowing ahead with current
| practices, but there is plenty of room for improvement.
|
| Make better decisions and fill your products with "Give a Damn!"
| iambateman wrote:
| People are saying "if John freaking Carmack can't handle the
| politics, it must be bad." And it probably is. But based on what
| little I know about Mr Carmack, I suspect his personality and
| incentives are unusually unsuited to navigating the politics of a
| massive bureaucracy.
| swellguy wrote:
| This is kind of a weirdly dramatic departure, as this was a union
| and a product that never made any sense on a napkin or the back
| of an envelope. Sigh. Hope to see him back on track and doing
| some cool stuff in the future.
| ryloric wrote:
| The way some users talk about him on this thread sounds almost
| cultish and creepy. I'm not American and don't play video games,
| but the way he's talked about you'd think he's Alan Turing or
| something.
| flappyeagle wrote:
| I haven't worked at Facebook scale but I've seen similar things
| at smaller companies.
|
| A lot of dumb stuff gets greenlit because someone put a lot of
| attention and effort into making power point presentations, and
| no one wants to be the guy that says: this is a load of crap.
| methods21 wrote:
| With Carmack's amazing talent and vision, unless FB changed
| somehow, FB is no place for the great Carmack!
|
| Keep programming brother, leave the BS politics to the plebs, and
| go back out there with YOUR team an fing kill it!!!!
| shafinsiddique wrote:
| Can someone explain me the 5% GPU utilization issue
| brezelgoring wrote:
| For the monster hardware it has, Oculus (at least in games) can
| only rival a PS2 in terms of polygon count. Pair that with the
| 5% GPU utilization metric and you get that this device can
| handle a whole lot more load and it's just being used
| inefficiently. I'd even use the word 'wrong', people within
| Meta made 'good enough' libraries and called it a day, and he's
| mad about that.
|
| This thing has billions of dollars poured into it, and all you
| get is PS2/PSP level graphics? No way, man.
|
| Carmack of all people knows the kind of feats this machine is
| capable of, having worked complex optimization problems in the
| RAGE Engine and the old Quake engine too.
| didibus wrote:
| I don't think that's what he meant.
|
| It sounded more like he meant that he is seeing their
| organization be inefficient at working on the right things
| and making progress towards VR.
|
| And as a person who cares deeply about efficiency of
| resources, that pains him to see so much human resources (in
| this case) being wasted when they could accomplish so much
| more so much quicker (in his opinion) with better focus and
| direction.
|
| And he likened it to the same feeling he'd have if he saw a
| game making use of only 5% of the available GPU, which would
| be that feeling of all that wasted potential.
| brezelgoring wrote:
| I interpreted it too literally, you're probably right.
|
| Ultimately we're talking about the same thing, here.
|
| Good day, didibus!
| tgmatt wrote:
| As someone else has mentioned, I believe it's a metaphor for
| Meta as a company. It's probably a little extreme at 5% but
| he's suggesting they're only working at that efficiency level.
| manucardoen wrote:
| You can find John Carmack's full post here:
| https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid0iPix...
| colinsane wrote:
| even the best of us vaguepost, huh?
|
| i can hope that if you're in the company you know exactly what
| he's alluding to throughout this post, but here on the outside
| i'd bet more that this is the type of letter where everyone
| reading it interprets his words in different, and often opposing,
| ways.
| sxg wrote:
| John Carmack did a 5 hr podcast with Lex Fridman recently [1].
| Moving away from Meta seemed like something that had been
| happening slowly over a long period of time.
|
| [1] https://lexfridman.com/john-carmack/
| nebulous1 wrote:
| Lex's guest list is absurd. I'm honestly not sure how he's
| managed to pull it off.
| pas wrote:
| network effects mostly. how Joe Rogan did it? not by being a
| genius. (by being mostly entertaining and a bit informative,
| and Lex built on this by being mostly informative and almost
| completely anti-entertaining)
| nomel wrote:
| > network effects mostly.
|
| Many guests, for Joe and Lex, say that they are fans that
| listen to the podcast. At least some of these people do it
| because they're passionate about what they do, and want to
| talk about it with someone who they enjoy.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| > mostly informative and almost completely anti-
| entertaining
|
| I don't agreee with this. I love Lex Fridman podcasts and
| watched almost all episodes, and most of the times I watch
| it for entertainment. There is some surface level
| information in few episodes, but that doesn't seem to be
| the norm.
| klabb3 wrote:
| Joe doesn't constantly talk about himself, let's guests
| talk, is curious about everything, open to non-mainstream
| ideas. That gets you pretty far. Lex is similar but with a
| stronger niche in tech, and ML in particular.
| pyinstallwoes wrote:
| Who else can bridge the neurotypical spectrum? Maybe Eric
| Weinstein from the portal but he stopped that.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Is that the finance guy who claimed he solved a theory of
| everything for physics?
|
| This whole section of the so-called "intellectual dark web"
| should be treated with lots of skepticism.
| pyinstallwoes wrote:
| Oh, please indulge me on why? How much are you aware of
| his actual work compared to what you are told of it? And
| his projects don't reflect on the nature of his ability
| to do other things. One must be careful to generalize an
| assumption over cohorts. If an individual has different
| political views than you, they aren't suddenly more dumb.
| This is a hard thing for our species to work through at
| the moment.
|
| I encourage you to look deeper into Eric Weinstein and
| less the memetic construct encapsulating a particular
| ideology and agenda through symbolic word.
| Gatsky wrote:
| He has the quality of being unformidable. The guests are very
| relaxed on his show I find. Tim Ferris is similar. Contrast
| to say Sam Harris, who although very erudite, perspicacious
| and articulate, asks paragraph long multipart questions and
| spends around 50% of his air time talking. Tyler Cowen is a
| better example of a formidable interviewer, who keeps things
| quite short and punchy and is always a little lighthearted.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Great explanation - Tyler Cowen is a good interviewer for
| sure. For some reason have never been able to get into Lex
| Fridman by contrast.
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| Honestly his guest list is so good, I thought for several
| years that he must be working for the Kremlin and
| honeypotting folks behind the scenes (or something)
| humanizersequel wrote:
| >Kremlin
|
| I take seriously the idea that Lex has an under-the-table
| relationship with government, but if you think the Kremlin
| is the likely suspect I've got a VR headset to sell you...
| yarpen_z wrote:
| For someone who constantly applies bothsideism in the
| discussion of the Ukraine war and uses "Putin's regime"
| and "Zelensky's regime" in the same sentence (you can
| find an example in a very recent interview), I'd say he's
| not doing a good job of being a US government shill.
|
| (Yes, I know that the original meaning of the word regime
| does not necessarily imply dictature, his intensions
| there were very clear and open - there are both sides and
| they are somehow comparable).
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| This is something I see really common with Joe Rogan, but
| it's also an "active measures" tactic taught by multiple
| generations of Russian (and Soviet) intelligence
| agencies. Bring in a bunch of reputable individuals and
| pepper them in with fringe thinkers who support your
| geopolitical objectives. In the 60s and 70s, more often
| than not, these could be people with totally naive
| objectives nice sounding objectives like denuclearization
| and world peace. Today, a lot of these folks come from
| both the far left and far right. Matt Taibbi (who worked
| in to former Soviet Union for many years) fits this
| profile
|
| The public ability to hold coherent viewpoints on topics
| gradually erodes.
|
| At the same time, find a way to blackmail some of the
| most powerful people (Elon?) or buy them out (Trump)
|
| Or I could be totally wrong and Lex could just be a
| bleeding heart dude who tries to sympathize with both
| sides on every topic (I hope this is the case).
| xwowsersx wrote:
| Relevant: The Gervais Principle, Or The Office According to "The
| Office" https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-
| principle-...
| etchalon wrote:
| Based on that hour-long talk, I'd say Carmack just had a
| fundamentally different set of priorities. He seemed to be
| focused on latency and scale, where Meta seems to be pivoting to
| fidelity and graphics.
| CursedUrn wrote:
| Meta definitely isn't focused on fidelity and graphics. Their
| mobile VR push degraded VR graphics significantly.
| nomel wrote:
| Or, you could say that Meta is focused on an audience that
| doesn't have a highish end gaming PC, and have a relatively
| small budget (say $400), which is probably most. For
| realistic hardware spread, see:
| https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-
| Softw...
|
| But, they do still support that type of user with
| AirLink/USB. Problem is, there's not enough of those users,
| so many of the developers target Quest users, which where the
| eyes are.
|
| I think a step function in VR quality, which requires a step
| function in the number of eyes behind a powerful system, will
| come with PSVR 2.
| MikusR wrote:
| Carmack was the one who was pushing for mobile.
| 1auralynn wrote:
| Yeah in my opinion him pushing so hard for GearVR seriously
| negatively impacted the industry. Tons of people had their
| first intro to VR be some crappy 360 video on mobile VR and
| it did lasting damage to society's perception of VR
| MikusR wrote:
| Crappy 360 video on mobile had nothing to do with gearvr.
| 1auralynn wrote:
| Ok then crappy 3dof VR on mobile, of which GearVR was a
| variety. Bottom line, Facebook/Carmack pushed mobile vr
| prematurely in order to get the most users possible, but
| the experience sucked and users lost interest. Meta just
| made the same mistake with horizon
| MikusR wrote:
| GearVR was not crappy.
| josefx wrote:
| From the text it seems that mobile is not the issue "5% GPU
| utilization" screams of seriously large problems on the CPU
| side. What where they writing their software with? CPython,
| an interpreter only JavaScript runtime?
|
| Also the current generation of VR was basically build on
| top of smartphone hardware and there where quite a few
| ideas to make use of the full hardware instead of using it
| as a dumb display.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| He's probably the best graphics programmer in the world so I
| would trust his read on the priorities over whatever Meta
| manager handles that project
| Philip-J-Fry wrote:
| John Carmack says himself he wasn't even the best graphics
| programmer at Id. He was very good at the problem of game
| development in general and very good at optimising for
| performance specifically.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Given the fact that the metaverse is widely mocked for
| looking like a Wii game, they probably do need to spend more
| time on graphics.
| nomel wrote:
| It's not a "time" thing. Current stand alone headsets are
| still _severely_ hardware limited, and extremely budget
| constrained. You have two independent ~ 1920x1800 displays,
| running at 90Hz. That 's _hard_ for a mobile chipset to do.
|
| Quest 3 is supposed to have 2.5 to 3x graphics performance,
| so things will improve with new hardware, but you can only
| take it so far.
|
| Another big problem is that things look much
| different/better in person, in VR, compared to a 2d video.
| I don't see a solution for that.
| this_user wrote:
| > He seemed to be focused on latency and scale, where Meta
| seems to be pivoting to fidelity and graphics.
|
| Which makes sense, you want your users to be able to really
| take in the graphical glory of the Metaverse.
| 3836293648 wrote:
| Sure, but it's VR. Not making people sick (= low latency)
| needs to come first
| gregw2 wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| I liked Quest2. It gave me noticeable mental fatigue/wore
| me out the first couple half hours I used it but it's
| bothered me less since. I think the graphics qualify and UI
| is 'good enough' for the platform/tech to maintain and grow
| traction. But some family members found it disorienting on
| first try and never wanted to mess with it again. That does
| limit the market. And it probably is the biggest issue as
| you say.
|
| I noticed three other constraints that were inhibiting
| success: 1) Not a lot of free fun mindless apps. The
| platform seems to really steer you to $30 apps as its
| business model. I respect that, would rather pay up front
| than be the product, but it limits
| adoption/addiction/stickiness. (Of course with Meta you
| might end up being both.) Never had patience to venture
| into the side loading world. 2) Kids under 13 are not
| supposed to use it. Not sure why but I believe it may have
| interfere with visual development (and I believe it), and I
| limited my kids use significantly. This limits the kid
| adoption/addiction/stickiness dynamic seen with, say,
| YouTube. 3) Creep factor. Your every move is tied to your
| real Facebook name. I was always conscious my every move
| and sight was visible to Facebook. It's true you are
| tracked/with the web/internet but in a less direct way. I
| suspect, but don't know that this inhibits people using it
| for porn, which also limits
| adoption/addictiveness/stickiness.
|
| Beyond those three, two more thoughts...
|
| As many have discussed, I'm not sure what the killer app
| is, but a bit to my surprise I'm not sure it is critical...
| There were a number of fun different unique experiences
| (Beat Saber, etc) so I think it may work out without one
| big one.
|
| I also found that casting the screen to Chrome didn't work
| a lot of the time which limited my family's ability to
| enjoy it together and help each other.
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| From his complaints, I can deduce one of two things:
|
| 1. Carmack isn't a good leader. It takes a lot of "soft skills"
| to lead a large organization, and while Carmack has proven to be
| an unpaired engineer throughout his career, I haven't seen him
| build outstanding _engineering organizations_.
|
| and/or
|
| 2. Carmack was fighting for influence with others at Meta VR, and
| couldn't get his goals take priority over others (Zuckerberg
| comes to mind).
| bagels wrote:
| I wasn't in reality labs, but all the posts from carmack over
| the years that I could see really really pointed at him
| experiencing both problems. Not only that, but people publicly
| both agreeing with his concerns, but also questioning why he
| was complaining about it instead of navigating the FB politics
| to lead the change.
| antman wrote:
| Some peoples faces are different when they are alone. Some people
| struggle with themselves just to present a normal looking persona
| in their everyday lives. For them it is good enough to live as
| stress free as possible. Their true underlying goal is not to go
| out of balance. Let them be.
| staunch wrote:
| Nothing could be a stronger indictment of Mark Zuckerberg's
| ability to lead teams and create innovative products than the
| fact that he wasn't able to utilize John _fucking_ Carmack
| properly.
|
| Even with all the money in the world, Zuckerberg is just too
| conventional, uncreative, and lacking in genuine enthusiasm. He's
| been totally unable to create the kind of esprit de corps present
| in every great team.
|
| He cloned and acquired his entire career and it's made him weak.
| He was never forced to actually get good.
|
| What inspiration there is at Meta today was brought there by
| Palmer Luckey and John Carmack years ago. And, since it can't be
| cloned or bought by Zuckerberg, it has simply dwindled away year
| by year.
|
| The upside is that Oculus launched the VR industery. And now it's
| just a matter of time until VR evolves from a toy to a powerful
| tool. Maybe Meta will eventually make it happen, they certainly
| have the money, but more likely Apple or a startup will give it
| The Big Push.
| [deleted]
| softwaredoug wrote:
| I feel John's pain, after a decade of consulting and working for
| big tech companies.
|
| I think though the major skill at a large organization is not
| speed of delivery, or even amazing software, but getting everyone
| bought in, and rowing in the same direction. That's really hard,
| and 90% of it is emotional labor. That's actually what a
| Principal Eng or Director does at a big company. Then if you can
| actually turn the 'Death Star cannon' of a large org at
| something, it's really powerful. But it can certainly be an
| exhausting skill.
|
| I think folks who are great software builders, that thrive at
| small companies can sometimes fail to appreciate those skills.
| Conversely, 'big company' people look at the crazy, yet
| productive, ways of small companies and roll their eyes at their
| lack of "maturity". Both sides require very unique skillsets, and
| I'm appreciating, often disjoint sets of people that thrive in
| both settings.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| When a company like Facebook becomes successful it attracts a
| bunch of "execs" whose only job is to bleed the company dry. It's
| hard for people to do good work. That is why good engineers
| shouldn't join faang but do their own thing or join a startup
| which hasn't yet attracted the leeches.
| joaoqalves wrote:
| This reminds me that no matter who you are, solving problems in
| big companies requires an insane amount of persuasion work.
| Storytelling and aligning people on why something is essential
| becomes the job rather than the vision to solve it.
|
| Corollary: if people don't agree on the problem to solve and its
| importance, solutions heavily tend to fail.
| cokeandpepsi wrote:
| I actually thought facebook was doing a ok job with oculus until
| the whole 'metaverse' social push happend
|
| it feels like the people invovled are serverly deteacted on what
| people want out of VR in general
|
| it's hard for me to imagine someone like carmack prefering to
| work in a envinronment like that (tearing down corp/product
| walls) vs building his own team and trying to solve technical
| challenges
| worldsayshi wrote:
| Metaverse as a general concept is not a bad aim and Meta seemed
| to have some interesting ideas.
|
| But their presentation was clumsy at best and they had miles to
| go to convince critics that they were not aiming for a very
| dystopian interpretation of the concept. They failed
| spectacularly on the PR side. Probably enough to make their own
| engineers lose hope regarding both ethics and executive
| management.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I just want cool hardware people can hack on. I couldn't care
| less about the metaverse worlds that they were building but I'm
| giddy as a child on Christmas at advances in the hardware
| lately.
| salawat wrote:
| The thing that always holds me back is the lack of open
| datasheet. Then again, I won't touch anything with an NDA,so
| that's probably more a me being picky problem.
| annadane wrote:
| Forcing a mandatory Facebook account is "doing an ok job"...?
| nomel wrote:
| There is no mandatory Facebook account, anymore. It's now a
| mandatory Meta account. Facebook is only linked if you want
| it to be. Meta has said that this was in response to
| disapproval of the mandatory Facebook account.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| Right, but they took a perfectly good (great for the time
| and the price) and messed it up for a couple years with a
| really ugly, oversharing, privacy threatening account
| system. I am sure many-- probably most-- people didn't care
| but I think early adopters and developers found it very
| alienating.
|
| People say that the Meta account-- or the old Oculus
| accounts-- is the same as the FB account they mandated but
| really that isn't true. For a while they were essentially
| forcing you to run FB on your phone or browser to use the
| hardware. It was super yucky.
|
| I really like their hardware and I appreciate that they are
| working on developing a platform. I just wish they could be
| content to sell a platform and sell aps on it, the way
| Apple does.
| lyu07282 wrote:
| Which naturally, if you don't create a Meta account till
| January they are gonna delete all your purchased vr apps.
| nomel wrote:
| I can't imagine they want to support two separate account
| systems, especially with the amount of potential PII
| involved (like eye/face tracking training data).
|
| This required change is _heavily_ communicated, when you
| put on the headset. Nobody will be surprised when their
| account stops working. Your comment makes it sound like
| it could possibly happen on accident.
| adamsb6 wrote:
| I haven't put on the headset in months and haven't gotten
| an email.
|
| Thanks to the person that raised the issue so I don't
| lose my content.
| lyu07282 wrote:
| I'm sure many people are going to be surprised to find
| their library deleted after not using it for awhile.
| FooHentai wrote:
| Earlier this year I packed up a lot of my computer gear
| and stored in at the in-laws house, because we were
| putting our house on the market and this got us ahead on
| moving into a new place. Then the housing market tanked,
| my stuff including a Quest 2 is still sitting there, many
| months later, and I'll maybe be able to get back to it
| now mid next year.
|
| I'm learning from you here now that I'm gonna lose all
| the paid content I have on my account?
| Blue111 wrote:
| > I actually thought facebook was doing a ok job with oculus
| until the whole 'metaverse' social push happend
|
| the only good that they were doing was decent hardware at a
| decent price...
| mjfl wrote:
| > I actually thought facebook was doing a ok job with oculus
| until the whole 'metaverse' social push happend
|
| Spending billions of dollars on a subpar MMO game when better
| ones cost tens of millions at most to make - is bad?
| Gigachad wrote:
| I think they might be right in the long run but that they are
| pushing it too hard when it's not ready yet.
|
| People probably do want to collaborate in virtual rooms at
| work, but only when it's better than video calls. Which it
| currently isn't. And they don't want to do it in a world
| controlled by zucc
| lyu07282 wrote:
| I don't really think that's it, I feel like there is enough
| prior art (Second Life, VRChat, AltspaceVR, etc.) that we
| know this has potential and is feasable. Its just that their
| technology isn't even remotely competitive with anything. Its
| all just a clunky, buggy, uninspired mess.
|
| Its everything from their corporate design story that bleeds
| into every world and avatar, the laughable visual programming
| tools to create worlds, the proprietary walled-garden
| approach to horizons, the privacy nightmare that is horizons,
| the operating system being this hacky unstable Android fork
| (don't ever look at logcat). Its like every single step of
| the way they made the wrong decisions and executed on them
| incompetently, no money in the world is going to fix this
| mess.
| worldsayshi wrote:
| >Second Life, VRChat, AltspaceVR
|
| NeosVR is the best example I've seen. But it seems to be
| severely stumbling because of internal conflicts.
|
| Here's a good summary: https://youtu.be/0rvAKRWC82g
| kace91 wrote:
| I still can't see what I'd be supposed to do during a work vr
| "call".
|
| A physical meeting already has everyone looking at a
| whiteboard or screen, which is already solved by
| screensharing. Even if you could fully recreate the
| experience of being in a physical room, what are you supposed
| to gain from that?
| nomel wrote:
| I don't know if you've tried co working in VR, or VR
| meetings, but "presence". Hearing a voice coming from a low
| resolution tile in a Webex is very different than having
| some resemblance of a human sitting at the same table,
| where they can look at you, smile, and you see them talking
| and hear their voice coming from them.
|
| I much prefer VR meetings to Webex. Webex feels like a
| glorified shared phone call. VR feels like an actual
| gathering. With working at home, I think the "gathering"
| part of it has value, to me. If there's a break, I just
| look at my computer screen right in front of me, in VR.
|
| But, some people don't like change, so I think it's
| somewhat doomed, especially with the "older" crowd. I don't
| say or mean that in a derogatory way, because I see it in
| myself all the time, and it's more of a contextual
| optimization than a shortcoming. Some people have been
| doing Webex for decades, have mentally mastered that
| context, feel comfortable in it, and don't want to even try
| VR.
| bombcar wrote:
| The dirty secret is some huge percentage of meetings are
| useless and so zoom is a godsend because you can "pretend
| to be paying attention" and actually getting work done.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Is there any reason Epic will not crush Meta's attempt of VR?
|
| They own unreal. They understand immersion. They want to have
| their own App Store eon mobile devices. They just don't know
| "social", but heck.. meta doesn't anymore either.
|
| Maybe GREE was right about seeing Facebook as their competitor
| after all.
| afterburner wrote:
| Getting into social just gets you into a host of other
| problems. Why even bother. It's a high-wire act, and yes you
| get $$$ ad money, but it sure is vulnerable to any weird
| shocks.
| giardini wrote:
| I have to login to facebook to view this?
| sowbug wrote:
| No. It works fine without cookies.
| giardini wrote:
| Nope, the url given always redirects me to log into Facebook.
| I cannot view the article.
| sowbug wrote:
| Just tried again, Chrome incognito. Works for me.
| boulos wrote:
| The actual memo is at https://archive.vn/Lmu9g which is more
| interesting than the summary.
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| Musk on VR https://youtu.be/Ai-gJQ99ci0
|
| I think he has some good points. I don't think the majority of
| people want something strapped to their faces. And for those who
| do, who can play longer than 1 hour without getting motion
| sickness?
|
| VR is a fad that comes and goes.
| kensai wrote:
| What is this new startup he will be working in? Has he disclosed?
| devmunchies wrote:
| https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/19/john-carmack-agi-keen-rais...
| rkaregaran wrote:
| Carmack addressing the leak of his internal memo, and notably,
| sharing his next goal of achieving AGI at Keen Technologies.
|
| https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/1603931905539325955...
| ojbyrne wrote:
| I'm going to guess that there was an earnout that expired.
| ezoe wrote:
| It took longer than I thought. The best timing for him was when
| Facebook purchased Oculus.
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| I'm going to link this because it's relevant. Safi Bahcall wrote
| of this phenomenon:
| https://mentalmodels4life.net/2021/01/04/safi-bahcalls-innov...
|
| In very large organizations (>150 people) incentives shift
| dramatically because it becomes more valuable to engage in
| politicking than actually delivering value.
|
| Carmack has perpetually worked in smaller orgs as an IC and has a
| reputation for being difficult (that is, a reputation for
| actually giving a shit).
|
| Based on Bahcall's hypothesis, one potential solution would be to
| break the org into smaller units and create milestone based
| incentives like large team bonuses centered around performance
| bonuses
| bradhe wrote:
| Bye bye. In to bigger and better.
| iguana_lawyer wrote:
| fuckHNtho wrote:
| All we're seeing here is the continuation of people with the
| means distancing themselves from the toxic brand.
|
| This and the excuses people make for still working there draw
| hilarious parallels with the Nazis.
| drewg123 wrote:
| _" I have never been able to kill stupid things before they cause
| damage"_
|
| One of the most important things an organization can have is a
| "no man". A project that I was involved in when I worked at
| Google was completed on time primarily because we had a very
| senior (DE level) engineer tangentially involved in the project.
| He was near the end of his career, and he just didn't give a f*
| about politics. He'd sit in design reviews and rip stupid
| features to shreds, with accurate estimates of what they'd cost
| in terms of headcount and project delays. He was probably the
| most valuable member of the team because he was respected enough
| that his objections kept the project focused and on scope, and it
| was a 20% project for him.
| worik wrote:
| Switching between business and academia several times I am
| really struck by this.
|
| Meetings where the elephant in the room is not mentioned,
| because nobody wants to loose face. Really bad practice not
| commented on because (I guess, I am bad at this) some form of
| "mutually assured destruction". I will not point out your
| mistakes so you do not point out mine.
|
| That, in case you are wondering, is from business.
|
| I am really pleased to see people commenting here about
| business experience that go against my experience. And in my
| little group (of two, we could easily be five) we are straight
| with each other. But in the wider group? Rank incompetence, and
| dreadful mistakes that could be corrected if someone would
| point it out.
|
| The point is technical excellence, good scientific practice,
| that is not required for being successful at business. It is al
| about "people skills". I.e. convincing somebody that they got
| what they were promised when they did not.
|
| The university system in my country (Aotearoa) has been hobbled
| by people with business fetish. The meme was in the 1990s that
| "business is the most efficient". I believed it, until I saw
| the waste, inefficiency, downright lying and dishonesty, aghh I
| am triggered, that is business.
|
| The same thing happens to some degree in academia (especially
| in commerce. My academic experience is science in the 1990s and
| commerce in the 2010s) but only "some degree". I see it at
| every nearly business meeting I attend.
|
| I said before, I will say again, how pleasing it is to see
| comments here from people with different experiences than me.
| herval wrote:
| As a counterpoint, this does add to Google's already
| established reputation of not shipping stuff. "No men" are
| generally a bad idea, they kill innovation and slow things
| down.
| joeyrideout wrote:
| One of my favourite board games is called Burn Rate. The
| premise is a parody of silicon valley during the boom. You
| compete with the other players for talent (each employee is a
| card, with varying skill levels).
|
| You could slow down other players by attacking them with "bad
| idea" cards that would tie up one or more of their engineers
| for an amount of time. To defend against bad ideas, you need a
| good manager (one type of employee card).
|
| I could be misremembering some of the details, but the wisdom
| of the above game mechanic has stuck with me :)
| praptak wrote:
| The part about not giving a fuck is crucial. You don't get
| rewarded for preventing bad things.
| wnevets wrote:
| > You don't get rewarded for preventing bad things.
|
| This is the source of so many problems at large companies.
| The employees part of the day to the day understand how much
| of a positive impact this has but the people in charge of the
| cash don't see that.
|
| The squeaky wheel gets the grease, or the new product launch
| gets the promotion.
| MajimasEyepatch wrote:
| You can, but only in the long run, and only if you're saying
| "yes" to good things too. We've all probably worked with
| someone who just says no to everything and manages to kill
| both good ideas and bad. That leads to stagnation, which can
| be even worse than trying and failing at a bunch of different
| ideas.
| psychphysic wrote:
| What's tricky is managing "the good idea BUT" situations.
|
| Good ideas at the wrong time, or good ideas if only we had
| the heads, skill, money.
|
| Say Yes to those and you can screw things up, say No and
| you might not be forgiven.
| dctoedt wrote:
| > _You don 't get rewarded for preventing bad things._
|
| Akin to not being rewarded for _deleting_ lines of code.*
|
| * unless the deletion measurably improves performance and you
| get rewarded for the improvement
| eschneider wrote:
| That's generally the case. It's soul-sucking to work when you
| can't prevent idiocy and at most places you're punished for
| pushing back hard, so the only response (other than, you
| know, burn-out) is to leave. When you see senior people you
| respect getting the hell out for no obvious reason, that's
| usually a sign that you should be polishing your resume. Bad
| times are coming.
| rpastuszak wrote:
| It really depends on the size of the org and the team
| dynamics.
|
| In a small startup with a fairly high degree of trust and
| emotional safety your CEO is more likely to notice that you
| prevented damage/loss by saying no.
|
| A large org where so much is lost due to the telefone game,
| misaligned goals, hierarchy and increased complexity is not
| an environment where this is (usually) noticed or
| appreciated.
| grogenaut wrote:
| I got top marks in 2021 based on feedback from two high level
| managers because I "prevented a year of wasted engineer with
| with a comment on a Google doc". Those marks lead to a nice
| pay bump.
| timeon wrote:
| Like with politics. Everyone notices leader visiting places
| after disaster while no-one can notice if one was prevented.
| rightbyte wrote:
| I think the story of the Japaneese major that built a silly
| big storm wall was noticed.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fudai,_Iwate
|
| However to prove your point, years after his death.
| Prolixium wrote:
| > You don't get rewarded for preventing bad things.
|
| A few years ago I saw a promotion announcement e-mail come
| into my inbox for a colleague who sat a few steps from my
| desk. It was filled with the usual "did this, did that, made
| an impact, etc." statements but it also had a large section
| dedicated to the analysis this employee performed and
| presented to kill a huge initiative before the organization
| rolled it out. The initiative was very innovative but it
| ultimately wouldn't have achieved its goals. It was
| encouraging to see this in a promotion announcement and
| indicated to me that some organizations do explicitly reward
| for preventing bad things.
|
| This was at AWS.
| blueboo wrote:
| Might be an exception that proves the rule. Killing a major
| initiative might've been a boon for sibling initiatives m
| -- no wonder those leads applaud an underling who usefully
| twisted the knife. Politics -- is Amazon known for it?...
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| Or it might not. Have you any reason to search for the
| negative in a prima facie positive?
| randmeerkat wrote:
| > Have you any reason to search for the negative in a
| prima facie positive?
|
| This article from three days ago: "'Stress, burnout,
| churn, and a cut-throat atmosphere': An internal Amazon
| study slams the company's culture."
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-earths-best-
| employer-...
| kelnos wrote:
| My experience matches with the GP. In my ~20-year
| professional life, I can't recall even one instance when
| I'd read a promotion announcement and saw that one of the
| person's accomplishments was that they prevented
| something bad from happening. Sure, it's possible I'm
| forgetting, but such a thing seems odd enough to me that
| it feels like something I'd notice and remember. I expect
| most people will have a similar experience.
|
| It's also possible that people are getting praise for
| these sorts of "negative accomplishments" in private, or
| on performance reviews. Which is better than nothing, but
| I think it's still valuable and healthy to remind people
| that part of the job isn't just building stuff, it's also
| making sure the right things get built. And public praise
| for killing bad things is a good way to do that.
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| I've never seen it either but that's irrelevant. The
| original guy talked about someone blocking a crap project
| with good results. That's a positive.
|
| So someone responds by assuming it's a negative:
| "...applaud an underling who usefully twisted the knife".
| I mean maybe, but quite possibly maybe not. But some
| people seem wired to find the worst.
| novok wrote:
| It's a save-the-budget kind of thing. By showing that we
| don't need X or can delay buying Y for 1 year, saved the
| company from $ZZ million dollars of spend. It might not
| be stopping other people from working, but it is praised.
| padjo wrote:
| That's not what exception that proves the rule means.
| "Parking allowed only on Tuesdays" is an exception that
| proves the rule. This is just an exception that disproves
| the rule, like most exceptions.
| afterburner wrote:
| In fact, you might feel like a hero for needing to put in OT
| to put out a garbage fire! Never mind that it shouldn't have
| happened in the first place...
| jrmg wrote:
| I've also seen morale being slowly killed by people who
| _thought_ they were doing this, but were _actually_ just
| argumentative defeatists.
|
| I don't think Carmack - or the engineer you describe - is
| likely to be one of these - but anyone hoping to emulate them
| should be conscious of what they're doing.
| grumple wrote:
| You need people to say no. You should be saying no more than
| yes in most cases. You have more important, more profitable
| paths to take.
| davewritescode wrote:
| > I've also seen morale being slowly killed by people who
| _thought_ they were doing this, but were _actually_ just
| argumentative defeatists.
|
| Yes, I've also seen this as well. At some point you need
| people who will go off on a limb and do something crazy. I've
| seen in multiple times in my career. In particular I remember
| an architect who'd ruthlessly attempt to take scope out of
| projects but while we was in charge, we were nearly never
| innovating. Just delivering features on time and budget.
| Existing customers were always delighted but we had a hard
| time reaching new markets.
|
| After he left, there's been a fair bit of projects that
| "didn't work" but there's been a couple of absolute home runs
| that would've never gotten off the ground because they were
| pretty wild.
|
| There's I've heard a few times that resonates with me and I
| reiterate to all senior engineers I work with when they get
| into conflicts. "It takes all kinds of people to make a great
| company" You need dreamers, the people who worry about the
| money, cold and calculating execute at all costs types and
| folks and the folks who are happy to toil in a small but
| critical corner of a massive system to keep the lights on.
|
| In my experience you can get into trouble when you try to
| play multiple roles at the same time because it's mentally
| exhausting trying to to do things like sell a vision while
| being the person trying to keep the economics of the thing
| from completely falling apart.
| lazilyloaded wrote:
| This is true. I think a good test for this is that the person
| making the criticisms also provides alternatives that are
| reasonable and it's evident that they're trying to make
| things better and not just arguing for argument's sake.
| mathgladiator wrote:
| These dumb things emerge because of two forces: first, the
| promotion game of people trying to get theirs. Second, price's
| law.
|
| Price's law is what constrains scope, and the boundary between
| engineers can often be the luck of having the right
| opportunity. As such, all the stupid things emerge trying to
| invent scope. I'm guilty of this, but that was the game.
|
| There is no solution except accept that big companies kind of
| suck and are slow.
| AgentOrange1234 wrote:
| Maybe I am unusually lucky. After managing a small team for a
| year in a FAANG, I am considerably less jaded.
|
| I think it is entirely possible to be truly focused on the
| customer, to have a vision and a strategy, and to balance
| working toward this goal with experimentation.
|
| It is of course also very hard work, it's easy to make
| mistakes, and nothing is perfect. But I really don't see that
| this is all doomed from the beginning just because of bad
| incentives and structural forces.
| mathgladiator wrote:
| If your leadership chain is good, then it is easy to have a
| great experience and good scope to grow.
|
| As you get higher up, the politics and limits become very
| visible. Strategy and focus are really hard to scale up
| which creates limited scope for continued growth.
| dpe82 wrote:
| Come back in 5 years and let us know if that's still your
| opinion. Maybe you'll get lucky, but most people aren't.
| slickrick216 wrote:
| Definitely depends on the person. The amount of projects I've
| worked on that were dismissed by such people done anyway and
| invariably became the saving of the team/org/company is
| laughable. These always took longer as they were under
| resourced and the people working on it did because of belief
| not because it was good for their status in the company. The
| hallmark of these is the last minute surge in resourcing when
| management figures out they got it wrong. Sometimes I think
| it's almost like they bought an option on saving themselves by
| badly resourcing something at the start.
| theteapot wrote:
| > The amount of projects I've worked on that were dismissed
| by such people done anyway and invariably became the saving
| of the team/org/company is laughable.
|
| That's intriguing. I would love some examples of these
| projects / products.
|
| > The hallmark of these is the last minute surge in
| resourcing when management figures out they got it wrong.
|
| Got what wrong? That they've heard the yeas and nays and
| chosen to undertake the project sounds like mang got
| something right?
| slickrick216 wrote:
| Good question hard to bake all the context in. The area I
| have worked most in is operations where a
| technique/widget/process is needed to fix a problem present
| within the environment due to an external actor which
| otherwise couldn't be identified/monitored/resolved. Also
| to clarify I've been lucky to be part of such skunk work
| projects never actually lead one.
| nvarsj wrote:
| > That's intriguing. I would love some examples of these
| projects / products.
|
| It's literally the definition of skunkworks projects. Many
| companies have been saved by a small few ignoring all the
| "Nos" and just doing what they believe in at personal risk.
|
| I really disagree with the general notion of people saying
| No. This is actually, imo, the death of big companies and
| very common. It is not heroic to say no, it is maintaining
| the status quo. People who talk about such things with
| glowing eyes probably have spent their careers only at big
| companies.
|
| Experienced people tend to have narrow vision and will
| shoot down ideas because they can't think outside of their
| worldview. That's why new ideas are so rarely born at large
| orgs. And the most innovation tends to come out of scrappy
| startups from kids who don't know that what they're doing
| is impossible.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Big orgs reward stupid BAs for coming up with "exciting looking
| stuff" and the most engineers gladly take it up their az and
| all would say yeah we can do this like it would make them look
| bad if they said otherwise. The ones that speak up would
| usually get grilled and questioned like their job was on the
| line.
| kqr wrote:
| This sounds familiar. It's usually when I've decided to resign
| in a few months because thing don't change that I start not
| giving a fuck and actually enacting change. I wonder how to
| break that cycle.
|
| It might sound easy to "just don't give a fuck sooner" but it's
| _exhausting_. The constant uphill struggle is not something I
| want to live with.
| fuzzythinker wrote:
| smrtinsert wrote:
| Mark and Meta have been given a once in a lifetime chance to
| right their way by refocusing and ironing out privacy and feature
| set while Twitter burns its house down. I wouldn't squander it on
| the metaverse.
| stodor89 wrote:
| I'm happy for him. The AI field is making things happen. VR has
| potential, but as of 2022, almost everything about it is hot
| garbage.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Carmack is a developer god, but against stupidity, the very gods
| themselves contend in vain.
| drummer wrote:
| Should never have joined the dumpster fire that is facebook.
| Dispicable company.
| Arjuna wrote:
| _"It has been a struggle for me. I have a voice at the highest
| levels here, so it feels like I should be able to move things,
| but I 'm evidently not persuasive enough. A good fraction of the
| things I complain about eventually turn my way after a year or
| two passes and evidence piles up, but I have never been able to
| kill stupid things before they cause damage, or set a direction
| and have a team actually stick to it. I think my influence at the
| margins has been positive, but it has never been a prime mover."_
|
| It is simply stunning that the seasoned direction and counsel
| that someone of John Carmack's caliber is capable of delivering
| was not being followed.
| Redoubts wrote:
| > _This was admittedly self-inflicted - I could have moved to
| Menlo Park after the Oculus acquisition and tried to wage
| battles with generations of leadership, but I was busy
| programming, and I assumed I would hate it, be bad at it, and
| probably lose anyway._
| klabb3 wrote:
| I interpret this as strong circumstantial evidence that
| companies who start out as engineering centric and claims to
| be meritocratic eventually deteriorate into good ole
| nepotistic power play and a sea of bureaucracy. It's quite
| entertaining to observe even John Carmack go through this
| very relatable frustration.
| kurige wrote:
| I see it more as the simple truth. There's only so much
| influence you can wield working one day a week as an
| executive advisor. By his own admission he could have
| steered things better if he'd been more involved, but he
| didn't want to be more involved. He's got his own startup
| to work on.
| klabb3 wrote:
| Oh yeah I was assuming we were talking about when he was
| actually working there. That whole consulting gig felt
| like a slow quit.
|
| > By his own admission he could have steered things
| better if he'd been more involved
|
| My reading is that back when he was full time, he was
| busy with actual product work and coding, and he could
| have possibly made a difference by going political, but
| there would have been no guarantee and it would have
| taken a lot of his time.
| agumonkey wrote:
| It's interesting how universal this pattern seems to be.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| It only seems universal because the management universe
| has ben captured by the MBAs. All upper management feels
| the same way because they were all largely trained at the
| same few MBA schools.
| stocknoob wrote:
| Do you think the schools taught people to think that way,
| or is there a selection bias for people with that
| personality to do an MBA?
| majewsky wrote:
| I don't see that distinction mattering all that much.
| What matters is that people with a specific mindset come
| out of these MBA schools that also have formed strong
| networks there which help them win the power and status
| games later on.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Reckon the cost of doing an MBA has a big role to play in
| this. MBAs are just stupid expensive. If you're 200k in
| debt at graduation, you're likely going to make
| conservative choices in your career.
|
| Siding with the in-group and perpetuating the
| bureaucratic structure is one way to ensure that you stay
| employed.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| We're just uppity primates so our group dynamics are
| always going to be dominated by our social instincts.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I don't want to sound rude nor elitist, but at the end of
| the day most workers don't care about the product the
| work on. They care about the prestige, or the money, or
| some other meta-factor (no pun intended) that comes with
| the role.
|
| Even those that really resonate with a product they work
| on don't necessarily view said product as their dream
| calling or calling in life. Maybe the knowledge and ideas
| from the industry are useful but not necessarily what
| they are used for (for a topical exmaple: I'm sure meta
| has top VR engineers working on some of the most boring,
| least ambitious apps you can imagine).
|
| If all that can happen at the non-1% level of society,
| I'm not surprised it happens amongst the wealthy elite,
| especially those whose job is to try and make the most
| money for the next quarter.
| RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u wrote:
| Ironically I felt reassured reading this. "[...] I'm evidently
| not persuasive enough. A good fraction of the things I complain
| about eventually turn my way after [...] evidence piles up"
| especially resonates with me. While I rationally understand
| it's just corporate bureaucracy / politics, sometimes I still
| wonder if I were just a bit more capable I'd be more
| persuasive.
|
| If _John fucking Carmack_ cannot move the bureaucracy this way,
| then it 's folly for me to try the same. I should accept that
| we're playing checkers not chess.
| oreally wrote:
| I'd suggest you get off the carmack idol worshipping horse.
| Just because he failed doesn't invalidate your thoughts and
| opinions.
| mkmk3 wrote:
| That didn't seem to be the implication. Carmacks name
| carries weight, and we're talking about navigating
| beurocracy and politics. My own thoughts and opinions tell
| me that they don't matter in those two domains
| oreally wrote:
| Oh they do. Leaders/execs will take note of enough people
| voicing something in common, assuming those opinions have
| passed counter-arguments/tests/discussions of sorts.
|
| Carmack is only one guy. Maybe his voice might be worth a
| little more, but your voice also matters, so don't be so
| quick to despair.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| Yeah. I feel like this a lot. I don't know if it's a bias of
| some kind but it feels right.
|
| I suppose it's selection bias. I don't know how to market,
| but apparently the marketing people do because we have
| customers. I do know about my corner of the system though,
| and when my advice is ignored it usually turns out I was
| right in the end.
| ryandrake wrote:
| At MegaCompanies, being right, having evidence, and trying
| to persuade just isn't enough, as John Fucking Carmack
| figured out. It's more like High School. You need to be in
| the right clique or have the ear of the right Very
| Important Person.
|
| When you send that E-mail and say "We should do X because Y
| and Z..." people stop reading at "because" and just go look
| in the company directory for your name. If you're high
| enough on the totem pole, they'll respond to you. If you're
| even higher, they might suggest a meeting to discuss X! And
| if you are really high up, they will stop what they are
| doing and do X right away.
|
| What's surprising to me is how someone like Carmack didn't
| have enough totem-pole clout just from who he is! He's
| practically a celebrity, and I'd have thought that would go
| a long way in the High School Drama Club but I guess not.
| varjag wrote:
| > What's surprising to me is how someone like Carmack
| didn't have enough totem-pole clout just from who he is!
|
| He is a game developer. Some people now at Facebook have
| breakthroughs in Computer Science on their resumes.
| Mockapapella wrote:
| "High school never ends" hits differently when it's a
| little closer to home
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| Modern capitalism has ushered in a new age of modern
| fuedalism, at first just inside big companies, but it's
| spreading to society in general now.
| mach1ne wrote:
| The distance between now & the world of Cyberpunk is
| becoming visibly smaller every day.
| turtleyacht wrote:
| In what ways? Will we have wearables, bespoke cyberdecks,
| and side hustles? :)
| m463 wrote:
| It's hard to walk this line.
|
| I think some people are forthright and outspoken, but a long
| game persuasion might be the best strategy sometimes.
|
| I remember Linus Torvalds commenting on systemd, and
| accepting the work with upstanding neutrality (I wished he
| had rejected the binary log files)
|
| _" I don't actually have any particularly strong opinions on
| systemd itself. I've had issues with some of the core
| developers that I think are much too cavalier about bugs and
| compatibility, and I think some of the design details are
| insane (I dislike the binary logs, for example), but those
| are details, not big issues."_
| urthor wrote:
| With those big companies, commonly there simply isn't a
| productive way to walk the line.
|
| Saving face and preserving "decision making credibility"
| means that taking advice is simply not on the cards for a
| large portion of the middle management class.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > commonly there simply isn't a productive way to walk
| the line
|
| I think that sums up the problem of institutional
| dynamics and individual talent rather well. For people
| with strong work ethics, sense of duty and genuine
| creative optimism, it's very painful to sit in a room of
| avoidant, grinning suits being superficially nice to one
| another wasting time trying to find "clever" reasons not
| to do anything. The whole show is a cloying deadlock.
| It's squandering human intelligence and life
| opportunities. I can't be witness to that tragedy and no
| remuneration, however many zeros you add, can make it
| worthwhile.
| lukemercado wrote:
| > Saving face and preserving "decision making
| credibility" means that taking advice is simply not on
| the cards for a large portion of the middle management
| class.
|
| While I'm happy to admit that this construct may be true
| in practice; it is _deeply_ infuriating that so many
| people's calculus nets out in this manner. It's
| infuriating to me, primarily, because I simply don't
| understand. By my understanding, "decision making
| credibility" comes _exclusively_ from *being right*. If
| you're optimizing for this metric, then how you get there
| should be an almost irrelevant footnote.
|
| Yet here we are; with a non-trivial percentage of
| managers coming to the conclusion that the correct answer
| is to not take advice.
| urthor wrote:
| Decision making credibility is simply not anchored in
| "being logically correct."
|
| It's anchored in _the ability to consider the needs of
| the tribe appropriately._
|
| Leadership credibility in human society is mostly
| anchored via your track record of emphasizing with the
| needs of a Dunbar's number sized tribe.
|
| Empathy, not logic, is the KPI our brains are tuned to.
| Empathetic leaders emphasize data collection, logical
| ones make decisions using that data. Evolution has
| optimized for empathy.
|
| The core problem with large companies is the middle
| management buffer grows large enough that it forms a
| subculture which drives decision making.
|
| Plus, institutions of 1,000, 5,000, 10,000, all have
| their "local" rules of detailed management know-how. Add
| it all up, and you have a problem that's just as thorny &
| knotty as any engineering problem. Requiring just as much
| detailed expertise.
| badpun wrote:
| In any large company, everything is so complex and
| connected with each other that it's close to impossible
| to hash out the actual output (positive or negative) of
| any big decision. So, decisions are not based on merit
| because it's impossible to reason what is good what is
| not. Instead, there's a leader who has some kind of
| vision and the company follows that vision, for better or
| worse.
| Karellen wrote:
| How could Linus have rejected a systemd feature, even one
| he didn't like?
|
| Linus runs the kernel. systemd is not the kernel. They're
| completely different projects.
|
| Yes, systemd runs on Linux (exclusively so) but Linus
| doesn't magically get veto power over separate Linux-only
| projects just because they run on Linux.
|
| Heck, even if Linux weren't Free Software, and was
| proprietary like the Windows kernel, he still wouldn't be
| able to tell other people what they could and could not
| build on top of Linux, just like Microsoft can't tell
| people what to put in their Windows apps. The fact that
| Linux is Free Software makes the idea even weirder.
| jemmyw wrote:
| Could he actually reject it though? The kernel has to
| interact with all kinds of other interfaces and I'm sure
| Linus doesn't like a lot of them - he's certainly commented
| as such. But if there's a binary logging system used by
| some distros and good code is submitted to the kernel to
| interact with it, it wouldn't be great if he rejected it on
| a philosophical basis. They make it work well, not dictate
| what you do with it.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Carmack is famous externally, especially among a generation
| that grew up with Doom/Quake. But it isn't like Facebook
| employs a bunch of ordinary engineers and then Carmack. There
| are _a lot_ of people with extraordinarily impressive resumes
| and a long history of massive technical success there. It is
| not a surprise to me that it didn 't just become the "do what
| Carmack says" show when he joined. Consensus-building becomes
| even harder at larger institutions.
| someperson wrote:
| He joined Facebook _with_ the Oculus acquisition and he 's
| the position was Chief Technology Officer of Oculus.
| jldugger wrote:
| > If John fucking Carmack cannot move the bureaucracy this
| way
|
| My read is its not so much the bureaucracy of project
| managers or paperwork as it is junior executives trying to
| 'leave their mark', defend their turf, etc.
| patrick451 wrote:
| What makes you think Carmack is especially persuasive? Often,
| those with the best technical chops are the least persuasive
| and it seems misguided to think that the reason you can't
| persuade is because you are lacking technically.
| vkou wrote:
| I don't work at Meta, but I assume that, like any other
| bureaucracy
|
| It's a large company, with home-grown political feifdoms - and
| technical merits for ideas aren't good enough to get things
| your way. Even if he is a big cheese in the world of actually
| knowing things, that doesn't really matter to his executive
| peers.
|
| You need to both know things, and be very good at politicking
| to be successful.
| throwaway_8989 wrote:
| Throwaway because it could be easy to identify my position from
| my normal account name.
|
| Carmack is many thing, engineering genius above them. However,
| he would frequently wade into areas where he had no experience,
| demand others do what he said, ignore evidence he was wrong,
| bully people, and disparage entire teams who were doing good,
| and in some cases legally required, work. When data proved his
| idea was wrong, he would say words to the effect of "I don't
| care, because I still believe I'm right from an ideological
| background". He would devalue people, there expertise, there
| experience, and there thoughts because "I'm John Carmack".
| Truthfully, I have never worked with someone before who was
| somehow so politely toxic to a workplace.
|
| Carmacks work in VR was absolutely invaluable from a technical
| standpoint, but VR now is as successful as it is in spite of
| his influence, not because of it. When I hear people say "If
| only Meta would let Carmack do what he wants we'd see his ideal
| VR experience and it would be amazing". You already saw it. It
| was Oculus Go, and by every metric is was a commercial,
| financial, and technical, disaster.
| threatripper wrote:
| This is an interesting comment. In my experience most people
| were right in their way of thinking. Even if they come to
| vastly different conclusions, most of the time they are kind-
| of-right. This continues until objective reality hits as in
| "can we ship" and "does it make money". And even then it
| depends on many factors with many people involved. For a
| vision like VR this is far into the uncertain future and
| "being right" can mean many different things to people. Data
| doesn't help much if it is biased, if the analysis is biased
| or if you just have different definitions and priorities.
|
| At the end of the day the real struggle is achieving
| alignment on business goals and priorities across the whole
| team. And also aligning them with reality. This is usually
| where you elect one leader to define those things and the
| others to follow those definitions.
| Apofis wrote:
| People with attitudes like yours are why Zuckerberg _WILL_
| fail in his vision. If Meta VR cannot be more compelling than
| video games, it is and will continue to be Dead on Arrival.
| Good luck though, with your feelings and whatnot. The
| "avatars" that Mark was forced to present are frankly
| embarrassing and humiliating in this day and age. 5% GPU
| utilization is a joke. Mark's gotta give all of you the boot.
| I'm happy for John that he got to escape that sycophantian
| paradise.
| arolihas wrote:
| 5% gpu utilization was just an analogy carmack used, he
| clarified in an edit to the post.
| [deleted]
| bsenftner wrote:
| I don't work with John Carmack, but I had a meeting with him
| once. He is brilliant, no doubt, but he is exactly like every
| single engineer with no professional communications training.
| He struggles to make his points in everyday developer
| language, when he needs to speak more calculated, more
| measured, and with significantly more audience empathy. Just
| like 99% of us technologists. We're an industry of weak
| communicators, and it is hurting all of our careers.
| lazilyloaded wrote:
| I don't doubt he speaks like an engineer because is
| basically is THE uber-engineer. He should be treated more
| as an oracle than an engineer. There aren't many people I
| would say that about in the world of computing, but Carmack
| definitely is that.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I think developers in my experience are very clear
| communicators, and PMs & managers tend to be poor
| communicators or at least communicators who have goals very
| disaligned from that of the company.
| mach1ne wrote:
| I think the notion of developers being 'weak communicators'
| is a bit too simplified. It suggests that if developers
| were better communicators, then things would move faster &
| better forward. But the fact is that the audience of non-
| developers tends to have a completely different mode of
| thinking, and indeed a different set of targets. Developers
| would like to see organizations as machines to give
| instructions to. Non-developers more often see
| organizations as ladders to climb. It would indeed be a
| miracle to persuade the latter people into machine-like
| thinking without a total cultural shift.
| gsatic wrote:
| Good analogy. Ideally ladders are designed based on
| problem type - simple to complex. But in corporate
| wonderland, the ladder climbers regularly change that
| ideal to stay on the ladder.
|
| You dont need a miracle. You just need to recognize
| early, who the most mindlessly ambitious over energetic
| unimaginative people, in the room are and keep them on
| leash/direct the energies away from ladder reconfig.
| s-lambert wrote:
| I think it's weird that people don't talk about non-
| developers being weak communicators because they often
| are as well. I guess it's because if a product manager is
| a bad communicator then they're just a bad product
| manager. While a developer can be a bad communicator but
| still a good developer.
| bsenftner wrote:
| > It suggests that if developers were better
| communicators, then things would move faster & better
| forward.
|
| That is exactly what would happen, within developer
| circles themselves at least. A huge amount of
| miscommunication and lack of communication routinely
| takes place within dev teams, and that process knot
| forming behavior would be eliminated by better
| communications.
| lyu07282 wrote:
| I feel like this post would have more credibility if the
| Quest and Horizons wasn't such a technical and privacy
| disaster.
| cleak wrote:
| FWIW, my interactions with Carmack have shown him to be
| extremely pragmatic when it comes to tech. Going quickly from
| "we absolutely shouldn't do that" to "ok it makes sense in
| that context".
| aswanson wrote:
| Yep. There are lots of talented people, programming wise, who
| can't communicate vision, lead, or inspire teams. These are
| mostly orthogonal to technical skill, but are extremely
| important if you're building something that requires more
| than one person.
| heather45879 wrote:
| Honestly no one really cares about VR that's the problem.
|
| It's cool in concept but whose going to shell out cash to be
| tethered to a machine wearing goggles sitting in a chair?
|
| AR has potential but even that is marginally better than
| alternative solutions.
|
| Also, I don't know about y'all but I don't trust Facebook so
| I don't trust Meta. They are a data-leach.
|
| We still probably have a decade or more to go with this
| technology it has to be affordable, lightweight, AR glasses
| not tied to a company that sells peoples data!
| andybak wrote:
| > Honestly no one really cares about VR that's the problem.
|
| For some values of "no one". VR has been hanging on quite
| nicely despite repeated reports of it's demise. The problem
| is that some industry people keep expecting it to be iPhone
| huge and it's never going to be iPhone huge.
|
| So - the truth is somewhere inbetween "no one" and "every
| one". Something above "niche" but below "mass market".
| pvaldes wrote:
| Virtual reality has been too abused. Is introduced
| typically a humorous home video when people is startled,
| hits some furniture with their fists or jumps over it,
| and unavoidably broke the very expensive TV in the wall.
|
| Is shown as a room disaster, much more funny for the
| people watching the player than for the player itself.
|
| And the people still wonder why people is not playing it
| in mass when you are mocking your own target? This is not
| how you sell a product.
|
| Maybe stopping the "need for jumpscare to show how
| awesome is our game" would help. Dunno. Maybe just making
| the game aware of he surrounding would help (This big
| square is the limit, if the player walks next the
| frontier show a warning or made it take one step back).
| ghosty141 wrote:
| VR shines in simulators, flighing, driving etc, there the
| immersion is key but thats really the only domain in
| private life where VR really works.
|
| In corporate there are bunch of neat areas but AR is
| defintely more useful right now. E.g. support, meetings,
| teaching
| andybak wrote:
| > AR is defintely more useful right now.
|
| VR and AR have essentially merged at this point. Nobody
| is releasing VR headsets without passthrough (and non-
| passthrough VR still isn't viable tech yet. cost,
| brightness and poor FOV are holding it back).
|
| So every VR headset is also an AR headset.
| oakashes wrote:
| Passthrough AR inherently has the same FoV as VR so I'm
| having trouble interpreting your comment. I also don't
| see how brightness would be an issue for non-passthrough
| VR. Did you mean "non-passthrough AR", like the HoloLens?
| andybak wrote:
| Sorry, yes. Non-passthrough AR.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| Honestly no one really cares about VR that's the problem.
|
| I feel like this is definitely the elephant in the room
| everybody is ignoring. Almost nobody gives a hoot about VR!
|
| I'm a software engineer with a lot of (surprise, surprise)
| nerdy/geeky/whatever friends and interest in VR is close to
| zero. A few friends vouched for various games like Half-
| Life:Alyx and Beat Saber, but nobody was claiming it was a
| life altering experience and nobody is clamoring to live
| more of their lives in VR. VR definitely makes a great game
| controller for some kinds of games and there are even a few
| killer apps, but I mean like... _Wii Sports_ was a "killer
| app" for motion controls and that doesn't mean it was a
| technology that shaped our lives in the long run.
|
| And needless to say non-technical folks have _less_ than
| zero interest in strapping a computer to their head and
| face.
|
| God bless John Carmack, but it feels like he and FB are
| arguing about _execution issues_ on a product _nobody cared
| about in the first place._
| cudgy wrote:
| > Wii Sports was a "killer app" for motion controls and
| that doesn't mean it was a technology that shaped our
| lives in the long run.
|
| Perhaps it could have been different if companies didn't
| just focus on using these technologies as leverage to
| increase their profits at "unicorn" levels and for
| unimaginative reasons. Carmack should have known better
| than to expect a huge, boring company like Facebook to be
| a good place for a maverick to make a major breakthrough.
| shimfish wrote:
| Carmack explicitly addressed this in his keynote last
| year https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnSUk0je6oo at
| around 43 minutes in.
| nvarsj wrote:
| I don't know about your friends, but playing Alyx opened
| my eyes to the level of immersion VR can achieve. It's a
| kind of gameplay that can't be repeated with 2d screens.
| I really do think it could be revolutionary, based on
| playing that game alone. If you can get ahold of a
| headset and a powerful gaming PC - I recommend giving it
| a try.
|
| The problems right now are very fundamental. The quest 2
| out of the box is supremely uncomfortable. Casual users
| will put it on and not want to use it due to VR nausea
| and the discomfort of the headset after wearing it for 20
| minutes. The hardware is not powerful enough to create an
| experience like Alyx - all the headset games just have
| basic polygons and colors. Resolution is still poor, FOV
| is poor. We're still in the infancy of
| immersion/comfort/usability. I played Alyx on the Quest 1
| which I actually think had better immersion due to the
| OLED screens.
|
| IMO the trick is going to be whether Meta can pull off a
| usable, immersive device in the next 5 years without
| their revenues completely tanking. The problems to
| overcome are really hard and still at basic research
| level which takes years to develop. The other issue is
| the killer game or app that gets people into VR en-masse.
|
| I guess my point is I think writing VR off completely is
| a mistake - like someone saying what is the point of a
| cell phone in the 1980s when they were giant bricks and
| cost a fortune. VR will get good enough at some point
| that it's like putting on a pair of glasses and stepping
| into another world without any friction. It's just a
| question of how long until we get there and who will
| bring it to us.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > I don't know about your friends, but playing Alyx
| opened my eyes to the level of immersion VR can achieve.
| It's a kind of gameplay that can't be repeated with 2d
| screens.
|
| Every time I read something like this about VR I hear the
| same stuff I hear from like, audiophiles talking about
| gold plated cables and shit. I have a Rift, and I get a
| lot of use out of it for Beat Saber and VTOL VR, but
| there's no reason the latter can't be non-VR and I would
| categorize nearly everything I've ever played with it as
| a gimmick.
|
| The experience is a _little_ more immersive than a
| screen, but in my opinion not that significantly so
| especially considering all the drawbacks.
| Faark wrote:
| Yeah, physical movement is a big advantage. Gorn and
| Creed were also fun, but most of my time was spent with
| Beat Saber. Never tried Kinect / PS Move, but i doubt
| it's even close.
|
| > a little more immersive
|
| I wouldn't say a little... 10% to 20% maybe. That can be
| quite a nice bump for stuff counting on immersion. But
| again, the software has to properly use the system... my
| neck really hurt after playing Subnatica, and the play-
| through pretty much ended anyway due to Cyclops being
| pretty much uncontrollable.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| I don't know about your friends, but playing Alyx
| opened my eyes to the level of immersion VR can achieve.
|
| I've had a lot of friends who liked a few VR games like
| Alyx but never really touched their headsets after that.
|
| My feeling is less "VR stinks" and more "yes, it can be a
| really nifty gaming controller/display but there's a big
| gap between 'nifty gaming thing' and Zuckerberg's opium
| dream of a fulltime VR revolution." The
| other issue is the killer game or app that gets people
| into VR en-masse.
|
| We've already had a few five star VR games, so I don't
| think that's sufficient.
|
| Maybe the "killer app" is more of a paradigm or
| framework. Like how we didn't have killer GUI
| applications until Xerox/Apple/Microsoft created _the
| environment in which those apps could be created._
|
| But, I don't know. Fundamentally I just don't think
| people want to strap these things to their heads.
| NovaVeles wrote:
| I am starting to think that Alyx is VR high tide point.
| It was either going to be the thing that makes folks and
| developers run to VR or just stand out there is a neat
| proof of concept that gets ignored. Alyx is now 2 years
| old, there hasnt been a rush towards the space yet...
| lostmsu wrote:
| I think the high tide point will be the replacement of
| desktops/screens.
|
| Compute should be offloadable with "5G E" (low lag,
| 500Mbps+, already out).
| netjiro wrote:
| Offload to local device with, yes. Offload to server farm
| elsewhere ... naaah. You have at most a few ms to
| compress - stream - decompress - refresh. Any latency,
| jitter, stutter, etc has a very negative impact in vr.
| Much more so than on a regular monitor.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| The speed of light really hurts when your gpu is several
| milliseconds from your screens and your motion
| controllers.
| zmmmmm wrote:
| There's a critical faulty assumption in your logic above
| ... we are on the verge of seeing multiple simultaneous
| technical barriers fall that will seriously alter your
| equation around comfort and immersion. micro-OLED screens
| are shipping this year which enable full immersion with
| pancake lenses at half the weight and greatly improved
| FOV. The next gen of chipsets will support resolutions
| and frame rates that eliminate screen door effect and
| nausea for a wide swathe of people.
|
| Within 2 years we'll be looking at _very_ different
| landscape for VR hardware. This is why people like
| Zuckerberg and companies like Apple are excited about it
| - they can see where the puck will be and they are
| skating to it, ignoring the critics operating on obsolete
| assumptions.
| turtleyacht wrote:
| Disney World's Animal Kingdom has an Avatar-themed "ride"
| where you are linked to a banshee rider. And they make
| you wear these silly glasses, with thick, bulbous lenses.
|
| So I'm there, mounted on a plastic motorbike, staring
| down in disbelief at the smaller-than-iPad display where
| the tachymeter and gauges would be. In front of me, in
| front of everyone to my left and right, is just plastic
| nothing. Plastic. And I think aloud, "Okay, are we gonna
| look down at this little screen the whole time?" The guy
| next to grins too: _Where 's the screen?_
|
| Then it starts. _Holy crap._ My _entire field of vision_
| is Pandora--up, down, left, right, everywhere.
|
| And we are flying on banshees! I feel a moment of
| weightlessness as we careen down a canyon at the speed of
| gravity. I want to hoot and holler. It's pure joy, and my
| heart _sings._
|
| _That 's_ virtual reality, to me.
| heather45879 wrote:
| Absolutely--it's also imagineering! Disney has done that
| for almost a century. But they make money because that's
| their bread-and-butter. You're buying an amazing
| experience at Disney, VR or otherwise.
|
| Meta's bread-and-butter is selling peoples data,
| irrespective of whether teens are committing suicide on
| their platforms.
| heather45879 wrote:
| You're definitely right the technology has tons of
| potential. Lots of applications in, for instance,
| content-creation space as well.
|
| The problem Meta ran into is that it's
| difficult/impossible to make money on it. It's a niche
| market at best, and it's much more difficult to prove the
| value when compared to something like Facebook. Facebook
| is easy to use and provides social value to everyone on
| the planet. And I say that not using it myself but I live
| in a small town and all business here rely on Facebook;
| the municipalities use it to communicate; elderly use
| it... it's accessible.
|
| I'm sure the wall Carmack ran into was the shareholders.
| To shareholders it's more often than not about profits.
| To Carmack it's probably about the product he envisions,
| not the profits. But you can't have both sustainably when
| folks can live without VR.
|
| I would jump on the bandwagon if my VR headset was mine:
| like a computer I can install whatever I want there--not
| in a walled garden owned by Evil Corp.
|
| The proper VR solution needs to be open source hardware
| and software. By the people, for the people. Reduce the
| barrier to entry and people will use it.
|
| One more thing: those virtual avatars are impossible to
| take seriously. If I'm in a virtual boardroom filled with
| those, I might as well be playing Minecraft.
| zmmmmm wrote:
| > if my VR headset was mine: like a computer I can
| install whatever I want there
|
| fwiw - you can install anything you want on your Quest.
| maxgashkov wrote:
| Nausea issue is not solvable by any standalone device.
| We'll either have direct brain jack-in that can override
| full range of sensory input (so there will be no
| dissonance between your sense of balance and vision) or
| we're stuck with mostly static experiences (teleporting
| point-to-point instead of moving etc.) which are not
| immersive.
|
| Not seeing the first one delivered within 5 years for
| sure and probably not within 50.
| netjiro wrote:
| Do you have numbers of the percentage of people who do
| get motion sickness from vr? Perhaps 50% of the
| population not going vomity is a large enough market?
| Perhaps 10%? As devices get better the market will grow.
| I can definitely feel off at 60Hz, but no problem so far
| at 120 if the latency is kept to a minimum.
|
| Plenty of people get seasick, but there are still quite a
| few of us who enjoy sailing a day through a proper
| October Storm.
| maxgashkov wrote:
| I don't have an exact number, but let me answer your
| question with another question -- why else are the most
| popular VR games (Beatsaber, Alyx etc.) either completely
| static or move-by-teleport? My suspicion is that they
| were playtested _ad nauseam_ and this showed significant
| portion of the players to be affected.
|
| > I can definitely feel off at 60Hz, but no problem so
| far at 120 if the latency is kept to a minimum.
|
| This is a common misconception and the type of nausea I'm
| talking about has nothing to do with the screen update
| latency or head tracking latency. Strongest effect
| happens when you're mostly stationary in the real world
| (sitting or standing on the floor) but moving in VR
| (let's say riding a rollercoaster). In this case, your
| vision tells your body that you should feel
| acceleration/deceleration, but your inner ear tells your
| body you're completely stationary. This is a
| contradiction commonly associated with intoxication and
| body deals with it accordingly.
|
| I accept that strength of the effect is different for
| everyone, for me personally when I tried the
| rollercoaster demo on Quest 1 nausea lasted for 2 hours
| (!) despite the fact that I was never seasick in my life
| before.
| trevyn wrote:
| Why was the Oculus Go considered a failure?
| fsiefken wrote:
| I think he meant commercially, technically (ideologically?)
| for me it was an amazing iphone/ipad like innovation -
| integrating samsung gear in one standalone easy to use
| package. I'd still use it for certain apps. https://www.red
| dit.com/r/OculusGo/comments/rnphlq/was_the_oc...
|
| Oculus Go formed one of the starting points for 6DOF mobile
| VR (even though the Quest1 'Santa Cruz' was already in
| development). If the comment was truthful, here it shows
| some bias. There are always multiple sides to a story.
| nullc wrote:
| > and in some cases legally required, work
|
| Are we talking EMI compliance or surveillance backdoors? :)
| eyko wrote:
| khazhoux wrote:
| Then we should dismiss your critique of his critique, since
| you are also anonymous :-)
| eyko wrote:
| You can, but I'm not that anonymous (one can easily find
| my name by searching for my username, not that there's
| much interesting to find anyway). More importantly, I
| wouldn't try to damage a person's reputation if I wasn't
| ready to stand behind what I said and, if proven wrong
| myself, take some responsibility. I think a few negative
| things were said about his personality, which can be
| damaging. An anonymous internet comment is not the most
| credible source though.
|
| Disclaimer: I don't work for Meta, don't know Carmack,
| etc.
| auggierose wrote:
| The difference is that nothing what eyko said is based on
| hearsay.
| earthnail wrote:
| Big corps usually prohibit their employees from expressing
| their personal opinions. It's sometimes tolerated but
| always against the employment contract. So whenever you're
| saying something, bigcorp could decide that "this one's too
| far". On a topic with as much PR as this one, it's rather
| dangerous to comment on if you gave a medium-to-high level
| position.
|
| The reason big corps do it is so that their PR department
| has ANY chance of sending a coherent message. So it's not
| even evil behaviour IMHO.
|
| All that to say, I understand why they used an anonymous
| account. Of course, that doesn't mean one has to believe
| them, it's their word against Carmack's. But it's good to
| hear that perspective IMO.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I don't disagree, and I was in a similar position not too
| long ago.
|
| But it also doesn't change the fact that this is
| ultimately hearsay. Maybe this was someone who butted
| heads and ultimately had the better idea go by the
| wayside because they lacked clout. Maybe they are a
| gilted employee whose full story would make them feel
| like how they described Carmack. We don't know and on the
| internet it's way too easy to pretend to that sabetour
| who never even worked at Meta but is very angry about
| some design decision in Quake 3.
|
| There's ultimately no good way to do PR as a non-PR
| employee for that reason, even if the big corp allowed
| it. You either put your name on the line or you just say
| nothing. Most employees choose the latter. Your best bet
| if you have any real evidence and want impact is to seek
| a journalist for coverage and anonymity.
|
| Anything else is simply a footnote to keep in mind until
| (if ever) some big bust happened.
| vintermann wrote:
| > Big corps usually prohibit their employees from
| expressing their personal opinions.
|
| Yes, but does that make it any better though? We
| understand why they have to do it anonymously, but it's
| still someone with nothing at stake, who we can't
| evaluate the claims of.
| dvzk wrote:
| I'm not sure there is much of substance to evaluate. If
| we fired every technical lead who sometimes "waded into
| areas with no experience," issued orders, followed a
| conviction or two and occasionally provided disparaging
| feedback, there would be no good engineers left. The
| bullying and devaluing claims are worth investigation,
| but that's always very subjective and range from "my boss
| disagrees with me" to horrific abuse.
| wzdd wrote:
| It's just really weird to me that people are all shocked-
| Pikachu about Carmack wanting to be the auteur in this
| scenario and to wield Meta's effectively-infinite resources
| in the exact ways that he wanted. It's apparent from every
| interview and article about him that this is how he operates.
| It seems to have worked well for him in the past, but it was
| obviously going to be a major culture clash at Meta unless
| they gave in and let him run the thing.
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| He was likely to have more success at Meta than his AGI
| startup. When it comes to intelligence and cognition no one
| even knows where to begin. The same for studying the brain.
| And the neural networks in the brain don't resemble
| anything like the neural networks in current AI.
|
| I guess there's this idea that we'll wander into the right
| territory. That might work for other things but probably
| not for the most complicated organism on our planet.
| sinenomine wrote:
| > When it comes to intelligence and cognition no one even
| knows where to begin
|
| Is it true, though? There is quite nice literature out
| there, surely John has read these papers during his
| bootstrap period:
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27683554/
|
| https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.15556v1
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| Are those papers breakthroughs in understanding human
| cognition? It feels like there must be some philosophical
| underpinning to creating human-like intelligence.
|
| I suppose there are two approaches: 1) understand the
| brain in all its complexity 2) wander upon something that
| seems like human cognition but isn't (i.e. GPT)
|
| Carmack and everyone else is taking the latter approach.
| Carmack may end up building something that seems
| intelligent -- if that's what you mean by intelligence.
|
| Consider Chomsky's view on current AI. He may disagree
| with me but he certainly disagrees with the idea that
| actual intelligence or something like AGI will result
| from current efforts.
|
| See the chapter on deep learning in this interview with
| Chomsky: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cMscNuSUy0I
|
| If you type in AI and Chomsky into YT you'll see many
| relevant interviews. The web summit one might be the most
| recent.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| I know someone who built a solid business around using the
| Oculus Go to show off kitchen designs to prospective buyers.
| The fact that the Go was a cheap-ish stand-alone Android
| device was really valuable for them.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Can you share the business name? That sounds very
| interesting.
| up2isomorphism wrote:
| Well, from what I have experienced, the people who dare to
| say "I don't care" in a corporate settings are usually much
| trust worthy than those been polite. Also most of time he
| said that because of the sheet frustration from the enormous
| BS that surround him.
| methods21 wrote:
| Carmack has more than proved himself. !
|
| Guess what buddy.... the entire fing executive management
| team is wading into areas they don't know this about,
| stabbing each other in the back, slowing progress due to
| corporate BS.
|
| And so what if Carmack was 'wading into areas where he had no
| experience'? (What was he showing up at the quarterly
| internal financial review and advising on advance tax
| strategy with offshore account to line exec pockets???? ;
|
| When you have a talent like that the organization makes space
| for them. It was never a cultural fit from the start.
| wyclif wrote:
| I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, but I have trouble
| believing that someone in your position would mistake "above"
| for "among" and not know the difference between "their" and
| "there." Surely a company like Meta has higher standards for
| written English.
| grumbel wrote:
| > It was Oculus Go, and by every metric is was a commercial,
| financial, and technical, disaster.
|
| It was the second best selling VR headset at that time, only
| behind PSVR1. The only problem with it was that it came too
| late. GearVR had been around since 2015 already, Go was
| essentially just a standalone version of that, but it took
| until 2018 to release. That was simply to late, as a year
| later it was replaced by the Quest1 and 3DOF VR was killed.
|
| Another problem with the Go was that Facebook didn't put
| effort into good 3DOF content. They never released a VR180-3D
| camera. Never build their own VR video platform. And finally
| they made Quest2 deliberately incompatible with Go, despite
| Quest1 still having some compatibility.
|
| There was and still is a lot of unnecessary fracturing going
| on in the VR space, even among Meta's own headsets. I think
| the Go line should simple have been continued with a stronger
| focus on movie instead of gaming. The Nreal Air shows what is
| possible when going that direction and Meta with an 8 year
| head start should have an easy time matching that. Instead we
| only got Quest2, which is much more heavy and low resolution
| than it needs to be for a movie headset.
| CynicusRex wrote:
| ben_w wrote:
| We're you trying to use a throwaway account for that?
| Because I think you used your main.
| thetoon wrote:
| Weren't he rather addressing the "throwaway" user's
| comment?
| felipellrocha wrote:
| If i had nickel for every time i had been in a conversation
| where someone "proved they were right" even though they were
| nowhere near there, ok, i wouldn't have millions but I'd have
| somewhere in the $50s which is a lot higher than you'd expect
| tiffanyh wrote:
| Sounds like Steve Jobs.
|
| Someone who is visionary, accustom to being in charge, and
| uses their intuition/gut as their compass because they fully
| understand the buck stops with them.
| Patrol8394 wrote:
| Steve Jobs once said: " It doesn't make sense to hire smart
| people and then tell them what to to , We hire smart people
| so they can tell us what to do."
| edem wrote:
| Given the fact that this is a throwaway account your
| credibility on this matter is less then zero. In fact this
| sounds like as if your project was shut down by Carmack and
| now your ego is bruised.
| AYBABTME wrote:
| His critique resonates with my expectations from large
| enterprises, and your perception also resonates from what I
| expect of large enterprises workers. So I'm guessing he's
| probably not wrong and your experience was probably an
| example of him hitting social/political roadblocks. In my
| arguably limited human sized experience, the vast majority of
| people at Meta-sized companies prefer the safety and comfort
| of things going slowly and being discussed at length, and
| being careful to respect all the hoops that need jumping
| through. And not having their caged shaken too much. This
| leads to 5% GPU utilization.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Do you mean Meta-sized or Meta-stasized?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi
| richliss wrote:
| I worked with someone who was a bona fide development genius
| about 10 years ago and he was a CTO and co-founder at the
| time and considered himself to be able to input into any
| conversation with people who were domain experts in fields
| that he wasn't.
|
| I remember him overruling the Head of Design and enforcing
| Arial to be the typeface used for the corporate brand because
| it was the typeface was present on more computers than any
| other in the world. Suffice to say the original typeface was
| much better.
|
| Self doubt is a really really important trait to have as a
| leader - don't automatically assume you're right outside of
| your area of expertise and that team members can come up with
| good solutions that aren't yours is the only way you can ever
| really scale.
|
| The CTO ultimately was forced out and became a specialist
| consultant and that probably suited him.
| michpoch wrote:
| Ok, that is an example where his advice was apparently
| incorrect.
|
| Was that a rule though? If you give advice in 100 different
| meetings, you'll be wrong in some of them for sure, even if
| you're a domain expert.
|
| If he was the CTO and co-founder it seems that his approach
| worked well, at least to get him and the company to that
| level.
| aswanson wrote:
| It's hilarious the CTO was enforcing corporate logo
| aesthetics. Talk about nanomanagement. Sheesh.
| cerved wrote:
| also, Arial
| aswanson wrote:
| Right?
| codethief wrote:
| > Self doubt is a really really important trait to have as
| a leader
|
| While I get the point you're making, I remember reading
| somewhere that _successful people_ (in terms of their
| career) tend to exhibit _less_ self-doubt.
| bee_rider wrote:
| What's wrong with Arial? I mean I know it is disliked by
| typography fans because it is a ripoff of the popular
| Helvetica. But like, moral concerns aside or whatever, as a
| slightly worse ripoff of a good and popular typeface, it is
| unsurprisingly fairly visually appealing...
|
| It seems like a reasonable product decision given that most
| people don't care about typeface history.
| bb88 wrote:
| I find Arial slightly discomforting, because the kerning
| is not as nice as with Helvetica. Helvetica feels
| "denser".
|
| But more to the point, for a corporate logo, Arial feels
| like a cheap knock off to the more polished Helvetica.
| You can see this yourself, by looking at corporate
| existing corporate logos designed in helvetica and then
| redesigned in Arial.
|
| https://www.ironicsans.com/helvarialquiz/
|
| Admittedly this is personal preference in the end, but I
| feel like if HR is going to give someone bad news,
| they're going to do it in Arial. If Apple is going to
| release a life changing technology, they're going to do
| it in Helvetica.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I should have thought more about the experiment. I was
| trying to identify the helvetica ones, looking for
| example for logos that looked slightly unusual or janky.
|
| I guess it would fit your point a little more if I just
| looked for whichever I thought was more aesthetically
| pleasing.
|
| Anyway, I got about 50% (accidentally closed the window,
| I think it may have been 51%?) so at least if I was the
| customer, the company would not seem to gain any
| advantage from licensing the superior font.
| bb88 wrote:
| The "R", "r", and "t" characters are the way you can tell
| between the two fonts.
|
| I think an example of a bad logo is Arial is this one:
|
| https://www.designworkplan.com/wp-content/font-arial-
| everywh...
|
| The A has too much space around it and it looks "uneven".
|
| The bottom one of this one is Helvetica.
|
| https://cdn0.tnwcdn.com/wp-
| content/blogs.dir/1/files/2009/10...
|
| It looks "fuller", "denser" to me. And leaves me with an
| impression of a "sturdy" company.
|
| Finally, here's Neue Helvetica 75 and Arial Pro Bold
| pages from Linotype. I just open them up in a new tab
| each and switch tabs to get a better idea for things.
|
| https://www.linotype.com/1264130/neue-helvetica-75-bold-
| prod...
|
| https://www.linotype.com/716034/arial-bold-product.html
| bee_rider wrote:
| I'm not sure I see a huge quality difference in the
| second example, but the A in the first example definitely
| looks awful.
| bb88 wrote:
| You can type "MIRABEAU" in Arial and Helvetica in the
| forms above, and you should see a definite improvement by
| using Helvetica.
| outworlder wrote:
| It's a typeface that was designed to be legible in
| monitors, more than two decades ago. There are better
| choices today.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| I shipped a successful game that used Comic Sans! ;)
| NAHWheatCracker wrote:
| Damn this sounds similar to a project manager I'm working
| with, except he doesn't have any of the technical/engineering
| merit.
| cudgy wrote:
| Are project managers expected to have technical/engineering
| merit? Or are they expected to be experts in managing
| complex projects at a high level?
| pengaru wrote:
| > When I hear people say "If only Meta would let Carmack do
| what he wants we'd see his ideal VR experience and it would
| be amazing". You already saw it. It was Oculus Go, and by
| every metric is was a commercial, financial, and technical,
| disaster.
|
| Hasn't Carmack always been pretty clear about wanting Meta to
| deliver an ultra-low-cost high-volume headset prioritizing
| getting them in as many hands as possible? Did Oculus Go
| deliver this? Because Carmack has seemed to be constantly
| complaining about this with every germane talk he's given to
| date...
| enqk wrote:
| What comes to mind is how hard it is to get low-latency user
| experiences out of a comglometate of teams exchanging data
| via blocks. I would expect someone like Carmack to have to
| interact with such teams in ways that they'll find intrusive
| camillomiller wrote:
| Oh, VR is currently successful? Must have missed some sales
| reports then...
| throwaway0asd wrote:
| > When data proved his idea was wrong, he would say words to
| the effect of "I don't care, because I still believe I'm
| right from an ideological background".
|
| I cannot imagine commercial software in any form where that
| is not the prevailing sentiment. I have heard of developers
| who actually measure things in the capacity of their
| corporate employment but in 20 years of doing this work I
| have only seen it once.
|
| As such I don't even bother mentioning performance or
| correctness at work (across all my employers) where evidence
| is so hastily discarded and inconvenient conclusions are a
| suicide pill.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| Yeah well, you're anonymous, so you might as well be someone
| with a huge ego who got their idea shut down by Carmack once
| and is still bitter about it. More often than not, when
| people think they "prove something wrong with data" it's more
| that they're "taking some data and interpret in a way that
| fits their standpoint".
|
| Carmack has proven enough times in the past that he's able to
| deliver, that he can push technology, knows what's possible
| and what isn't, and can wrap up a product. "Wading into
| fields he has no experience in" sounds pretty unlikely for VR
| given his past work. And I wouldn't consider the Oculus Go a
| failure, more like ahead of it's time and released too early.
| A prototype of the quest. But I guess now it's easy to claim
| everything that's bad about the go was Carmack's work and
| everything good about the quest and quest 2 was someone
| else's.
| [deleted]
| comfypotato wrote:
| At risk of upsetting this thread's balance and reducing it
| to negativity: I prefer your parent comment's
| interpretation of the Go. "Ahead of its time"? Technology
| is the last space where a newfangled product would lose
| momentum by being released to early.
|
| I'm open to being proved ignorant here. Can you think of
| some examples where tech was obviously ahead of its time
| and not accepted?
|
| Subscription music services like Rhapsody provided what
| Apple Music does now 15 years ago, and they died out
| (similarly Microsoft's Zune service). Maybe this is what
| you're saying? - All the same, I would trump these examples
| up to poor marketing, management, and product specifics.
| Apple Music isn't releasing their service at a better time.
| They just put a lot more effort into it, and it provides
| the service _better_. (Their phone ecosystem plays a big
| part in this.) This example could be extended into saying
| that the Go just wasn't good enough (thus: Carmack failed).
|
| FWIW: I'm a Carmack fan, and I base a lot of how I use
| Emacs on his wisdom accumulated over the years. For
| example, his recent shift to VSCode has inspired me to
| think in that direction.
| nickstinemates wrote:
| > Can you think of some examples where tech was obviously
| ahead of its time and not accepted?
|
| Webvan. 2000 era shopping as a service. Predates
| instacart, uber eats, etc. World wasn't ready for it.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| Have the modern versions of those services made any money
| yet, though? They could just be bad business models which
| are being help up by VC money.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| > Can you think of some examples where tech was obviously
| ahead of its time and not accepted?
|
| Uh yeah, VR itself as a concept and models of VR have
| been live since the 80s but were especially hyped in the
| 90s but never went anywhere beyond amusement parks and
| arcades. And no one wanted to touch VR in the 00s despite
| huge leaps in processing power.
|
| I would even argue the original Macintosh was ahead of
| its time, maybe because it was too expensive and too hard
| to upgrade. As a result, DOS and Windows and IBM clones
| took the PC market, despite coming later and initially
| being inferior.
|
| Lots of such examples in history.
| aswanson wrote:
| Beta max vs VHS is another one.
| ghaff wrote:
| Which is not nearly as simple as the common mythology.
| comfypotato wrote:
| I enjoy this as a friendly/elucidating discussion and
| don't want to annoy or antagonize you (just don't respond
| if I do).
|
| I do appreciate your take on the original Macintosh.
|
| VR has never been ahead of its time in that it's never
| had a time. It still hasn't made its way into any sort of
| popular acceptance. The gaming industry is the only space
| in which it has made significant strides. If VR circles
| back around to popular acceptance of something like
| Carmack's vision (like the Mac has done with Job's) your
| point will be valid.
|
| As it stands, Carmack's vision failed, and Meta continues
| to experiment and R&D with different directions.
| Carmack's decision to leave more closely aligns with the
| ideas expressed in the comment that started this IMO.
|
| I'm literally invested in Meta's endeavors here. (FMET
| through Fidelity Investments.) The previous sentence is
| just communicating my bias that I think they have the
| right idea in the long run.
| scheeseman486 wrote:
| Carmack's vision culminated in Quest 2, which is the only
| hardware Meta has produced that any significant number of
| people care about.
|
| Instead of Macintosh, I might point at Commodore.
| Affordable hardware with success in some niches like
| video production, but poor broader acceptance beyond
| gaming markets. Weirdly out of touch management with a
| yearning to be accepted by stuffy business types, but
| completely misjudging wants and needs. With Quest Pro I
| get vibes of the Commodore 128, a game machine trying and
| failing to be a Serious Business Device.
| ohyes wrote:
| Tbh if oculus weren't associated with Facebook in a
| meaningful way I'd be all over it. But it is so I avoid
| it. The technology works fine but is a commercial
| failure, that's not wholly Carmack's fault.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Yea it is a device that goes on your face, puts cameras
| in your room, and creates a pseudo-reality for you. Who
| in their right mind would trust Facebook with that?
| WA wrote:
| The millions of people who put microphones from Amazon or
| Google in their homes.
| taylorius wrote:
| No no, we're looking for people "in their right mind"
| shapefrog wrote:
| That simply demonstrates how low a regard people have for
| facebook.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| While I completely agree with you. I think it's important
| to point out that if it wasn't sold by Facebook, it would
| be 2.5x the cost and then most people wouldn't touch it
| as it would be too big of an investment.
| onepointsixC wrote:
| Why do you think it's a commercial failure?
| Eisenstein wrote:
| It is probably helpful to define 'commercial failure'. In
| the sense that it sold a lot of units, it is a success;
| in the sense that it made any money for the company which
| produced it, it is a failure. So, it could be taken
| different ways depending on how the term is defined.
| Shared404 wrote:
| I also fall into this category.
|
| Oculus without facebook would have probably sold me
| multiple pieces of hardware right now.
|
| With Facebook however, I'll never touch the stuff.
| worik wrote:
| > VR has never been ahead of its time in that it's never
| had a time. It still hasn't made its way into any sort of
| popular acceptance.
|
| So VR is _still_ ahead of its time?
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Between Oculus, Vive, and other various competitors, VR
| has been successful in many ways that it wasn't able to
| achieve 20 years ago. If you set the bar so high that it
| needs to be as successful as the personal computer or the
| mobile phone, sure. But I wouldn't call Oculus or modern
| VR a failure. It's a niche success.
| dwighttk wrote:
| > If you set the bar so high that it needs to be as
| successful as the personal computer or the mobile
| phone...
|
| Seems like Meta has done that
| ghaff wrote:
| >I would even argue the original Macintosh was ahead of
| its time
|
| You can argue about the Mac but certainly the Lisa was.
| Early laptops like the Data General/One as well (although
| in that case there business issues as well).
|
| As for streaming music, to go mainstream it probably
| needed cheap enough and fast enough cellular service. Of
| course, ripped, purchased, and umm acquired local copies
| of music also had a place once cheap enough portable
| devices with sufficient storage were available.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| The company I worked for, had a Xerox system. It looked
| like an 860, but may have actually been more modern.
|
| Now _that_ was ahead of its time.
|
| We also had Osborne and Kaypro computers, but the 860 was
| arguably the inspiration for the Mac. The operating
| system presented a mouse (actually, I think it was a
| touchpad)-driven, icon-based GUI. I remember seeing the
| "trash can," on the bottom right (I think). I also seem
| to remember folder icons.
|
| But that was from a brief, 5-minute (or less) peek, 40
| years ago.
|
| They didn't let us mensch engineers near the thing.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Good point!
|
| Of course Alan Kay's Dynabook was the original gangsta
| "ahead of its time" laptop.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynabook
|
| And the GRiD Compass laptop was even ahead of the Data
| General/One's time.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_General/One
|
| >The Data General/One (DG-1) was a laptop introduced in
| 1984 by Data General.
|
| The GRiD had a fanatical niche following in the
| government and military and space and spook industries.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28736510
|
| >Old school hackers, military generals, special forces
| paratroopers, and space shuttle astronauts who are
| sensitive to social status use a GRiD Compass.
|
| https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/GRiD_Compass
|
| >Development began in 1979, and the main buyer was the
| U.S. government. NASA used it on the Space Shuttle during
| the early 1980s, as it was powerful, lightweight, and
| compact. The military Special Forces also purchased the
| machine, as it could be used by paratroopers in combat.
|
| >Along with the Gavilan SC and Sharp PC-5000 released the
| following year, the GRiD Compass established much of the
| basic design of subsequent laptop computers, although the
| laptop concept itself owed much to the Dynabook project
| developed at Xerox PARC from the late 1960s. The Compass
| company subsequently earned significant returns on its
| patent rights as its innovations became commonplace.
|
| I asked Glenn Edens, who co-founded GRiD, about a story I
| heard about the GRiD a long time ago, and here's the
| discussion:
|
| https://computerhistory.org/profile/glenn-edens/
|
| Hey Glenn!
|
| Did you ever hear the rumor about the Mossad agent whose
| GRiD stopped a bullet?
|
| I was writing about the GRiD on Hacker News, but can't
| find any citations for that rumor. But it sounds like it
| could be true!
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28736200
|
| >Not a solution for people who are sensitive to social
| status.
|
| >Old school hackers, military generals, special forces
| paratroopers, and space shuttle astronauts who are
| sensitive to social status use a GRiD Compass. [...] I
| can't find a citation and don't know if it's true, but
| decades ago I heard a rumor that a Mossad agent's
| magnesium alloy GRiD stopped a bullet! Try that with a
| MacBook Air.
|
| https://www.jstor.org/stable/3527036
|
| >Man in a Briefcase: The Social Construction of the
| Laptop Computer and the Emergence of a Type Form
|
| >Abstract
|
| >Dominant design discourse of the late 1970s and early
| 1980s presented the introduction of the laptop computer
| as the result of 'inevitable' progress in a variety of
| disparate technologies, pulled together to create an
| unprecedented, revolutionary technological product. While
| the laptop was a revolutionary product, such a narrative
| works to dismiss a series of products which predated the
| laptop but which had much the same aim, and to deny a
| social drive for such products, which had been in
| evidence for a number of years before the technology to
| achieve them was available. This article shows that the
| social drive for the development of portable computing
| came in part from the 'macho mystique' of concealed
| technology that was a substantial motif in popular
| culture at that time. Using corporate promotional
| material from the National Archive for the History of
| Computing at the University of Manchester, and interviews
| with some of the designers and engineers involved in the
| creation of early portable computers, this work explores
| the development of the first real laptop computer, the
| 'GRiD Compass', in the context of its contemporaries. The
| consequent trajectory of laptop computer design is then
| traced to show how it has become a product which has a
| mixture of associated meanings to a wide range of
| consumers. In this way, the work explores the role of
| consumption in the development of digital technology.
|
| https://spectrum.ieee.org/nasas-original-laptop-the-grid-
| com...
|
| >NASA's Original Laptop: The GRiD Compass Rugged and well
| designed, the first clamshell laptop flew on the space
| shuttle
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20080625004757/http://www.net
| mag...
|
| >GRiDs In Space
|
| https://groups.google.com/g/ba.market.computers/c/w5KVg1I
| gdt...
|
| >GRiD Compass laptops, peripherals, and software
|
| https://medium.com/l-a-t-o/invece-di-guardare-avanti-
| prova-a...
|
| >[translated:] The Grid Compass was made of black
| lacquered magnesium alloy.
|
| >Among its most remembered features, there is the fact
| that the paint went away after a while, due to the weight
| and dimensions that did not allow it to be too delicate
| with its transport. And so the dull black splintered,
| revealing the shiny metal beneath.
|
| >Grid Compass - Bill Moggridge Design
|
| >The Grid Compass was a status symbol, the flag of that
| tribe of people who wanted to show the world that they
| can never really disconnect from work.
|
| >Owning it was cool.
|
| >But even cooler was having chipped it, because it was
| the unmistakable sign that one not only possessed that
| thing, but actually used it.
|
| The GRiD was so well built, and they were so popular with
| the military, that rumor was totally believable.
|
| This has some stories about spooky GRiD users, like
| Admiral John Poindexter, who was a bit of a hacker:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQgoAQq7bP4
|
| >Pioneering the Laptop: Engineering the GRiD compass
|
| >Introduced in 1982, the GRiD Compass 1100 was likely the
| first commercial computer created in a laptop format and
| one of the first truly portable machines. With its rugged
| magnesium clamshell case (the screen folds flat over the
| keyboard), switching power supply, electro-luminescent
| display, non-volatile bubble memory, and built-in modem,
| the hardware design incorporated many features that we
| take for granted today. Software innovations included a
| graphical operating system, an integrated productivity
| suite including word processor, spreadsheet, graphics and
| e-mail. GRiD Systems Corporation, founded in 1979 by John
| Ellenby and his co-founders Glenn Edens and David
| Paulsen, pioneered many portable devices including the
| laptop, pen-based and tablet PC form factors.
|
| >Key members of the original GRiD engineering team --
| Glenn Edens, Carol Hankins, Craig Mathias and Dave
| Paulsen -- share engineering stories from the Wild West
| of the laptop computer. Moderated by New York Times
| journalist John Markoff.
|
| (At 32:37 they mention an external 5 1/4" floppy disk
| peripheral that was returned for service with a bullet
| hole, and the "Scrubbing Bubbles" software they wrote for
| the government to erase the bubble memory in case of
| emergency.)
|
| Glenn Edens sent the following messages at 11:16 PM
|
| Hello Don, I know that rumor, I can neither confirm nor
| deny :)
|
| We got a lot of returned gear with bullet holes or
| shrapnel damage of odd kinds.
|
| I doubt GRiD's use had anything to do with social status
| though - it was more about it was the first laptop, it
| was rugged (we over-engineered the heck out of it), it
| had an amazing software development environment (you
| could actually write SW for it on it beyond BASIC),
| usually folks rag on the price, however if you fully
| configured any other computer of the day the price was
| not all that different - plus no one paid retail in those
| days, thats what everyone forgets :)
|
| I love all the references you found!
|
| I'll also add that it is a myth that the military and
| Government were our biggest customers, they were about
| 25%, our biggest early customers were banks, audit firms,
| engineering firms, oil exploration, etc.
|
| The first machine went to Steve Jobs (he paid for it, it
| was a bet he and I made), the second machine went to
| William F. Buckley (he paid for it as well). The one
| thing I regret is that we didn't release the Smalltalk
| system we did for it (getting a mouse was not easy in
| 1982, the only producer at that time was Tat Lam and all
| his production went to Xerox (Star prototypes as I
| remember). A funny story that for Apple to get a mouse
| prototype for the Lisa I had to go "appropriate" one from
| Xerox PARC - with tacit permission, everyone forgets
| Xerox was an investor in Apple (Trip Hawkins kindly tells
| that story from time to time).
|
| So how are you doing?
|
| Larry Ellison was an early buyer as well to use for a
| sailing race computer - I was told it replaced a DEC
| minicomputer that was being used onboard, saving a lot of
| weight and power draw :)
|
| I can add it wasn't Mossad that I know of, it was closer
| to home, although I think we may have discussed that long
| ago - it was a US Agency :).
|
| Don wrote:
|
| So I'm reading between the lines that it DID stop a
| bullet, but it was somebody in the US, not the Mossad. Is
| that why Reagan survived his assassination attempt??! ;)
|
| I still believe the social status was more like the
| unintended effect, not the primary cause, of people
| owning a GRiD, because they certainly were bad-assed
| computers.
|
| Maybe MythBusters cold do an experiment to find out if a
| GRiD will stop a bullet. Hopefully not a working one
| though, those should be treated with care and respect and
| not shot at.
|
| Wow it would have been amazing to run Smalltalk on that
| thing. As it was so inspired by the Dynabook, did Alan
| Kay ever get to play with one?
|
| Glenn replied:
|
| That's the story. I never heard it had anything to do
| with Reagan though. Over the years we did get multiple
| units with all sorts of crazy damage, much of it was
| repairable, some was not.
|
| Well we certainly did nothing to counter the image,
| although I think that really came later. In that time (we
| started shipping in 1982) even having a computer was a
| big deal no matter if it were an Osbourne or a GRiD.
| Although the Compaq's et. al. sewing machine sized
| computers shipped well into the late 80's. We really
| didn't any serious competition until 88' or 89', so
| nearly five years after we started shipping. For the
| first 3 years we were always catching up to the backlog.
|
| Indeed :). We definitely found 'debris' inside the
| machines that were returned to see if they could be
| repaired, obviously it would have to do with what size
| bullet and angle of incidence.
|
| The Dynabook was the inspiration for sure. Yes, Alan Kay
| played with several GRiD models as did Dan Ingalls. The
| Smalltalk implementation was on the GRiD was pretty good
| for the day, the 8086 being a real 16-bit machine made a
| difference. The Alto II was still a bit faster, but not
| by much. If a mouse were readily commercially available
| we would have shipped it. It was a little hard to use on
| the small screen so you wound up moving windows often.
| justin66 wrote:
| Were the GRiD laptops, which I remember reading about in
| Byte Magazine back in the day, waterproof? I believe
| decades of experience with portable computers suggest
| that might be a more important feature than being able to
| stop a bullet. Depending on what kind of company one is
| keeping.
|
| I've been revisiting it lately, and Byte actually
| contains a vast collection of things that didn't make it
| largely because they were ahead of their time. Great
| stuff.
|
| https://vintageapple.org/byte/
| abecedarius wrote:
| Expensive and hard to upgrade are both separate from
| being ahead of your time design-wise. (Apple had healthy
| margins on Macintosh from the start, and the 128k no-
| slots aspects were both argued against by people on the
| team. I guess there's a sense of "ahead of its time" that
| fits, where Jobs consistently aimed for more "upscale
| consumer" type products but wasn't yet able to make that
| work for a big market.)
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _Can you think of some examples where tech was obviously
| ahead of its time and not accepted_
|
| Mobile devices with clunky resistive touchscreens come to
| mind. The iPhone was hardly the first "smartphone," but
| Jobs's key insight was to have people sitting by the
| river waiting for decent touchscreen technology to come
| floating by. When capacitive multitouch happened, it was
| a classic example of apparent "good luck" being equal to
| "preparation meets opportunity." Musk is obviously trying
| to camp the same spawning grounds with Neuralink.
|
| Teletext might be another example, as the predecessor to
| the WWW. Putting a lot of money into advancing Teletext
| development would have resulted in WebTV at best, and
| more likely just an expensive waste of time.
|
| Any of dozens of personal computer models in the 1980s,
| some quite advanced, that weren't made by Apple or IBM.
|
| Navigation and infotainment in cars -- Buick's early CRT
| touchscreen and Honda's "electric gyrocator" for
| navigation come to mind. There was no point trying to do
| either of those things at the time.
|
| Minidisc as an early embodiment of advanced DSP
| techniques for lossy audio compression. ATRAC could have
| been MP3 but wasn't, because Sony.
|
| Analog laserdiscs as a home video format. It was the
| right basic idea, and boasted some exotic technology
| under the hood -- but disc-based A/V needed to wait for
| digital techniques before it really made sense.
|
| Not hard to come up with examples that answer this
| question, for sure.
| NovaVeles wrote:
| One step ahead is an innovation. Two steps ahead is a
| Martyr.
| ChildOfChaos wrote:
| Stadia is a great example. I am still using it today
| before the shut down, it's amazing how it's actually got
| me into playing games again and it's fantastic for casual
| games with friends since everyone can play no matter
| there hardware and the multiplayer features are fantastic
| for this.
|
| It works and it is fantastic, but it's ahead of it's time
| and most people don't know what it is. That and Google's
| mismanagement of the service, but if it was an accepted
| thing, Google wouldn't have had to push it ahead so much,
| but since it wasn't they did and they failed.
| tcmart14 wrote:
| I don't know if we really pin the blame on that for
| stadia. Maybe portions, but I also suspect that a big
| reason for stadia's "failure" wasn't necessarily
| Google's/Stadia's fault. Lots of homes still have really
| bad internet connections. I tried stadia, I think the
| concept is great and most everything is there except I
| can't get a decent enough internet connection from any
| ISP in my area to make it usable at home. But I know
| people is places with really good internet connections
| and have heard nothing but good things about it before I
| tried.
| [deleted]
| zamalek wrote:
| > Can you think of some examples where tech was obviously
| ahead of its time and not accepted?
|
| Smartphones. Microsoft and Symbian were at least 7 years
| ahead of Apple. The manner in which they squandered the
| opportunity aside, most people simply didn't care about
| having email on their phone.
| cudgy wrote:
| > Can you think of some examples where tech was obviously
| ahead of its time and not accepted?
|
| TabletPC and Newton before it.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| > Can you think of some examples where tech was obviously
| ahead of its time and not accepted?
|
| Well I think we might have different ideas of what "ahead
| of its time" exactly is. I would include - and I think I
| hinted at that with "released too early" - things that
| simply weren't refined enough technically, as well as
| things that relied on other technology that simply wasn't
| capable, widespread or accepted enough at their time.
|
| So regarding Rhapsody for example, it was released in
| 2001, a time where the majority of people was still on
| dial up iirc, and even if you were one of the lucky ones
| with a DSL connection, you might've had a metered
| connection, so music streaming was just... ahead of it's
| time.
| [deleted]
| justin66 wrote:
| > Technology is the last space where a newfangled product
| would lose momentum by being released to early.
|
| > I'm open to being proved ignorant here. Can you think
| of some examples where tech was obviously ahead of its
| time and not accepted?
|
| Is this a joke?
| somehnacct3757 wrote:
| I've always thought that TiVo was way ahead of its time.
| The company is still alive but it feels weird to talk
| about it in present tense when we've got Roku,
| Chromecast, Firestick, and Apple TV. Even the era of
| cable provider DVRs made me feel like TiVo was ahead of
| its time!
| bee_rider wrote:
| Maybe as a company.
|
| The idea of the actual device seems very tied to a
| particular time, not ahead of it. The point was to record
| broadcast TV (so, reliant on the time when broadcast TV
| was the main way of getting TV) and the ability to skip
| ads (nowadays any streaming service worth watching
| doesn't have ads anyway).
| ghaff wrote:
| TiVo was sort of a niche and basically as soon as DVRs
| weren't, the mainstream was fine with just using whatever
| they got from their cable provider.
| mmcconnell1618 wrote:
| Tivo nailed the user experience which is why it took off.
| In the early years, the response time on the interface
| was nearly instant for everything. This made it
| delightful to use because it felt like an extension of
| your intentions. Today, even with all the content in the
| world available, there are far more delays and wait times
| because the content is streaming and not local. Even
| YouTube TV, which could have the same 10ms response time
| as Stadia, is slow in many places.
| AceyMan wrote:
| footnote: The TiVo UX was _superb_ but, for my money,
| ReplayTV was superior, technically.
|
| And, worth mentioning, its UX was not lacking in any
| perceivable way; OK, maybe less flair & eye candy than
| TiVo, but also really, really good in its discoverability
| & daily usability.
| grumbel wrote:
| The Go was certainly not "ahead of it's time". It was a
| standalone version of the GearVR, which was released three
| years earlier. At the same time Oculus released the Go with
| 3DOF tracking, Google released the Lenovo Mirage Solo with
| 6DOF tracking.
|
| That said, there was nothing fundamentally wrong with the
| Go. It was and still is, the cheapest entry point into VR.
| The lack of features made it much more lightweight and
| comfortable than its successors, which also cost double of
| the Go.
|
| The only real problem with the Go is that Facebook didn't
| continue that line of product. There is plenty of room for
| a 3DOF/2D content focused headset, but Facebook never
| really cared about that area of VR.
| P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote:
| This was my interpretation as well.
| moralestapia wrote:
| >who got their idea shut down by Carmack once and is still
| bitter about it
|
| Nice fantasy you created there to support your argument.
| Have you heard of _" don't shoot the messenger"_?
|
| I admire Carmack as much all other hackers around. I don't
| sympathize with many of Meta's practices. Still, it's
| entirely plausible that GP's experience holds truth.
|
| I've been around the equivalent of people like Carmack in
| academia and all of them have their dash of arrogance and
| petulance, sometimes this leads them to take really bad
| decisions. Also, engineering skills and management skills
| are different things. And there's Peter's Principle as
| well, to which Carmack is not exempt either.
| bee_rider wrote:
| The person's whole story was entirely based around their
| anonymous word. The follow up comment reads to me like a
| narrative way of pointing they out.
|
| We don't really know, I guess, what happened internally.
| But:
|
| * Carmack has tossed some grenades as he left, so if
| there's a real story there I guess we're likely to hear
| about it from some non-anonymous sources soon enough if
| he was a real pain.
|
| * He's gone now, so we'll see to what extent he was
| holding them back shortly.
|
| I bet we hear nothing and they never release anything,
| but I won't claim to have an uncle who works at
| ~~Nintendo~~ Facebook.
| freejazz wrote:
| They can just point out it's anonymous... that's the only
| logical connection. The rest is just as speculative.
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| The story from Carmack is also based on his word. Unless
| you've worked with him directly, everything you know
| about John Carmack is based on some or other's words.
| essentia0 wrote:
| A word with a name behind it.
| e-v wrote:
| Does it make it more true?
| Retric wrote:
| Statistically yes.
|
| There are vastly more people with at best second hand
| information and at worst willing to make stuff up than
| there are people directly involved.
|
| This is why people are allowed to confront their accusers
| in court and we are suspicious of hearsay.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| I think that the point is that we can and do have other's
| stories of Carmack's behavior but nothing about 8989.
|
| Have others in the past said similar things about
| Carmack?
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| I'm not obsessed with Carmack, so I honestly don't know
| what has been said about him one way or the other. But
| really this is just a coat rack to hang a point about the
| epistemology of the argument.
|
| >Yeah well, you're anonymous...Carmack has proven enough
| times in the past that he's able to deliver, that he can
| push technology
|
| In a follow up agreeing with him
|
| >The person's whole story was entirely based around their
| anonymous word
|
| And later still
|
| >A word with a name behind it.
|
| So what's being implicitly said here is "I judge what's
| true based on the authority of the source". The premise
| is John Carmack is an asshole, and the attempt to refute
| it is "I have it on good authority he isn't", and when
| you dig into that claim the authority is either Carmack
| himself or a tech news org article. Well, when you stop
| and think about it, tech news has no interest in learning
| or publicizing if he's an asshole.
|
| Unless you worked with him, everything you know about
| Carmack is just something you read somewhere. But there
| is no root of the reputation tree. Reputation comes from
| nowhere. Its all just bits of text being trusted because
| they looks like other bits of text you previously
| trusted. Nothing ever grounds the Carmack story in
| something else you can observe. We have no way to test if
| we are in a PR manicured version of the truth or not.
| Claims about him are both unfalsifiable and
| inconsequential and reduce to insisting a preferred
| source of narrative is more reputable than the others.
|
| As far as I know, he only exists as a concept which is
| written about in websites I frequent. I'm a John Carmack
| Truther. There is no John Carmack. The CIA made him up as
| part of MK Ultra II. I read it on a very reputable online
| forum.
| retSava wrote:
| Everyone can and will make really bad decisions, but in
| my experience, owning up to mistakes and taking
| responsibility in contrast to playing it down and being
| history revisionists, is inversely proportional to, well,
| how clever they consider themselves be. The "well that
| was intentional/expected/irrelevant since it was really X
| instead of Y we did" is a bit worn by now. Painting
| broadly, generalizing etc of course.
| MrScruff wrote:
| I think the point was that any large enough company will
| have a ton of politics related to decisions around
| technology, so one person's anonymous perspective
| shouldn't carry much/any weight.
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| >has proven enough times in the past
|
| Past experiences do not mean future success. This isn't
| even about Carmack: past 'heroes' end up failing in their
| decision-making in the future many times, and they were
| followed for no other reason than 'they have a track
| record'.
|
| The sooner that myth dies, the better.
| mihaic wrote:
| Past experience is not a perfect predictor, but still
| much better than almost anything else. I'm pretty sure
| you'd feel safer going into an operations if the surgeon
| said "I've done this 100 times now" instead of "This is
| my first time with this procedure".
|
| Of course, it matters if the experience is directly
| relevant, and that's where hero worshiping often gets it
| wrong.
| threatripper wrote:
| It does not ensure it but it is the best indicator we
| have.
| moralestapia wrote:
| Not at all! There's even a fallacy named after that, come
| on.
| bt4u wrote:
| lajamerr wrote:
| Let's say we have 2 people in two different walks of
| life. Jim and Alice.
|
| Both of them are entrepreneurs and like doing startups.
| Both of their goals are to take a startup from idea to $1
| Billion+ IPO in 2 years and exit and then start the next
| start-up. If they don't reach 1 Billion IPO they just
| exit.
|
| After 20 years. Jim and Alice have both attempted 10
| startups.
|
| Jim has reached the goal 2 out of 10 times. While Alice
| has reached the goal 8 out of 10 times.
|
| Would it be a fallacy to bet on Alice if you had to
| invest in either Jim or Alice's startup?
| moralestapia wrote:
| Yes.
|
| There's plenty of other variables at play.
|
| e.g.
|
| Jim built two huge public companies, while Alice reached
| "the goal" of selling them early and fast.
|
| Jim's on food while Alice's on real estate, and the new
| bet has to do with food.
|
| Jim's bootstrapped while Alice is not.
|
| Jim's on hard tech while Alice does web3 stuff.
|
| There's a reason why _" past performance is no guarantee
| of future results"_.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| That is an indication of why the particulars are
| important, but not defining what makes the argument
| fallacious. For instance 'ad hominem' is a fallacy
| because attacking a person making an argument doesn't
| make the argument incorrect. Relying on past behavior to
| indicate future success is _also_ what you just did, but
| you were more specific about the inputs.
| salawat wrote:
| >Carmack has proven enough times in the past that he's able
| to deliver, that he can push technology, knows what's
| possible and what isn't, and can wrap up a product.
|
| In the finance world, lesson number 1 is past performance
| is not a predictor of future results.
|
| I don't care how much of a virtuoso you are, if you clash
| with culture, you're fucked. I'm just coming out of a
| similar stint where the best I could do was hold off a
| predilection toward toxic culture norms long enough for
| processes to materialize. To support the business in spite
| of it.
|
| So I know exactly the kind of forces he was probably
| working against. It's rather thankless, draining, and
| exhausting in a way sleep doesn't help with.
|
| It's often bidirectional as well, so there's a trick to
| figuring out when it's time to bounce.
| beowulfey wrote:
| Carmack has been around a long time, and I've never heard a
| word about him that rings true to the PC. Anyone on here
| worked with him in the past?
| SideQuark wrote:
| Read the John Romero stuff. Even Carmack explains in the
| Lex Friedman interview how badly Carmack treated him.
| Carmack also presents enough in that interview to expect
| this take us quite likely correct.
|
| All from Carmacks own mouth.
| gompertz wrote:
| ruggeri wrote:
| I say this as someone who cares about language, and who
| has no dog in this Carmack dispute.
|
| I think you are overweighting a fairly simple grammatical
| error. The commenter expresses themself clearly and
| logically. It is possible that they don't speak English
| as a first language, or that they simply are not that
| careful about making grammatical mistakes. Not everyone
| is as pedantic about language as you or I may be.
|
| Unreasonable people can write grammatically, and
| reasonable people can write ungrammatically. I think it
| is better to judge an argument by its reasonableness.
|
| I think many people would consider your response impolite
| and unkind to the original poster. Surely you do not want
| to shame someone for their lack of mastery with the
| English language? Surely you would rather judge an
| argument on its merits?
|
| May I suggest a last question: could you see yourself
| reading this comment to the original poster face-to-face?
| Does it not seem rude and condescending to imagine
| yourself doing that?
| the-smug-one wrote:
| > It is possible that they don't speak English as a first
| language
|
| This is more of a fun side note: It's more likely that
| they're a native speaker. People who learn English as a
| second language generally don't make the their/there mix
| up.
| takeda wrote:
| I observed that too on myself (English is my second
| language), and I even wrote comments like that in the
| past, but after 20 years I noticed that I started making
| those errors myself, which sucks.
|
| I'm guessing when you read people making this mistake
| over and over (I even saw it done in news articles) I
| guess your brain starts equating them together :(
|
| I'm thankful for those people correcting it, although I
| think it is a losing battle.
| edanm wrote:
| That _is_ a fun side note :) Do you have a source for
| this? I 'd love to read more about it. I assume it's
| because when you're actually taught this specifically,
| you remember it, as opposed to native speakers who
| "learn" the spelling via osmosis or something.
| takeda wrote:
| I observed it on myself, although after some time I
| started doing it too.
|
| My belief was that it's because English is not spelled
| the same way it sounds, so people who learn it are forced
| to memorize pronunciation and writing separately.
| haspok wrote:
| Native speakers learn the language at a time when they
| can't read or write, so they have to rely on their
| listening. Non-native speakers on the other hand usually
| first see the language written down, and then hear /
| pronounce it, and connect the writing with what they
| hear.
|
| If I had a penny for every time a native speaker wrote
| "would of" instead of "would have" in forums, I'd be a
| billionaire. "Their" / "They're" / "There" is also
| common.
|
| But the funny thing is, I noticed I would make similar
| errors after being immersed in a native environment after
| a few years time. Somehow I just say to myself what I
| wanted to write, and the slip-up happens. So native
| speakers are more prone to this, but it's not only there
| privilege!
| takeda wrote:
| > So native speakers are more prone to this, but it's not
| only there privilege!
|
| LOL, you won't fool me.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| May also just be autocorrect? Like I have to actively
| battle my mobile keyboard to type "its" and not have it
| turn into "it's".
| eitland wrote:
| I use SwiftKey for this exact reason.
|
| Other keyboards are seriously annoying by either not
| having prediction, putting them behind late T9s or they
| have predictions which seems to be made by someone who
| almost actively try to make me look stupid.
| LightG wrote:
| I'd like to see the stats on that.
| xattt wrote:
| Half-serious take: My bet is on a deliberate attempt to
| throw off any attempts to match their writing style to
| their OG account via AI.
| comprev wrote:
| English is the only language I know and my international
| friends take great pleasure in correcting my grammatical
| errors. I've learned a great deal about my mother tongue
| from them!
| rapnie wrote:
| There is also a good possibility that this person is
| hampered by dyslexia, a very common disability where such
| oversights are easily made.
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| Thank you for saying everything I wanted to say.
|
| I only add that the post above invokes some wildly
| spurious logic in counting the 5 instances of the same
| mistake as if they were 5 different mistakes. Such a
| basic error really makes me question his general
| reasoning ability.
| gompertz wrote:
| Going to reply on this comment since it's a thorough
| response to mine.
|
| Look; I'm seeing a lot of reasoning across comments from
| non-native language, keyboard input, autocorrect, and so
| forth.
|
| None of this changes the fact that the usage is just flat
| out wrong. Have we become so soft in society that nothing
| can be pointed out because of speculative reasons?
|
| If it's a 2nd language, learn the language. If it's the
| keyboard, get a better keyboard. If it's autocorrect,
| double check what you write. Stop making excuses for
| everything.
|
| All these cries for why we should accept there/ their/
| they're uncontested is no doubt a reflection of the
| frustration Carmack must have experienced, if HN is any
| indicator of the FAANG workforce. John is known to be
| very direct and unapologetic himself, and here y'all are
| losing your mind on a slight criticism. It's no wonder.
| ruggeri wrote:
| I would suggest that it's not necessary to speculate too
| much about _why_ they made a grammatical error. There are
| many possible reasons. For instance, I suggested that
| they may simply be less pedantic /careful about grammar.
| They may simply care about the form of their expression
| less than you or I do.
|
| I think judging a hypothesis by its form/expression is
| not a great way to get at the truth. If a heuristic has
| to be used, then probably tone, coherence, and even-
| handedness are better than grammatical correctness. Those
| are at least closer to the _substance_ of the argument.
|
| I suggest that evaluating arguments on the basis of
| form/expression will not help _you_ get at the truth.
|
| It is your choice whether to be aesthetically
| dissatisfied by grammatically incorrect English. Many
| would consider that pedantic, though I might have a
| modicum of sympathy for you. However, I think the error
| you've made is to promote aesthetic displeasure into
| distrust for the OP's reasonableness.
|
| I do not know about others, but I do not think I am
| losing my mind about anything. I suspect that most direct
| and unapologetic people have faith in the substance of
| their arguments, and would be frustrated to be judged
| using low-signal heuristics like grammatical correctness.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| Perhaps the poster is trying to befuddle identification
| of their main account through stylography?
|
| One can get quite paranoid on the internet, you know.
|
| (I am not a dog).
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Likely. I can't find it now, but there was an HN story
| not long ago where someone used fairly rudimentary
| techniques to identify former/alt HN accounts based on
| stylometric similarity. It worked VERY well.
|
| If I were going to post from a throwaway account for some
| reason, I would probably launder it through an
| intermediate language on Google Translate for one or two
| cycles. Otherwise, if I didn't bother with that, I'd
| certainly scatter some intentional errors here and there
| that I don't usually make.
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| >there was an HN story not long ago where someone used
| fairly rudimentary techniques to identify former/alt HN
| accounts
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33755016
| fluidcruft wrote:
| Nowadays people would probably just use GPT prompts and
| rephrase to obscure identity. Good luck reversing the
| output to deduce the style of the author's original
| input.
| amelius wrote:
| Until OpenAI's logs get hacked and leaked ...
| andirk wrote:
| I am quite confident that Satoshi Nakomoto was an
| Australian bloke(s) living in Japan when he/they/their
| wrote the Bitcoin Whitepaper. The code itself does
| suggest it was one person, but I still think it was a few
| people with one at the helm.
| throwaway743 wrote:
| Their use of 'there' instead of 'their' could've been
| done purposely as a means of not being unmasked. A tool
| was posted the other week that took HN usernames and
| found accounts that it deemed as being alt
| accounts/similar writing styles.
|
| Could be an attempt to throw something like that off
| necroforest wrote:
| It blows my mind that someone thinks that counting
| "their/there" mixups constitutes an argument.
| nocsi wrote:
| Grammatical mistakes aren't a means to disprove anything.
| Not everyone is detail oriented and I doubt it prevented
| anyone from understanding the meaning of what they were
| saying. Their post wasn't even technical, more like a
| stream of thought
| runarberg wrote:
| > specially anyone who doesn't know the difference
| between 'their' and 'there'
|
| This is a really ablest take and should not really be
| seen here on HN. You have no idea what kind of an input
| device the author is using, if they have some handicap or
| disability nor even what their native language is. There
| are plenty of reasons a poster can make this mistake, and
| even more reasons to make it consistently. Please do
| better.
| steve76 wrote:
| autoexec wrote:
| someone writing and wishing to hide their identity may
| very well be masking their writing style. The bad grammar
| here might be the social media equivalent of using
| letters cut from magazines.
| andirk wrote:
| We talking pronouns? This/these? Who's Cramack? That
| quote from his letter sounds like someone who constantly
| overstepped their bounds.
| throwaway675309 wrote:
| What a fatuous argument. Have you considered that they
| may have used speech to text to dictate _there_ (sic.)
| response from a mobile device, or that perhaps _their_
| (sic.) not a native speaker?
|
| I find that the people who are overly concerned about
| semantics tend to be the people who have the least to
| offer in terms of substance. The idea that you can draw a
| correlation between one's technological aptitude and the
| inability to distinguish between various possessive
| adjectives is patently absurd.
|
| Here's a pithy quote I created just for you: "it doesn't
| matter how many languages you can speak if you have
| nothing to say."
| [deleted]
| kronks wrote:
| OttoVonBizark wrote:
| or just be dyslexic or any other myriad of disorders like
| ADHD etc that may affect such minor grammatical rules yet
| not change or alter the likelihood that they could be a
| senior meta engineer?
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Sic is not an abbreviation, placing a full stop/period
| inside the brackets after the word sic is erroneous.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Sic! (Is an exclamation mark ok?)
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| > trying to be convincing on technical issues when you
| can't understand fundamentals of English is not
| persuasive at all.
|
| Note to disprove your point but there are plenty of very
| technically capable people who learn English as a second,
| third, fourth language. In fact I would say in technical
| settings, such as here, that this is statistically more
| common than a native English speaker with poor writing
| skills.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| There is/are and their sound very different in other
| languages, so I would say that people who speak English
| as a second language generally make these types of
| mistakes less often than natural speakers who learned
| speaking English many years before writing. (We make
| other types of mistakes more often though).
| icoder wrote:
| As a non-native Enlish speaker I'd like an n=1
| 'experience' to your n=1 'would say': the English is in
| my head first and then in writing. So at the time of
| writing there and their already sound alike and van be
| easily mixed up
| xiphias2 wrote:
| This is true, but I (and you) learned to say and
| read/write these words at the same time, so we have an
| advantage over native English speakers in differentiating
| them.
|
| At the same time the poster had a larger vocabulary than
| I have (which is true for native speakers generally, as I
| try to stay within simple English).
| roninghost wrote:
| I've noticed this error more on natives than people that
| learn English more formally as a second or third
| language.
| turbobooster wrote:
| Stop slandering people due to school training. We all
| understood what the person meant and I guess you got
| confused too many times.
| dropofwill wrote:
| It's not a fundamental of English, because it's (that's
| another example) impossible to hear. You're (that's
| another example) being pedantic about an artifact of our
| writing system, which is strictly not language. I'm being
| pedantic about this because i'm tired of this being
| pointed out.
| 8note wrote:
| If you're typing quickly, you can miss when autocorrect
| puts in the wrong replacement
|
| I stopped caring about when people have incorrect your vs
| you're and there vs their because it's really about
| whether the autocorrect ai is getting them right. English
| is an evolving language that I don't think will keep
| those distinctions in the future
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Even if the statement were true, it's not like they hired
| some anonymous guy, they knew what they were getting. Don't
| hire a passionate guy like that if you don't want him to
| concern himself with your company.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| It's Facebook's fault for hiring him for a figurehead to
| not listen to, instead of hiring him for what he is to
| shake things up.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog
|
| Sometimes a smug frog like Facebook just needs a good
| poisonous stab in the back.
|
| It's not like they should be shocked after hiring a guy
| who was famous for making a game about shooting Nazis.
| masteranza wrote:
| You're exactly right.
| petee wrote:
| Is VR really successful? Because it seems like its been
| floundering for years, and still hasn't learned to walk yet.
|
| And your example in a way backs up what Carmack is saying --
| nobody listened, and Oculus sucks, as you pointed out.
| jimmySixDOF wrote:
| He was alone on his side of the table for the All In One
| integrated hardware approach that was the Go and became the
| Quest and, after years, proved to be the right long term
| direction. Of course that is out of his mouth according to
| him but, if true, it is the kind of high level strategy
| setting that separates market leaders from the also ran's.
| Very different from task level involvement but friction there
| should be separate from effectiveness at the CTO's desk level
| (& I have to guess Boz is the one who's quality of life got
| improved more than specific engineering teams)
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Maybe Oculus Go was a failure in all those areas because VR
| will always be a failure in those areas.
| danuker wrote:
| Indeed. I couldn't believe Facebook bet so much on VR, and
| especially a low-quality 3D MMORPG full of micropayments.
| With no LEGS. How long have video game characters had
| legs??
|
| I feel dizzy even playing Minecraft on a plain screen. I
| won't ever buy VR goggles. Let alone ones bound to a
| Facebook account.
| eddiewithzato wrote:
| Zuck must've been high when OKing VR, I still think
| Google Glass is the way forward with augmented reality.
| Very comfortable and isn't trying to rewrite how humans
| communicate.
|
| I have VR and it is immersive, but way too uncomfortable.
| ghaff wrote:
| If you imagine arbitrarily good technology VR still feels
| like a niche while it's easy to imagine lots of uses for
| a lightweight stylish internet-connected HUD that
| supplies realtime information--even if we're talking
| years in the future. I tend to believe this is one of the
| next consumer (and industrial) device categories but a
| long way to go as a wearable. (We'll presumably see it on
| a phone first.)
| danuker wrote:
| Ah, so AR. I remember Google Glass, and it was not a
| great success.
| ghaff wrote:
| Google Glass was not arbitrarily good technology. And,
| while the glasshole thing may have been a factor in its
| demise, if you look around privacy factors don't much
| deter the use of anything people actually find useful.
| danuker wrote:
| The GDPR has been passed since then. At least in the EU,
| it would be illegal for Google to gather video of people.
| ghaff wrote:
| You don't need to store video for AR to work. Besides,
| people take video and photos of others _all the time_ and
| upload to the Internet without permission of the subject
| whether that 's technically allowed or not in a given
| country.
| annadane wrote:
| He's not high, he's been treating people like contempt
| ever since Harvard, this isn't new
| [deleted]
| andybak wrote:
| Oh the legs thing again. I don't want legs (or arms)
| until they are out of the uncanny valley. No legs is
| better than janky legs in the same way stylized graphics
| are better than bad "realistic" graphics.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| In that case, then off with their heads, not just their
| legs!
|
| Marc Zuckerberg's head is already uncanny in real life,
| but his avatar's head should be guilleitened.
| d0100 wrote:
| there
| osigurdson wrote:
| Interesting perspective. One ominous anecdote is I've noticed
| that kids seem to have lost interest in the Oculus / VR. I'm
| assuming the business model needs to be bootstrapped with
| games and then move into other areas. I hope it is successful
| however, the world will be kind of boring if all we ever have
| is screens.
| slim wrote:
| By reading between the lines of your story and carmack's, my
| guess is carmack was against facebook user profiling in VR
| headsets, and you think the sales numbers are sufficient and
| prove him wrong. If that's the case I'm with Carmack both
| because "the ideological background" and because the sales
| argument does not hold : you don't know what the sales would
| have been (and will be in the future) if facebook did not
| strong arm users into surrendering their privacy
| yownie wrote:
| > there expertise, there experience, and there thoughts
| because
|
| their*
|
| I do not believe you worked where you say solely from this.
| civilized wrote:
| You could be right about all of this, but it isn't very
| compelling without more concrete detail.
|
| From the perspective of a neutral observer, what we're
| getting here is one anonymous person's interpretation of
| Carmack's behavior, and we don't know anything about this
| person. So for all we know, it's equally possible that this
| person is arrogant and narcissistic and takes disagreement as
| bullying.
|
| Not saying I actually believe this of you, but there are
| plenty of such people in the tech industry. So I don't know
| what to think here.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| I've watched many Carmack videos over the years and he never
| complained about the team not following him or people working
| for him being not good enough, he always praised the work
| done and explained in very fine details why the decisions
| where taken one way or another.
|
| When he wanted to remove a pebble from his shoe, he talked
| extensively of the company decisions, in the higher ups,
| which is more than fair given his role.
|
| He never struck me as a "Steve Jobs of coding" (probably
| today Elon Musk?).
|
| I also had several encounters with John Romero and talked a
| bit about the times at id Software and he never ever hinted
| that Carmack was problematic in any way.
|
| He's also obviously not a very good politician/sellperson (he
| can't sell what he hasn't already produced or envisioned) and
| suffers bureaucracy, like every normal person here that is
| not a bureaucrat.
|
| Anyway.
|
| Regardless of the truthfulness of what you write, Carmack has
| always been able to deliver, both in time and as of code
| quality and maintainability, one way or another, Meta hasn't.
|
| The evidence pile up more against FB/Meta management than
| against Carmack, moreover I think it's easy to attack the
| person taking responsibility in person than those hiding in
| the shadows, Linus suffered the same destiny, but he created
| Linux and brought it where it is now, the attackers didn't,
| so maybe Linus was simply right.
| joveian wrote:
| Well, if John Romero vouches for him... _rolls eyes_
|
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3nxd3/how-kindness-saved-
| th...
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Their point was that it means something when someone who
| was badly hurt still praises the person who did it. ("Did
| it" is shorthand for the full story.)
| aricz wrote:
| Check out Lex Fridman and John Carmack interview. Also read
| Masters of Doom. I think the key with Carmack is that he's
| a workaholic, and he expects the same from the ones around
| him.
| davidcbc wrote:
| > He never struck me as a "Steve Jobs of coding" (probably
| today Elon Musk?).
|
| Musk is the Donald Trump of coding if anything.
| kubb wrote:
| HN is all about that cult of personality, we want to believe
| in heroic programmers (or founders) who singlehandedly change
| the world with their geinus clarity.
|
| Paul Graham said this, John Carmack said that and we lap it
| all up.
|
| It's been this way since the ancient times, and the stories
| of Hercules and Theseus. We mythologize these personalities,
| and in our mind they become demigods.
|
| But there's a reason the folk wisdom tells you to never meet
| your heroes. When you do, you painfully realize that the
| stories didn't focus on their humanity but instead were
| spinning the myths of their divinity.
|
| The person in your head is a source of inspiration. The
| person in the world, on which the former is based, is a
| source of disappointment.
| guerrilla wrote:
| > HN is all about that cult of personality, we want to
| believe in heroic programmers (or founders) who
| singlehandedly change the world with their geinus clarity.
|
| I'm not one to defend the culture here but this isn't fair.
| _Everyone_ is like this and it has nothing to do with HN.
| They do it with politicians, rock stars, capitalists, etc.
| Just look at the cult of Elon Musk. And they do it because
| all of those people put a lot of money and work into
| _making sure_ they do it. Worship is paid for. That 's what
| PR and image firms _do_ , not to even mention that it's the
| default culture of the media in pretty much every country
| on the planet.
| neilc wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that people like John Carmack, Donald
| Knuth, or Fabrice Bellard are not spending money on PR
| firms.
| guerrilla wrote:
| I'm pretty sure you don't know what you're talking about.
| Carmack has been covered by multiple PR departments,
| sometimes simultaneously, throughout his career. Knuth
| literally has publishers doing that work and I don't know
| what you think the Nobel committee or ACM Turing Awards
| are _for_. That 's their entire purpose, to promote these
| people for their accomplishments. It's not like they hide
| that. And what do you know, Bellard isn't even remotely
| as popular as those others. I wonder why.
| ChildOfChaos wrote:
| As you mention, the world is about cult of personality, not
| just hacker news. Look at the situation with influences and
| such and why brands are following over themselves to link
| there products with some personality.
|
| We like to think it's some super human person that is some
| for of genius, but there are very real limits to human
| intelligence and while there are some admittedly great and
| lucky people in that regard, they are still very limited
| and would likely be disappointing if we knew what the rest
| of there lives were like outside of what we see.
|
| In some ways we seem to love the idea that others are just
| somehow more gifted than we are and then idolize them, we
| don't like to accept that everyone is just making it up as
| they go along all the time, maybe it's a defense mechanism
| in some ways as it keeps us from doing some of the more
| exciting things that we could do, because that's only for
| these special people that we somehow idolize and of course
| to make it worse, these people generally love the attention
| so play up to that even more.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| More than that, I think it's important to remember that no
| one, even a technologist as strong as Carmack, is going to
| get more right than wrong.
|
| Carmack has been a huge inspiration for me over the years.
| I grew up eagerly reading his plan files.
|
| But if we look at the big picture, a lot of his big calls
| haven't in fact worked out.
|
| His vision for the future of graphics was to stick closer
| to the original OpenGL state machine, and just make it so
| blazing fast you could do complex lighting and materials
| via accumulating 100's of passes per frame. The world chose
| shaders instead, and I don't think they got that wrong.
|
| Stencil buffer shadows were a dead end.
|
| iD tech used to set the standard for the entire industry,
| but long term its totally lost out to Unreal and Unity.
|
| Carmack's ideas around sparse voxel trees were really
| interesting to me at the time, but now with hindsight I can
| see he totally misunderstood what artists want/need. They
| don't want to uniquely paint every bit of the game world,
| they want tools that let them use instancing and smart
| materials/shapes. In comparison Unreal's Nanite gets this
| totally right. Artist productivity is _the_ key constraint
| in both film and games.
|
| I don't say this to be pointlessly negative. As I said JC
| is one of my personal heros. But the problem with the
| "superman" approach to coding is no one is in fact
| superman, even someone like JC. It's just not possible to
| get complex calls like this right long term. If you don't
| pay that some respect in your interpersonal behavior, you
| are gonna end up alienating people.
| 1auralynn wrote:
| You know, maybe he just has a huge blind spot when it
| comes to optimization: Because he's so good at it, he
| overestimates others' ability (and possibly appetite for
| - I personally find optimization grueling and soul
| deadening work though of course needs to be done)
| Strom wrote:
| > _iD tech used to set the standard for the entire
| industry, but long term its totally lost out to Unreal
| and Unity._
|
| Unless you fault Carmack for selling id to Bethesda, this
| isn't so much Carmack's fault. He always proposed more
| sharing of id tech. Look at the older versions of the
| engine that are available under GPL. Unreal really took
| over when they started their cheap licensing with source
| available. Bethesda was asleep.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| iD tech was already floundering before the acquisition. I
| obviously don't fault JC for taking the bag.
|
| Unreal was always far cheaper and way better supported
| than iD tech. This is something iD got very wrong from
| the very beginning. iD was "give us 500k, here's a cd
| rom, and never talk to us again." Epic was considerably
| less (I forget exactly but I want to say 100k), and was
| all "ok, here's the email list, here's the news group,
| here's the IRC channel, and here's some folks you can
| talk to when you get stuck."
|
| All the Unreal licenses collaborated and helped each
| other underneath Epic's umbrella. iD licensees had to do
| again working around iD's hostility/apathy.
|
| There was no comparison in the quality of the toolchains
| either. Quake's kit did the job, but with a ton of flaky
| behavior and horrible UX. The BSP code had so many
| numerical issues level designers were constantly
| reworking stuff to prevent leaks. Unreal was an absolute
| dream in comparison.
|
| Cliffy B sending you unsolicited porn pics over IRC was
| more of a "perk." /s
|
| Source: was contracted on an Unreal port to the
| Playstation 1 by Infogrames back in the day.
|
| Again, JC is one of my personal heroes, but I think
| people are reluctant to point out he got a lot of stuff
| just wrong vs choices others made. His tendency towards
| contrarian independence is a double edged sword.
| hajile wrote:
| > Carmack's ideas around sparse voxel trees were really
| interesting to me at the time, but now with hindsight I
| can see he totally misunderstood what artists want/need.
| They don't want to uniquely paint every bit of the game
| world, they want tools that let them use instancing and
| smart materials/shapes. In comparison Unreal's Nanite
| gets this totally right. Artist productivity is the key
| constraint in both film and games.
|
| Aren't voxels and instances/shapes orthogonal? Do artists
| really care if the shapes are textures or pictures
| wrapped on triangles or pictures wrapped on voxels?
|
| The real argument for Voxels is analogous to the argument
| for raytracing. It is more accurate at describing how the
| world works, but we currently don't have the
| computational power to do it in anything close to
| realtime in advanced games -- even with lots of
| optimizations.
| kevingadd wrote:
| If you have a single world representation made out of
| voxels, you can't trivially edit instanced objects and
| have the changes propagate out to the whole world where
| all the instances were. Or if you get that feature, it
| comes at the cost of the voxels being a secondary
| representation, and now the instance updates potentially
| trample some custom textures/geometry that were placed on
| top of the instances. It changes the workflow a lot.
| hajile wrote:
| Adding more realistic lighting also completely changed
| workflows from adding random pseudo light sources to
| having to describe how light should work on various
| things (this is before considering ray tracing). Those
| changes were better for realism which was better for
| users and that trumps artists having to learn new things.
| osigurdson wrote:
| Is it possibly because he lacks the academic rigour? I
| don't think casually reading math (or any) texts as a
| $50M+ net worth individual is remotely the same as having
| to study and pass tests like a regular person.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| I'm an autodidact and that's something I definitely
| struggle with. I'm good at getting the "gist" of
| something by scanning fast, but then I get hung up in the
| details because I didn't go back and actually work
| through the formalisms in the paper.
|
| JC strikes me as someone that would do the math however,
| or at least would code up something that probed it real
| quick.
|
| Just to ramble about another point I wish I'd made in my
| post above: I've had some success in my career by
| depersonalizing these kind of debates. Instead of "my
| plan" vs "your plan" try to frame it as everyone
| enumerating the possible plans as a group, brainstorming
| on benefits vs risks on each of them, etc. So if I set
| myself up as facilitator on the white board aggregating
| everything, without pushing my own view much, I find it
| tends to get less into back and forth arguments. Not a
| silver bullet but that depersonalization is a big part of
| how I think about these dilemmas now.
| osigurdson wrote:
| Agree. I've been on both sides of this. Forced to learn
| things as a student as well as rushing through self
| curated material for a particular purpose. There is
| definitely some value in simply being a student. Spending
| 8 years studying to get a phd in math doesn't guarantee
| that you will be an outlier (like Carmack) but you will
| have a solid foundation. I think both types of people are
| needed to make progress realistically.
| cudgy wrote:
| Formal training can be a disadvantage when innovating,
| since it trains one to think the same as others.
| HellDunkel wrote:
| Well said but we don't know for sure if the above is true.
| Carmack is a genious programmer and rather than trash him
| right away we should acknowledge that his job was hard-
| very hard. In any biography the failures are way more
| interesting than the successes. The ancient greek
| understood that pretty well.
| phlakaton wrote:
| There are many people lurking on HN who do not fall for the
| cult of personality and stick to technical and personal
| topics. You should look around for them! They're cool.
|
| PG has been an inspiration but he gets things wrong all the
| time. Most famous Silly Valley leaders are people I'd steer
| well clear of.
| mavelikara wrote:
| A young fan of James Joyce once asked the Irish maestro,
| "May I kiss the hand that wrote Ulysses?" The novelist
| replied: "No, it did lots of other things too."
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Carmack aside, I think the "never meet your heroes" thing
| is even simpler: no one's perfect. Your hero could have
| cured cancer but maybe they're a nervous wreck in public.
| Or aren't native to your area and may commuicate badly face
| to face for culture clashing reasons. Or maybe they are
| great in a small intimate team but completely fall apart in
| a large setting. Heck it could be as simple as finding out
| they are a heavy smoker or an alcoholic.
|
| The common stereotype is "heroes are narcissitic and have
| skeletons in the closet", but there are valid reasons for
| an otherwise good person to fail in what may be common
| sense to others.
| sundvor wrote:
| To me it would be the opposite; we all have our faults,
| so how do they manage the feats that they do?
|
| There's no point idolizing people for their
| accomplishments in the "they must be perfect" kind of
| way.
|
| Ie I look at John and see someone amazingly fit for their
| age (very close to mine - only a few years older, yet he
| appears younger); I'd like to learn more about his
| routines (running and judo?) to see how I might benefit
| from the same.
| ambrose2 wrote:
| I'm curious too, in the Lex Friedman podcast/interview,
| John described he oftens "runs on" a diet of pizza and
| Diet Coke.
|
| https://lexfridman.com/john-carmack/
| GeorgeTirebiter wrote:
| Theseus was the name of the mechanical 'learning' mouse
| that Claude Shannon built
| https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/12/19/138508/mighty-
| mo...
|
| Also: https://youtu.be/_9_AEVQ_p74 (It would be great it
| some AI could upscale this...)
|
| I had the privilege of meeting Claude, at the CMU Robotics
| Institute, and showed him how to use (what turned out to
| be) an early incarnation of of Boston Dynamics -- a hopping
| pogo stick. Here you can see an operator using the same
| control box that Claude Shannon used:
| https://youtu.be/mG_ZKXo6Rlg?t=34 p.s. yes, that 'operator'
| in the video is me.
| chongli wrote:
| _But there 's a reason the folk wisdom tells you to never
| meet your heroes. When you do, you painfully realize that
| the stories didn't focus on their humanity but instead were
| spinning the myths of their divinity._
|
| This is part of the reason I like Steve Jobs so much. The
| stories around him never failed to mention his legendary
| penchant for downright nasty behaviour. And yet people
| loved him anyway, even when they lived in fear of stepping
| into an elevator with him! It's bizarre and entertaining
| stuff!
|
| Personally I'd rather work with boring, reliable, friendly
| people in an low-stress job and focus my passion on my
| hobbies. I recognize that others might want to take risks
| and try to make something big.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| I don't think many people loved Jobs, and a good few
| hated him.
|
| But unlike most narcissistic assholes he was unusually
| good at certain things [1]. And he could be persuaded to
| change his mind when he was dead wrong, at least some of
| the time.
|
| So that made him _tolerated._
|
| [1] Finding good people, understanding that computing is
| about services and UX and not just boxes, and having a
| goal for commodity computing that was at least as
| aesthetic as technological.
| [deleted]
| afterburner wrote:
| The people with those stories typically made a lot of
| money thanks to Jobs. The people who didn't, just have a
| negative opinion of him.
| rohit89 wrote:
| If you are really good at something, people will like you
| inspite of your drawbacks however big they may be.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| If you want a hero to idolize, select someone who's been
| dead for at least 100 years. Most of their foibles will be
| public knowledge by that time, so you probably won't be in
| for any rude surprises.
| vacuumcl wrote:
| Even that might not be entirely safe, as Schrodinger's
| behaviour has only become widely known in recent years
| for example. (Although he died around 60 years ago, so
| not quite 100.)
| oldgradstudent wrote:
| Was he mean to his cat?
| aswanson wrote:
| Yes and no. I'll see myself out.
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| Everyone fails.
|
| Carmack has also had a lot of wins. His accomplishments stand
| on their own.
|
| Perhaps he is not a good people person.
|
| He puts in an astonishing amount of effort on his pursuits or
| at least he used to. He may expect the same of others, not
| understanding that the majority of people have different
| lives and goals.
|
| He might also just be an asshole.
|
| It will be interesting to see what he does next. I think he
| still has one or two wins left in him.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> When data proved his idea was wrong, he would say words to
| the effect of "I don't care, because I still believe I'm
| right from an ideological background". He would devalue
| people, there expertise, there experience, and there thoughts
| because "I'm John Carmack"
|
| Projecting are you? You're devaluing someone with way more
| experience and accomplishment than you. Did it ever occur to
| you that he was right? I've read a lot of his posts that
| cover ideology, and I always agree. Ideology is what it takes
| to go big and play a long game. If the short term stuff does
| fail (even his) it is appropriate to fall back to ideology to
| figure out what to do next.
|
| I also never saw anything revolutionary in his work. He's
| really good at selecting practical and straight forward
| approaches to real problems. If he says "that's stupid and
| here's why", it's worth listening to even if you can make it
| work.
| nopenopenopeno wrote:
| [deleted]
| HandstandMick wrote:
| It takes two. If accurate and true, there is an obvious
| conflict between the two of you. John perhaps didn't listen
| to your point of view enough and in the reverse you didn't
| respect his view and role in the company. His success was
| your success and it would seem you both failed as a result of
| the conflict. Tech is full of difficult personality and ego.
| It's multicultural and communication challenges and cultural
| differences are common are often misinterpreted. At the end
| of the day though, many of us just want compassion and
| respect in our roles, to be valued and heard. All said, feel
| in this described circumstance that perhaps the initial folly
| was all indeed John's. He held the power after all to make
| the right start.
| boppo1 wrote:
| Not sure I'd trust someone who mixes up 'their' and 'there'
| to interpret data proving or disproving some strategy. From
| the looks of the product, I'd say he was probably right on
| whatever that stuff was.
| loppg wrote:
| That's the norm these days I think. No one is supposed to be an
| expert, everyone is equal, everyone's voice matters.
|
| If you are an expert and demand high code quality, you are a
| class traitor and the bureaucrats will come after you.
|
| This shows in the code quality of the OSS examples I have seen
| from Facebook.
| kernal wrote:
| >It is simply stunning that the seasoned direction and counsel
| that someone of John Carmack's caliber is capable of delivering
| was not being followed.
|
| He worked for an Ad company that voraciously mined through
| their user's data. Unless he was able to find new ways to
| monetize their users or bypass iOS's opt in app tracking, I see
| no reason why they would even care.
| [deleted]
| mathgladiator wrote:
| He isn't alone.
|
| A core problem is that FB culture is way too positive and
| happy, and hard criticism is received poorly. The politics to
| get anything done if your name isn't Mark is borderline
| impossible.
|
| I left a year ago, and I've become beyond happy.
| Blue111 wrote:
| > FB culture is way too positive and happy
|
| oh wow.. never thought they could be happy at FB
| harrisonjackson wrote:
| I interpreted this as coerced positivity and forced
| happiness. Not organic actual emotion from feeling
| fulfilled and successful within their role.
| csande17 wrote:
| Yes, the atmosphere at most big tech companies is this
| way. Everyone writes their emails with a plastered-on
| fake smile.
|
| The worst part is when people pretend that things are
| difficult. You can't just suggest that someone not waste
| time on an obviously bad idea; you must acknowledge that
| the team's development strategy is a complex,
| multifaceted governance problem, and many quarters of
| sync meetings will be necessary to drive the appropriate
| alignment with all stakeholders and establish
| prioritization and scheduling on an action item to form a
| spot committee that will deliberate on the necessity of a
| course correction.
|
| It's suffocating, it produces terrible products, but it
| pays really well.
| azinman2 wrote:
| I wouldn't say that's universal or inevitable.
| yuppie_scum wrote:
| adamsb6 wrote:
| I'd say it's more a cultural echo of a time when it felt
| like anything was possible, and you were making stupid
| money to work on whatever you felt like working on, and
| everyone you interacted with was super competent and
| happy to help you out.
|
| It used to be an incredibly fulfilling place to work.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Yeah the book "The Circle" (now of course a major motion
| picture :) really captured that culture well, I thought.
| A lot of these companies are really like that.
| ghaff wrote:
| My problem with the movie was that it played it straight
| with a novel that IMO could only be enjoyed as a
| deliberately over the top "if this goes on" satire. The
| film really needed some Doctor Strangelove level black
| humor.
| doktorhladnjak wrote:
| I'd describe it more as optimism than happiness. You gotta
| believe in the future vision, how great a place this is,
| etc.
|
| The hope is that it creates a can-do culture. Downside is
| that it can create a culture where no one feels safe
| criticizing bad ideas.
| sesm wrote:
| It's possible to deliver criticism in an optimistic way,
| if it's impersonal and concrete (according to M
| Seligman). BTW, that's also a standard for academic
| criticism. But there is a difference between allowing
| only optimistic criticism and banning criticism at all.
| That's the problem with both tech culture and academia
| these days.
| baby wrote:
| Didn't they win best place to work at many years ago?
| jbverschoor wrote:
| For people who did a programming workshop maybe?
|
| I guess they don't value x1000 talent
| mathgladiator wrote:
| Before 2016, it was a great place.
|
| At least, the kool-aid tasted great.
| ac29 wrote:
| The sort of person applying to work at FB probably has a
| rather better opinion of them than the average HN
| commenter.
| blululu wrote:
| Never worked there, but from everything I have observed,
| the free lunches, full medical/dental/vision and high six
| figure salaries generally imbue people with a sense of well
| being. The nice offices and decent working hours also help.
| The trip is that Facebook also has some mission driven
| stuff about making the world a bit nicer that some people
| really buy into. It's a good mission too and a lot of
| people really do enjoy using their products so it's not all
| that crazy to thing for someone to associate with. Why
| would anyone feel bad about making the world a more
| connected and open place for ~$300/hr? Hence the oppressive
| optimism.
| closeparen wrote:
| Facebook is one player in a large ecosystem of workers
| and companies, in which things like lunch and nice
| offices and health insurance are simply table stakes, and
| total compensation levels are broadly comparable. Until
| recently, Facebook did pay at the upper end of that
| spectrum, which was some combination of their stock doing
| well and people souring on social media as a force for
| good in the world. Certainly relative to peak social
| media excitement ca. 2006, working there is now
| considered going off to be a cog in a vaguely evil
| faceless machine; they couldn't get away with lowballing
| people the way SpaceX or even Google can.
|
| Hedonic adaptation is real. You compare yourself to your
| peer group, in which there's always people living larger
| than you, stocks appreciated more than yours, bought
| their house earlier than you, higher earning spouse than
| yours (or any spouse at all if you're single),
| generational wealth from China, etc. And homeownership in
| the Bay Area is such an insatiable black hole that this
| kind of money merely puts you in the running. You'll
| never be, like, unable to repair a household appliance -
| which is better than many people! - but neither are you
| just waltzing through life milestones in the way people
| think when they see these figures. You're mostly a pass-
| through vehicle from your company to local property
| owners.
|
| Some companies are more top down and some companies are
| more entrepreneurial. Amazon is famous for assigning just
| the right amount of work to break you before your stock
| vests. Apple has rigid and precise opinions about what it
| wants built, with engineers discouraged from scratching
| their own itches. Facebook on the other hand is all about
| initiative, with engineers being almost like Wall Street
| traders: come up with ideas and implement them on your
| own, and in your performance review we'll check the
| numbers to see whether you made us money or not. Like
| trading, you might have a good hypothesis that just
| didn't pan out, or something else outside your control
| might have shifted, but that's not going to save you. You
| have to be right. It's stressful! But one thing that
| happens in places run this way is a pretty strong social
| norm against trying to stop anything before it happens.
| If someone wants to run an AB test, however stupid it
| seems, they get to run it, and you have to trust in the
| data (and data analysis) to reveal whether it was really
| a good idea or not.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > mission driven stuff about making the world a bit nicer
|
| That instantly becomes political because not everyone
| agrees on what "nicer" is.
| blululu wrote:
| Practically speaking not really. The official mission is
| something like 'empower people to build communities and
| make the world more open'. It's a pretty nice goal and
| you really have to be trying to find an objection to it
| that doesn't come off as being a jerk. You can make
| anything political in some sense but most things just
| aren't.
| markeibes wrote:
| My name is Mark, should I apply then?
| lullab wrote:
| It sounds as if the company itself does not have a 'dislike'
| button.
| verdenti wrote:
| shultays wrote:
| That is a problem in every company to be honest. And bigger
| problem as it gets bigger
| Mistletoe wrote:
| The Stepford Wives come to mind.
| adamsb6 wrote:
| I joined back in 2014 and left this year.
|
| I feel like I got to enjoy a couple of years before the
| company started to lose its nimbleness. Feedback groups used
| to get responses from the people that actually built the
| things instead of contractors whose primary function is
| feedback group triage. Sometimes you could actually have an
| impact by giving feedback, and you could see others having
| those impacts as well.
|
| When I left, it seemed like whatever wasn't planned for
| upfront at the planning meetings for each half just won't
| happen. Around 2018 I came to a team with a small feature
| request that I was happy to take on myself as long as they'd
| provide code review. I was told if I'd come to them a month
| ago they might've been able to do it, but now I'd need to
| wait until planning for the next half.
|
| I think Portal is a perfect example of how slow to adapt the
| company has become. It's a fantastic video conferencing
| device, certainly the best at its price point. We happened to
| enter the pandemic with this device already available for
| sale, but we completely failed to capitalize on it. Zoom
| become the dominant video conferencing service pretty
| quickly. We failed to roll out Zoom support until October of
| 2020, when everyone had already established their video
| conferencing routines and were less likely to see the benefit
| of a dedicated device.
|
| Portal ended up failing so hard as a consumer product that it
| got transferred over to the Workplace division.
|
| I'd argued internally that at the very least we should allow
| sideloading of apps. Portal is just Android. People could run
| their videoconferencing application of choice, as well as any
| other apps. That would make the Portal more competitive
| versus an Android tablet, which all have okay
| videoconferencing as well as the whole world of Android apps.
|
| The Portal camera is fisheye so we'd need to modify Android
| to let regular apps pull a normal image using the Android
| camera APIs, but that's totally doable.
|
| In the distant past these kinds of requests would've at least
| gotten engagement from people working on the product. In
| 2020, they got a chipper response from a contractor who I
| guess filed them in a feature requests tool where they went
| to die. Oh, the contractor also would provide directions on
| how to use the web browser in lieu of apps. Like the first
| iPhone.
| underwater wrote:
| Allowing sideloading of apps is a business decision, not a
| technical one.
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| >I think Portal is a perfect example of how slow to adapt
| the company has become. It's a fantastic video conferencing
| device, certainly the best at its price point. We happened
| to enter the pandemic with this device already available
| for sale, but we completely failed to capitalize on it.
|
| Thanks for your insight, but the Portal failure shouldn't
| be surprising. There are a large number of people who would
| never want to have a private conversation or meeting using
| Facebook infrastructure or be forced to create a Facebook
| account to join a meeting. As far as Zoom support, again,
| why would anyone trust Facebook infrastructure with private
| meetings?
|
| Aside from the trust issue, why buy hardware from FB just
| to have meetings?
| fs111 wrote:
| > There are a large number of people who would never want
| to have a private conversation or meeting using Facebook
| infrastructure
|
| Have you ever heard of Whatsapp? More than a billion
| people use it for private communication daily. Maybe not
| in the US, but elsewhere on the planet. You know who owns
| Whatsapp? Meta does.
| FPGAhacker wrote:
| We should congratulate Meta on actually not destroying an
| app by buying it.
| zwaps wrote:
| Whatsapp was hugely popular before Meta bought it.
|
| In fact, it lost quite a bit of users when Facebook
| bought it, as many tried to move their networks to
| Signal, Threema etc
|
| So what was said is exactly right: nobody trusts Meta,
| rightly so
|
| By the way, case in point, look what happened about
| Facebooks promise to keep Whatsapp data separate and
| private
| UncleMeat wrote:
| More people use WhatsApp today than when it was
| purchased. "Quite a bit" is not how I'd describe it.
| smallerfish wrote:
| Whatsapp had already carved out its market (because of
| SMS being charged for in its initial markets) before
| Facebook acquired it.
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/260819/number-of-
| monthly...
|
| Granted that they've at least tripled MAU since, but
| that's the power of network effects. There's a heavy dose
| of "in spite of" rather than "because of". On the other
| hand if Meta tried to, say, merge Whatsapp and Facebook
| Messenger, I think they'd lose half their users
| overnight.
|
| Similarly, if Meta bought Zoom (and kept it running as it
| does today), most businesses probably wouldn't switch.
| Zoom already owns the market.
| fs111 wrote:
| So? OP claimed nobody was willing to do private
| communication on facebook/meta infrastructure. More than
| 2 Billion people on the planet do just that on WhatsApp,
| which is Meta. It doesn't matter that WhatsApp started as
| its own thing, it is owned by Meta and people use it all
| the time for very private things.
|
| Facebook messenger is another example, hundreds of
| million of people use it all the time.
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| >So? OP claimed nobody was willing to do private
| communication
|
| You are arguing against an obviously silly false premise.
| I said "large numbers of people" were unwilling to use FB
| for private communication.
| philjohn wrote:
| There's also the ios to Android usecase.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _Similarly, if Meta bought Zoom (and kept it running as
| it does today), most businesses probably wouldn 't
| switch. Zoom already owns the market._
|
| Zoom's continued survival still surprises me. There was a
| point in time during its meteoric rise, early in the
| pandemic, when stories broke about it being spyware for
| China and a security threat, and its use was subsequently
| banned in many places. Then some months later people were
| back to using it, as if nothing ever happened.
| jamesjamesm wrote:
| Zoom has by far the best feature set out of any
| videoconferencing system - Zoom Rooms work almost
| seamlessly, and the core product is pretty user friendly
| and incredibly reliable from my experience - something
| I've never been able to say about Hangouts, Teams, Skype,
| GoToMeeting or Webex.
| rvba wrote:
| I donr use zoom much but it has a very intuitive UI -
| everything is easy to discover.
|
| Meanwhile in TEAMS people dont know how to do things.
|
| Recently I had a meeting that was supposed to be
| recorded, firsf nobody could record it; now the supplier
| side does not know how to share it as a downloadable
| file.
|
| The Microsoft cloud experience is pure trash from
| productivity point of view.
| SOLAR_FIELDS wrote:
| My favorite thing about Zoom (and I suspect a large
| portion of its staying power) is that it somehow manages
| to just work on every device, even if your device is slow
| or your internet connection is garbage. Heck, I'll be on
| a Zoom call on my phone driving in a rural area with two
| bars and I'll somehow still get grainy video.
|
| In comparison, I use teams for my two person startup and
| we can only get that absolute trash fire working reliably
| about 75% of the time.
| brabel wrote:
| Zoom had appaling security when it started being used by
| the masses. But it did the right thing, acquired Keybase
| which were doing really great work in the field of
| security and UX, and they subsequently fixed the problems
| Zoom had (stories about spyware for China are bullshit,
| as usual, they just had just *really* basic issues like
| anyone was allowed to crash into a meeting by just
| knowing its ID, which used to be easy to guess). Today, I
| consider Zoom a solid, safe choice for private meetings
| until something new comes to light that proves otherwise.
| smolder wrote:
| I think you're forgetting the core controversy, which was
| that their marketing materials proudly claimed they used
| end-to-end encryption, which was just completely false at
| the time.
| mnd999 wrote:
| It also has appalling UX. They seem to place buttons
| completely at random. Pop ups all over the place. It
| makes Teams look good.
| zer0zzz wrote:
| > There are a large number of people who would never want
| to have a private conversation or meeting using Facebook
| infrastructure
|
| Seriously, this is a really dense comment from previous
| poster. Sure people don't like the idea of a dedicated
| hardware appliance with camera and microphones from Meta
| but the idea that folks are so paranoid that they won't
| use any of Meta's private communications systems or infra
| is beyond out of touch with reality.
|
| I had a couple models of Portal. Really useful products
| but they literally didn't iterate on adding features fast
| enough and they locked it out from the existing Android
| ecosystem. Too complacent IHMO. On top of that the built-
| in browser was a purposely limited version of chromium
| that seemed like whatever the custom user-agent was would
| just cause problems with all sorts of web-apps especially
| Google's (couldn't even sign into YouTube etc, got
| "unsupported browser" errors all the time).
|
| The Portal TV is still the only good Consumer Home TV
| based VC system I've ever used (so good that its the only
| Portal device Cisco wouldn't ship WebEx on probably
| because it would be too competitive against their own
| hardware I suspect is the reason).
| meta_throwaway_ wrote:
| >There are a large number of people who would never want
| to have a private conversation or meeting using Facebook
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if Meta was the number one way
| people have private conversations on planet earth.
| bratbag wrote:
| Chatting about grannies birthday? Sure.
|
| Talking about company ip? Not a chance in hell.
|
| When making a purchasing decision for company comms
| tools, guess which of those two have to be considered.
| zer0zzz wrote:
| There's probably more people using WhatsApp securely in
| authoritarian hellholes and nightmarish war zones around
| the world than many of the alternatives you are thinking
| of combine.
|
| Personally I wouldn't use any chat service for super
| sensitive conversations about company comms and IP that
| didn't have strong encryption as well as limitations on
| how messages can be backed up as well as disappearing
| messages. I think Signal is the only system that is semi-
| popular that does this where by default backups don't
| leave the device unencrypted.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| There is an even larger group of people who happily used
| Facebook's products to stay in touch before, during, and
| after the pandemic.
|
| For much of the world, Whatsapp video calls were the
| standard way to keep in touch.
| david38 wrote:
| I highly doubt it. What percentage of those people spend
| money on FB?
| rlt wrote:
| > There are a large number of people who would never want
| to have a private conversation or meeting using Facebook
| infrastructure or be forced to create a Facebook account
| to join a meeting.
|
| A large number of people in your circle / on HN / etc
| perhaps, but I think the vast majority of the general
| population have no such concern.
| bitcharmer wrote:
| Doesn't matter. This device was clearly targeting
| corporate market where clueless individuals don't make
| purchase decisions on things like that.
|
| Facebook is not very popular among IT people in corporate
| world.
| ninth_ant wrote:
| It wasn't targeting the corporate market at first. It was
| conceived and designed as a consumer-oriented device.
| bitcharmer wrote:
| Didn't know that. In that case how was this device
| supposed to compete with smartphones or tablets that we
| already have?
| ninth_ant wrote:
| The elevator pitch I heard, was that it would be ideal
| for connecting grandparents who would struggle with
| existing videoconferencing software. So it would be a
| supplemental device -- not a replacement -- with ease of
| use for non-technical people being a main driver of
| adoption. It would be a wonderful gift to help keep in
| touch, though pricey.
|
| This was conceived prior to the implosion of the Facebook
| brand during the Cambridge Analytical revelations. It's
| hard to say for sure how successful Portal would have
| been in another universe where that didn't happen.
| cranekam wrote:
| It's clearly not intended to compete with a smartphone.
| It's 50 times the size and mains powered. It's intended
| to be an always-on device with a wide camera and large
| screen that makes it easy for a few people to talk on
| video. Like video conferencing.
|
| My family uses them so my parents can see my kids and
| they are great. We plop down on the floor in front of it
| and everyone has a chat, sees the kids, etc. propping up
| phones and straining to hear/see things is much inferior.
| philjohn wrote:
| Totally different usecase. My elderly parents LOVE theirs
| - it's simple to make calls, the camera quality is great,
| the automatic pan and zoom was top notch (especially for
| following toddlers around the room, which was crucial to
| them to see their grandchildren during lockdown).
|
| The story mode was much loved as well - my mother (an ex
| kindergarten teacher) would read the stories to my niece
| and nephew and they loved the AR effects and filters it
| applied to her, in tandem with the story.
| dmitriid wrote:
| And yet the corporate world is increasingly on Facebook's
| Workspace.
| smolder wrote:
| I think it's very helpful of those corporations to
| clearly signal that they are a bad place to work.
| nl wrote:
| No one had heard of Zoom in January 2020.
|
| If it worked the way people wanted and was available in
| April 2020 people would have used it.
| rahoulb wrote:
| Yes and no.
|
| If you talk about privacy they don't care but they
| absolutely do when it comes to "I was talking to my
| friend about X and suddenly I'm seeing ads for it
| everywhere - my phone must be listening to me". Their
| phone may not actually be listening to them but as soon
| as they see what it means, people hate how their data is
| used. They just never made the connection before.
| [deleted]
| adamsb6 wrote:
| As a recent insider, this is one of those things where
| the outside perception doesn't match the inside at all.
|
| Privacy is taken more seriously at Facebook than any
| other place I've ever worked. It's drilled into you from
| day one that we have systems in place to catch you
| accessing things you shouldn't and you will be
| immediately fired if you do.
|
| You can make mistakes that bring the entire site down and
| cost the company millions and they won't fire you. If you
| try to bypass privacy controls on an ex-girlfriend's
| post, you're gone.
|
| Yes, they hoover up a ton of personal data. But they
| guard it like the crown jewels. If you do want your data
| deleted, they'll delete it. I've worked on the systems
| responsible for this where we had to reason through what
| to do with things like offline backups.
| shapefrog wrote:
| > systems in place to catch you accessing things you
| shouldn't and you will be immediately fired if you do
|
| Unless you are selling it to the highest bidder on behalf
| of _the company_ , and that gets you an immediate
| promotion.
| b3morales wrote:
| I appreciate you making the point, but it sounds like the
| _perception_ is correct, but the _definitions_ don 't
| match. Individual-human-level privacy controls are
| important, and it's good that they're in place, but
| equally important is the systemic use of all that
| hoovered data.
| orangecat wrote:
| Sure, but I expect most people's primary threat model
| isn't that a rogue Facebook employee will access their
| data and use it to stalk them. It's that Facebook will
| sell their data to advertisers who will use it to better
| manipulate them, or to insurance companies who will raise
| their rates.
| tomComb wrote:
| And Facebook doesn't sell user data either.
|
| I know there are lots of people here knowingly redefining
| the meaning of sell in this regard, but doing so is
| really harmful to the privacy cause since most companies
| do actually sell user data so we need that distinction.
| adamsb6 wrote:
| That's another common misperception, that Facebook sells
| data. They don't. They sell targeted advertising that
| uses that data. The advertiser API specifies descriptors
| for who should see the ads. There's no facility for
| accessing private data.
|
| Selling the data itself would be giving away a huge
| component of what differentiates their product from other
| advertising platforms. It would be like Coca Cola selling
| the recipe for Coca Cola.
| orangecat wrote:
| That's true, but most users aren't going to understand or
| care about that distinction. And for the concern of
| targeted ads creepily following them everywhere, it
| doesn't matter.
| xvector wrote:
| It's difficult to describe how amazing Portal is. It was
| a game changer for those that used it
| billjings wrote:
| I get the feeling that the Quest Pro is a similar game
| changing experience, but the strategy tax from being
| forced into Facebook services is absolutely suffocating.
|
| I am legit excited about the idea of having VR eye
| contact, and would gladly pilot headsets for my team. But
| nobody wants to be on Facebook's platform. It's
| embarrassing to even talk about it. And I'm frustrated
| that something that should be a fun, cool, liberating,
| wide open new platform is so stifled and locked down.
| pavlov wrote:
| Locked down? The Quest allows both sideloading and third
| party app stores, and the browser has good WebXR support.
|
| It's far less locked down than an iPhone.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _The Quest allows both sideloading and third party app
| stores_
|
| When did that happen? Last I checked, sideloading was a
| potentially bannable offense (as in effectively bricking
| your device _and_ losing you your Facebook account).
| MichaelBurge wrote:
| If you sideload pirated copies of commercial games that
| are on the Quest store, that's forbidden. But sideloading
| 3rd-party apps is fine.
|
| The "grey area" is modding games(notably Beat Saber),
| since it involves replacing the APK with an altered one
| without the consent of the developer. And if the
| developer sells DLC, that cuts into their profit and
| maybe they'll threaten to sue Facebook for damages since
| they created the development tools and authorized
| development accounts that allow people to do it.
| pavlov wrote:
| You could just use the Android Debug Bridge to load apps
| onto the Quest from a desktop.
|
| For a more managed option, there's SideQuest:
|
| https://sidequestvr.com/
|
| Also Meta itself offers AppLab which is a less strictly
| curated app store.
|
| Meta desperately wants you to write apps for the Quest
| platform. Nobody is getting banned. (You don't need a FB
| account anymore either.)
| sharpneli wrote:
| One didn't need FB account at the start either. Nothing
| says they won't bring it back despite backlash.
|
| Even if they have now changed their opinion on what can
| be done a large amount of damage is done. No-one will
| actively monitor that have their changed their terms. I
| was also under the impression that it's FB account and do
| the tiniest mistake and you lose it all. Thankfully it's
| just FB account so unlike with Google no real damage will
| be done.
|
| Even if the things are better now I kinda have moved on,
| like many others.
| [deleted]
| XorNot wrote:
| This comment could not be more wrong. The Portal failed
| because for exactly the reason the parent pointed out: it
| can't run the video conferencing apps people need it too.
|
| If it's just Android then yeah, intercept the camera API
| to let the portal stuff work with _any_ app and you 've
| got yourself a killer product getting put on every
| grandparents TV.
| happyopossum wrote:
| > Portal ended up failing so hard as a consumer product
| that it got transferred over to the Workplace division
|
| The immediate response I heard from everyone who heard
| about it (not in my tech circle) was an immediate _NOPE_.
| Followed by "I'm not letting Facebook put a camera in my
| house."
|
| I don't think the failure can be blamed on the lack of zoom
| support.
| broknbottle wrote:
| The portal devices wouldn't have succeeded even if it came
| with lunch voucher for a 1:1 with the Zuck himself. The
| devices failed as a consumer product due to years of
| Facebook disregarding users privacy and their focus on
| growth at all costs. Zuck has become nothing more than a
| meme ceo and the only reason he hasn't been removed by the
| board is because of the king like structure that he has
| setup for himself.
| saddist0 wrote:
| In contrast to all other comments, Portal was/is one of the
| best done video conferencing product made before pendamic,
| and fully support your speculation.
|
| I wanted to buy it for personal work meetings usage,
| corporate usage to setup in conferencing room, etc, but..
|
| [1] zoom wasn't supported.
|
| [2] not available worldwide to buy.
|
| [3] regularly out of stock when it even came.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| > Feedback groups
|
| What's that?
| crorella wrote:
| each team or project normally has a group where you can
| ask questions, provide feedback or ask for features.
| ojbyrne wrote:
| One of the things that bothered me there was working with
| contractors. I felt like having two tiers really undermined
| a lot of the culture.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Ye you get an apartheid atmosphere when the amount of
| contractors go so high that they can't be experts
| anymore.
|
| Oh so now there is a Xmas lunch, but a third of the group
| is not invited. Or "No ice cream" for you.
|
| It is funny how it was the small things that pissed me
| off. Who in their right mind even has a Xmas lunch
| without everyone ...
|
| It was always one manager layer disconnected from the
| actual contractors that pulled off the BS meany things.
| The direct management knew that had to give ice cream to
| contractors too.
| vintermann wrote:
| I've heard that before about Facebook, that there's a taboo
| against "cynicism".
|
| But sometimes lack of cynicism can be disastrous. I'm
| reminded of a story, recounted in Francis Spufford's "Red
| Plenty", of Leonid Kantorovich who invented linear
| programming, and wrote a letter to Stalin politely suggesting
| he was doing economics wrong, he should do things his way
| instead. At the time Stalin was in his paranoid phase and had
| a tendency to murder anyone he noticed. Luckily for
| Kantorovich, a much more cynical bureaucrat intercepted the
| letter before Stalin could read it, and didn't pass it on.
|
| When things are unacceptably bad, it's actually necessary to
| _realize_ things are unacceptably bad, and not pretend that
| there 's always a nice and right way out of it.
|
| People who suppress their own doubts force others to carry
| their doubts for them.
| dmix wrote:
| Is this a classic middle management malaise where everyone
| gets paid so well they don't want to stir the pot? The
| bureaucracy and protection of today's money cows which only
| clouds them from seeing tomorrow's cows that will rescue them
| from certain obscurity?
|
| The Clayton M Christensen solution to big companies ignoring
| obvious problems is to have isolated small teams
| "infrapreneurship" who aren't under the pressures of the
| larger org. With Meta's push towards VR it's obvious Oculus's
| purpose is now Meta's purpose. And all the downside that
| comes with such a thing.
| dmix wrote:
| Intrapreneurship*
| jauer wrote:
| Part of the problem is that Oculus has all the overhead
| from Meta's regulatory compliance burden, so they can't
| escape some of the most frustrating pressures.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Regulatory compliance would be quite easy by just not
| doing spywares.
| jauer wrote:
| Meta could have a subsidiary that does nothing but stamp
| out manhole covers. That subsidiary would have a far
| higher compliance burden than any other manhole cover
| manufacturer.
|
| Their past choices have consequences. It's too late for
| them to "just not" do anything to reduce that burden.
| dinvlad wrote:
| Sadly, there're very few modern examples of big companies
| following this solution.
| blululu wrote:
| There are lots of companies that entertain this solution.
| There are just very few examples of it working for the
| simple reason that this advice generally doesn't work. We
| look at the one company that succeeds and "say why didn't
| we just do that?" without remembering that there were 10
| other startups that failed. The more reliable solution is
| to use the same wisdom of hindsight to pick winners and
| just buy out the one that succeeds. Facebook bought
| instagram, but none of their internal efforts have
| produced anything so useful.
| dinvlad wrote:
| Hmm, could you give a few famous examples that "failed"?
| nrp wrote:
| Cisco tried a fairly extreme version of this, but a new
| CEO put an end to it due in part to morale damage in the
| bulk of the company not working on those projects: https:
| //www.ft.com/content/a81c934c-cb31-11e9-af46-b09e8bfe6...
| mathgladiator wrote:
| This is it. No one is restless, and ruthless pragmatism
| runs things.
|
| I was fortunate as I joined a team that was growing and had
| heat under them which gave me opportunities to go ham in a
| space I care about.
| osigurdson wrote:
| >> ruthless pragmatism
|
| I hadn't heard this this term before but I think it is
| pretty accurate in many organizations. Nothing is worth
| doing as its impossible to prove ROI conclusively - just
| do what the boss says instead.
| berniedurfee wrote:
| This sounds like "Success Theater," where everyone always
| reports green lights up the chain of command, until it's
| too late and the show ends abruptly and poorly.
|
| It's a poison that seems to seep into organizations as they
| get larger.
|
| I once gave a talk about "Enterprise Entrepreneurs" after
| being labeled as one. It can be a good approach to prevent
| stagnation as grass-roots initiatives often generate great
| ideas in large companies.
|
| Unfortunately the practice requires executive sponsorship,
| which can be hard to attain if executives feel *their
| position and stature is being undermined by subordinates.
| pharmakom wrote:
| I've never understood "enterprise entrepreneurs" or
| "intrapreneurship" from the perspective of the employee.
| The massive potential upside for a success just isn't
| there compared to founding your own start-up, so why do
| it?
| rahoulb wrote:
| Risk.
|
| The company takes the risk rather than you personally. If
| it fails but you maintain good relations with the rest of
| the company you lose nothing and just transfer elsewhere
| (I guess, I've never worked at a big company preferring
| to go it alone)
| pharmakom wrote:
| Most start up founders have high opportunity cost but
| lose nothing if the start up fails.
| rahoulb wrote:
| They lose a steady salary until they are profitable or
| get funding
| berniedurfee wrote:
| Less risk yes, but more importantly, for me, more
| stability. I can still hustle and innovate, but within
| the context of a full-time job where I can collect a
| (usually) steady paycheck.
|
| I'm far more motivated by working on cool projects, so
| the reward for me is just as salient if I build something
| cool within someone else's company or my own... I guess,
| having never done the latter.
|
| But yeah, also tbh, risk is a big factor.
| dmix wrote:
| The best answer I could come up with: it's not your
| typical employees who are going to be doing that.
| Employees are employees. Typically you want someone who
| is about to leave the company because they are bored and
| want to do something interesting...and they have an idea
| (or you give them an idea) that excites them.
|
| So instead of VCs you invest company capital into them.
|
| Obviously 99% of the time employees just leave and
| startups win the day. Which is fine. But that's basically
| just how it is. So you either adapt or die until the
| monopoly/cash cow runs its course.
|
| Facebook turning into Meta making the 'startup' be the
| whole companies mission is a bold new idea, which I'm
| skeptical can work. But it's interesting.
| mnky9800n wrote:
| How does this solution work? Does every team work this way?
| Is there no HR but only local administration? Or is it only
| a few teams who get this privilege? How do you avoid us vs.
| Them mentality in that situation?
| dmix wrote:
| Well most of the company still needs to keep the cash cow
| running. So it's only 10% of the company at most
| typically. You just have to have your future bets
| simultaneously be taken serious and isolated from the
| middle management and cyclical swings of the parent
| company.
|
| Often companies get excited about a new idea, staff and
| finance them well... then after a year or two they get
| thrown into the wider system and expected to survive.
|
| Eventually they are absorbed and managed as if they are
| the old cash cow, needing layers of management, risk
| adversion, accelerated timelines, and new 'processes' to
| fix every small problem instead of focusing on the bigger
| picture.
| urthor wrote:
| Sound like the solution is incredibly straightforward.
|
| Spin "the other bets" out as a separate company.
|
| Capitalize it separately.
|
| Literally just don't have it as part of the parent
| company.
|
| The only advantage of having the company inside the
| "parent" increasingly becomes accounting tricks.
|
| Concealing excess profits via shuffling them to the
| "other bet" is the biggest trick of them all.
|
| All publicly listed companies actively hide profits from
| shareholders.
|
| Who might want the capital as a dividend.
| ido wrote:
| It's not just tricks, there are also real efficiency
| gains from not having duplicate efforts (double HR
| department, double finance, etc).
| ghaff wrote:
| Right. Spin off a company and the spin-off now needs all
| those corporate functions that cause many developers to
| ask "What do all those people do?" It's not purely
| duplicative as such things scale with size to a certain
| degree. And it depends to some degree on how the spin off
| is structured but there's almost certainly a lot of
| incremental headcount and other expense.
| blippage wrote:
| > Spin "the other bets" out as a separate company.
|
| Aha, glad somebody is seeing the same thing I'm seeing.
|
| The problem with Google is that it is too large, and too
| successful. Their idea of having experimental projects is
| a good one, the problem is that Google makes so much
| money that they don't commit to them. They become too
| dilettante about them.
|
| The fix is to do spin-offs, say keeping a minority stake
| at less than 20%. This generates capital for Google,
| gives them a share of the upside, but they don't have too
| much influence on the spin-off. So it's Death or Glory
| for the spin-off. They are forced to make whatever it is
| they invented work, or face extinction. There is a
| smaller management team, focussed on success.
|
| This strikes me as a much better proposition than what we
| see at the moment, with Google just dabbling around
| pouring money into something they'll eventually get bored
| with.
|
| You'd think that what with all the big brains at Google,
| someone would have thought of this. Maybe someone at
| Goldmans should make a pitch.
| urthor wrote:
| The issue is if they did this, what would happen is:
|
| 1) An enormous pile of cash would accumulate on Google's
| balance sheet. 2) The spinoffs would be subject to normal
| commercial rules about risk, rate of return and such. 3)
| The spinoffs couldn't be "brand Google." Which is a not-
| inconsiderable thing.
|
| Clearly though, it's a good call.
| mejutoco wrote:
| Not being brand Google would have advantages too. For
| instance, it would not affect Google's brand when shut
| down.
| mnky9800n wrote:
| Couldn't they just be in the Google family? Like there's
| a startup I work adjacent to called aker BP. BP owns a
| 30% stake. But aker BP is a separate company that's
| publicly traded.
| vintermann wrote:
| Google has tried this. Wasn't Niantic pretty much exactly
| what you describe?
| nunez wrote:
| The only experiences I've seen of intrapreneurship didn't
| solve these problems, since funding was guaranteed and
| their leadership basically worked for the "parent" company.
| [deleted]
| solardev wrote:
| Is that how Google ended up with eight chat apps while
| Search gets worse and worse every year?
| HyperSane wrote:
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| I'm willing to bet that that's also how Google will be
| completely disrupted by an AI-first competitor. The execs
| will be too chicken to kill their current golden goose.
| vl wrote:
| Google far outperforms everyone else in AI.
|
| Search is already heavily ML-powered. Right now it's
| impossible to provide ad-sponsored fully-AI-powered
| search and make it profitable. Remember, you are actually
| not paying for it at the cost, and users that actually
| click ads are subsidizing you.
|
| But when it will be possible, Google is going to be in
| perfect position to capitalize on it.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| It might be ML powered but has that power made it better?
| Can it actually provide you with useful relevant info
| without adding "site:reddit.com" to the query?
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Google simply can't monetize chatGPT-like search to the
| tune of $150B/year.
|
| The current model doesn't work for this new reality.
| They'll have to find a new model. And if history is any
| clue, the suits will be unwilling to change
| rvba wrote:
| The problem with search that it can be powered by AI, but
| it is worse now than it was 5 years ago.
| aix1 wrote:
| I am not totally sure what you mean by an AI-first
| competitor. Could you give a (hypothetical) example?
| saddist0 wrote:
| ChatGPT can be an example.
|
| Do you need to search and figure things out if you have a
| personal assistant to do that for you?
| Mezzie wrote:
| This is going to take a _long_ time. Longer than one
| would think if one is using the progression of the
| language model as a basis for this prediction.
|
| There are a lot of pitfalls and erroneous assumptions
| built into both Google's current search and the
| information used to train AI/ML models. Two big ones are
| "assuming that a person searching for something and
| accepting the answer means it's a successful search" and
| "assuming a person searching/asking for something
| actually wants what they're asking for".
|
| I'm a librarian with several years of reference
| experience under my belt and neither of those things are
| true. They're both good tools for a well considered and
| well informed information search, but that 'well
| considered and well informed' is doing a lot of heavy
| lifting.
| disqard wrote:
| Since you have domain expertise, I'd love to know your
| opinion on searching through "personal libraries" like
| Zettelkasten (or similar repositories), and perhaps
| linking that with Internet-scale indexes.
|
| Are there tools that do that well right now? Do you know
| of (maybe niche) projects exploring such ideas?
| jl6 wrote:
| ChatGPT already far outperforms google for heavily-SEO'd
| topics like recipe searches.
|
| Try asking "what herbs and spices go well in a chilli?"
| in both. I get a sensible, rough answer from ChatGPT
| within seconds. From Google I get page after page of
| content farms hiding information in amongst ads and life-
| story filler.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| I wanted to demo it for my wife who was writing a paper
| on digital media consumption during the pandemic.
|
| She was trying to find poems that went viral during the
| pandemic. Googling it showed a bunch of mediocre articles
| or irrelevant news stories
|
| I asked chatGPT and it gave me a list of 10 poems by
| relatively well known poets. A brief review showed that
| these poems were, indeed, viral during the pandemic.
| Saved at least 15 minutes of Googling.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| google has the ai ability but no one has achieved cost
| scalability yet
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| No one doubts their ability. What one does doubt is the
| willingness of the suits to replace their wildly
| profitable business model with a new one.
|
| Kodak invented digital cameras but jettisoned it because
| they ate into its existing business. Will the same happen
| with Google?
| sacrosancty wrote:
| bbarnett wrote:
| It already has started.
|
| Look at Meta, and how Apple borked their primary cash
| cow.
|
| Now, mostly due to concerns about state spying, many
| jurisdictions are passing enhanced privacy bills.
|
| On top of that, the entire planet now wants cash for news
| listings.
|
| And the EU is repeatedly extending its legislation,
| making Pii collection and tracking less and less
| profitable.
|
| The US keeps considering similar bills. Alphabet can
| lobby all it wants, but even so, these laws will be
| passed eventually.
|
| Google needs to smarten up.
| urthor wrote:
| A very very conservative prediction given the exact same
| thing happened to IBM, Sun, Burroughs, Yahoo to an
| extent, and infinitely many others.
| canadianfella wrote:
| dmix wrote:
| Monopolies tend to stick around much longer than other
| industries despite their lack of competence. Clayton's
| book was mostly about Intel which operated in a
| competitive market with AMD and others.
|
| DuckDuckGo is great but it's not nipping at their heels
| meaningfully.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| ChatGPT is increasingly handling the bulk of my major
| queries, and that's when its rate limited and hard to
| access (behind a sign up, behind captcha)
| pcl wrote:
| It somehow disturbs me that I need to prove I'm a human
| when chatting with a bot..
| solardev wrote:
| Sorry, puny human, you couldn't solve the squiggly
| license plates fast enough.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| It takes a long time for any company to die, period.
| WeWork (or I guess now Twitter) style rapid flameouts are
| very rare.
|
| Most corporate deaths look like Sears. The writing on the
| wall was there for over two decades.
| master_crab wrote:
| On the wall for two decades?!
|
| Hell it was there for four decades, double that time.
| Walmart was running circles around Sears by the 70s.
| lumost wrote:
| I kinda wonder if there is a type of employee who likes
| working at dying firms. Every year their job gets easier
| with fewer demands. Failure becomes kinda expected.
| doktorhladnjak wrote:
| I'm reminded of someone I met at a party who actually
| worked for Sears. They'd spent many years at Amazon on
| the retail side of the business, in the earlier days of
| Amazon. Sears hired several people with this background
| in Seattle to turn their business around.
|
| Pretty quickly, they figured out upper management had no
| interest in their ideas to make Sears into a viable
| online retailer. Everybody left or started coasting. They
| all knew the company was doomed but cashed their
| paychecks. After all, that's literally what they were
| being paid to do.
| alvah wrote:
| Twitter? Seemed very much alive an hour ago.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| WeWork is still going strong in London. Lots of offices
| and all of which are full.
| spoonjim wrote:
| A full office only tells you about the revenue side of
| the business. Many businesses are popular with customers
| but go bankrupt
| hnlmorg wrote:
| Yeah, but I'm sure most of those businesses would have
| done their due diligence on WeWorks financials before
| moving in.
|
| Changing offices is an expensive exercise so they
| wouldn't want to risk renting space from somewhere that
| is likely to go under in the next year or two.
| mejutoco wrote:
| The whole point of wework from a customer perspective is
| that you don't have to commit to long 10-year leases. So
| wework leases long-term and the customers short-term. If
| the customers dry up wework still needs to pay their
| commitments.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| Where did I say 10 year leases? I specifically said 1 to
| 2 years knowing exactly how WeWork operates.
| mejutoco wrote:
| Nowhere did you say.
|
| My point is the dynamic I mention explains the problems
| of wework, and is not proved wrong by the argument you
| put forward, paraphrased, that "businesses have evaluated
| long-term risk of renting at wework so wework is not at
| risk"
| hnlmorg wrote:
| Your second attempt at paraphrasing my comment is still
| way off the mark.
|
| You keep discussing a long term context yet my comment
| was just as much about short term risk too.
|
| You don't have to agree with me, but I'd appreciate it if
| you didn't "paraphrase" my comment in a way that's
| disingenuous to the original point it was making.
| parasubvert wrote:
| WeWork is also very much alive.
| m0llusk wrote:
| WeWork is living dead, taking down and feasting on the
| flesh of the living. Their financials are so bad that
| there is no possibility of rescue, only the matter of the
| timing and details of end. Meanwhile the coworking space
| continues to be critical for an increasing fraction of
| the workforce. Those companies that actually live in this
| space by charging members fees that pay for the property
| and services required have a huge challenge competing
| with WeWork. It is a textbook case of venture capital
| doing terrible damage to an entire sector without
| actually contributing anything. The capital will be
| burned through and WeWork and other companies will die
| and then maybe we can start again for real. It is so
| frustrating.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| Sure, this month
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| So it has been for however many years since the purported
| "rapid flameout".
| SuperQue wrote:
| Google ended up with a bunch of chat apps because the
| culture promotes building new over keeping things
| running.
|
| The first chat was basically an XMPP service. It was
| decent, it federated outside of Google, it was fully
| functional. It even supported group channels (XMPP
| conferences) internally. But I don't think that was ever
| exposed to the public.
|
| Then Hangouts was created. It was, per usual at Gooogle,
| a ground-up rewrite. IIRC not the same team. So they
| spent at least a couple years playing catch up to get
| feature parity with the XMPP chat. Worse, Hangouts was
| one of the first services to suffer from strict team-
| created "Personas" design philosophy. Any time anyone
| would complain about a feature, or miss-feature, it was
| flatly ignored because "You're not one of our Personas".
| It took years of complaints to get them to change their
| minds.
|
| By the time Hangouts was good enough to fully replace the
| previous service it was now boring and people left the
| team for other new projects. Because maintenance won't
| get you promoted.
|
| The other random chat services were basically
| experiential toys.
|
| Now we have Meet, which is is likely another case of
| "Hangouts is unmaintainable tech, we need to re-write
| it". Years of getting up to feature parity. And miss-
| features that won't get fixed.
| detourdog wrote:
| The first sign of trouble to me was when google killed
| xmpp support. Prior to that everyone just logged into
| instant messaging on whatever device.
|
| Every decision since then has been pro-ad network
| technical competition.
| SuperQue wrote:
| Yea, it was great. But it was more lack of maintenance
| than anything. The original chat devs were passionate
| about open federation. The new devs were not.
|
| Add to that it was a big source of spam that nobody
| wanted to deal with.
|
| Apparently the team tried really hard to get more
| companies on board with opening up federation. But I
| think the only "major" service that did was what was left
| of AOL.
| mejutoco wrote:
| XMPP compatibility was amazing. I remember using one chat
| client to accept all the different chat services,
| including google one.
| unity1001 wrote:
| > Is that how Google ended up with eight chat apps
|
| Its more because they killed their already working, well-
| accepted Google Chat app, not seeing gigantic profit or
| any market control benefit from it. Somehow they thought
| it was a better idea to have some 'chat' through the
| browser - which resulted in whatever 'Hangouts' was.
| Prioritized 'engineering' and profits over users as its
| so normal for large public corporations.
|
| Then Slack and Discord came and wiped the floor with all
| of them.
| [deleted]
| freddref wrote:
| I so wish I could "kill stupid things before they cause
| damage", "set direction" and have people follow, but it seems
| especially difficult for technical people.
|
| We spend all-day every-day talking to our subservient (a
| compiler) but a human is fuzzy and unreliable which is
| compounded by team size. Carmack can realize something in an
| instant but it is amazing how long it can take an entire team.
|
| One thing I've noticed that really does not work is
| "complaining", if Carmack thinks he is complaining, then
| magnify that by 10 for others on the team.
|
| Rather than attacking an idea directly, I'm wondering if
| ignoring the idea may be more effective. This way there's no
| one to fight and the idea can slip away without any ego or
| drama, there's no face to lose.
|
| If you really can't help the situation, then leaving is the
| last resort. Oh well, on to the next thing, very curious to see
| what Carmack gets into next.
| joanfihu wrote:
| That's so true.
|
| Carmack is working on AI. He started Keen Technologies.
| oreally wrote:
| It's only stunning because programmers view him as a god, when
| in reality, he is a just a fallible human being. Just goes to
| show even programmers are susceptible to idolism.
|
| The signs were all there. He entered a den where he doesn't
| hold founder status anymore, and that the value of his
| contributions to the company does not hold as much weight.
| ericzawo wrote:
| This would surprise nobody who has any experience behind the FB
| curtain.
| xwowsersx wrote:
| Where is that quotation from? I don't see that in the linked
| article.
| rawrfml wrote:
| His internal badge (ie. goodbye) post. This is definitely not
| in the article.
|
| Edit: The article has a link to some other paywalled link
| that may contain the full contents of the note. I don't have
| a subscription so I can't tell but the quote is real at
| least.
| sp332 wrote:
| He finally posted the full note himself. https://www.facebo
| ok.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid0iPix...
| chihuahua wrote:
| https://archive.ph/Lmu9g
| xwowsersx wrote:
| Thank you
| xwowsersx wrote:
| Ah ok, thanks
| mandevil wrote:
| This is why there are so many leaks from Facebook. My sister is
| a reporter and she says that people leak when they feel they
| can't influence the decision of the org, that they are a
| Cassandra who is being ignored by the organization. That there
| is so much leaking from Facebook- much of it from seemingly
| senior and highly respected people- suggests major problems in
| the decision making process there.
| underwater wrote:
| Facebook leans into making everyone feel like their opinions
| matters: "Nothing at Facebook is someone else's problem". But
| not everyone can be right, so of course you end up with
| people being ignored and feeling shirty.
|
| At other companies I've worked at the norm is that the rank
| and file feel powerless, and it doesn't even occur to them to
| offer their opinion.
| ecshafer wrote:
| Your reference to people being a Cassandra inside Facebook is
| extra funny considering they made CassandraDB.
| khazhoux wrote:
| > It is simply stunning that the seasoned direction and counsel
| that someone of John Carmack's caliber is capable of delivering
| was not being followed.
|
| This doesn't actually surprise me in the least bit, and that's
| not a criticism of either FB/Meta or Carmack. It's simply that
| after a couple of decades in industry, I now see that effective
| organizational leaders are exceedingly rare, and I've seen now
| many super-experts --legends in their fields-- join big
| companies and not find their footing.
|
| I also don't really buy the "you gotta be good at cutthroat
| politics." I have plenty of examples across multiple top-tier
| companies, of senior leadership who were smart, thoughtful,
| effective... and still reasonable and compassionate.
|
| I think it's simply that it's tough to move people, plain as
| that. And in Carmack's case, I will wager that his expertise
| and track record were not enough to get everyone to drop what
| they're doing and follow his lead. After all, there are many
| other legends at Meta too. And, there's an abundance of good
| ideas all fighting for limited mindshare and limited ability to
| act.
| tinco wrote:
| Carmack is an absolute genius and it would be madness to
| disregard anything he's spent any significant amount of time
| thinking about.
|
| But let's be real, he isn't Tim Sweeny or Gabe Newell. As
| smart he is, I don't think he is even top 3 in the best
| business decision makers of his specific field of first
| person shooter game developers. His track record is that
| using his tremendous skill he caught one of the biggest
| waves, and he's been riding that out and catching smaller
| waves ever since. I don't even think he didn't see the larger
| subsequent waves that Sweeney and Newell saw, I think he just
| wasn't interested in them.
|
| Was he interested in catching big waves for Facebook, or was
| he interested in pursuing his specific vision?
| HellDunkel wrote:
| Doom kicked ass not because it was trying to catch big
| waves but because they followed their specific vision.
| Making shit tons of money is not everything.
|
| Agree that Sweeney seems to be the better captain. And he
| left carmack in the dust with unreal.
| baandang wrote:
| I am pretty sure the big sticking point is Carmack thinks
| they should be doing the opposite of putting out $1500
| headsets.
|
| He was pretty much taking shots at people during his Meta
| Connect talk this year. There is nothing shocking about him
| leaving.
| cudgy wrote:
| Perhaps this is the point of criticizing 5% utilization
| of the gpu. Why not have 90% gpu utilization of a $400
| headset? Which strategy is more likely to succeed in
| gaining more adoption?
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| For every example of smart, thoughtful, effective senior
| leadership there are 10 or 100 of the opposite sort. Most
| corporations are a living proof of Peter's principle, where
| senior management is a country club of old* people covering
| each other's incompetence. * It is not about ageism, but
| about people that are in their 5 years before retirement and
| have zero motivation to do any work, keep skills in shape or
| give a damn. I worked with a lot of people that were more
| than decent in their careers, but dropped the ball completely
| in the last 5 to 10 years before retirement with huge
| negative impact for their employers. How can this happen? In
| big companies the inertia covers for these people.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| That honestly sounds like a lot of tech "gurus" too, like
| Mudge and Carmack. These people made a name for themselves
| with incredible skill as an IC (usually in a hot field,
| too), and never made the transition beyond that level,
| towards being leaders with the ability to grasp the full
| picture.
|
| There is a completely different set of skills involved. In
| fact, the best wide-area tech leads I met at Google were
| not great engineers, but they were very good at inspiring
| other engineers.
|
| I think this is where Steve Jobs actually deserves a lot of
| credit, and honestly Elon Musk too.
| touisteur wrote:
| While I agree with the idea, I think John Carmack
| illustrated he was capable as more than an IC but also a
| team leader for several projects while at Id.
|
| So, probably a very able leader of a small-ish team.
| Which is OK and can still lead to huge impact and I wish
| he'd stayed in that zone in anything he was doing
| (probably started that way at Occulus?).
|
| Some of us can't acquire (or haven't acquired yet) the
| skillset and daily gumption of leading bigger orgs and I
| guess it's fine.
|
| I hope his next endeavour gets him back to a manageable
| high-impact I-decide-most-things job. I just want to see
| what a happy and free Carmack can still do.
| icoder wrote:
| Someone on Reddit coined the term 'institutional inertia',
| which probably applies here too.
| woadwarrior01 wrote:
| That term is apt for Reddit's engineering teams as well.
| [deleted]
| mattlondon wrote:
| That term predates Reddit.
|
| https://trends.google.co.uk/trends/explore?date=all&q=Insti
| t...
| vertis wrote:
| Was going to say the same thing. I don't think it was
| coined on Reddit. -\\_(tsu)_/-
|
| I like your use of trends though to prove it.
| nickersonm wrote:
| It's even older; there's a decent blip in the 1830s: http
| s://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=institutional+.
| ..
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >I have plenty of examples across multiple top-tier
| companies, of senior leadership who were smart, thoughtful,
| effective... and still reasonable and compassionate.
|
| some hide it well, some haven't met a cutthroat enough
| politician/executive. Some may be smart or lucky enough to
| completely avoid the scene altogether and tend to their own
| farm peacefully. And then maybe 2 remaining groups are truly
| in sync and altruistic and overall seem to be interested in
| the betterment of their audience than profits.
|
| I wouldn't bet on Meta being in the latter category tho. I
| hope carmack enjoys his farm, he's definitely earned it.
|
| >I think it's simply that it's tough to move people, plain as
| that.
|
| can't make a horse drink. In this case, it's probably more
| like you can't even lead the horse to water to begin with.
|
| That's why culture fit is such a strong factor in success.
| you can't spend all day fighting and expect reasonable
| progress to be made.
| labrador wrote:
| I'm as shocked as you are. What a wasted opportunity by petty
| people with big egos. And I paid for it literally. I bought a
| Oculus set and stopped using soon after. What a disappointment.
| I wanted to support the technology, but my good will was
| squandered. At least I feel vindicated by every thing John
| Carmack says because I thought some similar things.
| Forge36 wrote:
| Where did this come from? This quote only resolves to this
| post.
|
| Edit: A little more searching and I found the full memo
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-john-carmack-scathing-e...
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > It is simply stunning that the seasoned direction and counsel
| that someone of John Carmack's caliber is capable of delivering
| was not being followed.
|
| I'd be very careful about making that assertion when you're
| only hearing one side of the story. There is a good quote from
| the Dowager Countess in Downton Abbey about why she never takes
| sides in a broken marriage: "Because however much the couple
| may strive to be honest, no one is ever in possession of the
| facts."
|
| I strongly think that applies here.
| hinkley wrote:
| That saying about how teenagers and twenty year old think
| they're immortal? There's some variant of that for programmers.
| That failure mode is something that happens to other people, to
| suckers, so I don't have to change direction because some guy
| who's going grey at the temples tells me I'm walking toward a
| cliff.
|
| I've been in places where my job became a bit of a cleaner, for
| things that shouldn't have needed to be cleaned in the first
| place. When I realize that's what I'm doing - when it's most or
| all of what I'm doing - I leave. Sounds like John might have
| similar boundaries, and found himself standing at the edge of
| one.
|
| I'd really like to see him try his own thing again, and either
| not sell it this time or be quite a bit more precious about
| what he's willing to part with and for how many zeroes.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| I dunno man. I think I'm a pretty good dev, but if John
| Carmack told me I was wrong about a technical issue/overall
| technical direction I'd give him some serious consideration.
| The only time I can recall disagreeing with him was a few
| years ago when he said people who want better gaming on Linux
| should focus on improving Wine instead of native support. And
| it turns out he was largely correct there and I was wrong, if
| Valve's success with Proton is any indication.
| rightbyte wrote:
| The joke goes that Win32 is the best and most stable cross
| platform api for Linux.
| dcow wrote:
| I have a genuine question about what to do when one finds
| oneself in this type of position and one is surrounded by
| people who seemingly _do_ give a damn (and one isn 't compelled
| to just give up and leave).
|
| In my experience, the software industry, in it's aggressive
| desire to be egalitarian, has an authority problem. I have
| encountered the "I told you so one year ago but we just _had_
| to learn the hard way didn 't we" situation more times than it
| seems efficient. I am not unaware that I may be selectively
| remembering things and I'm not so prideful to ignore that I've
| also made calls that turn out to need adjusting down the
| road... but it baffles me why people put in positions of power
| and leadership are so often ignored almost on the whim of some
| well meaning but misguided other party. Certainly Carmack has
| the industry respect to be taken seriously. Why wasn't he?
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| If you want the boring answer: Money and clout.
|
| The slightly less boring answer: some people don't
| necessarily have the audience's best interests at heart.
| Sometimes not even the company's best interests. To use a
| slightly less heinous example than some of the obviously
| malicious backstabbing: maybe you do know that Idea B is more
| efficient, but Idea A was yours, and it looks great on a
| resume to say that you achitected Idea A, that is being used
| in production (even if it made the company less money and the
| product worse off). You're gonna leave the company in 3 years
| anyway, so why care about some efficiency? Why even care if 6
| years down the line someone else comes in and cleans up the
| code and ends up using Idea B in the end? You got your value
| out of it.
|
| Slghtly less boring answer 2: people aren't perfect. And
| attach to the smallest fixations. So they fight not because
| the idea is bad but because their goal is to spite that
| particular person. You just need to be more discrete about it
| than back in grade school. This example was a person, but it
| can be extended to a group, a company, even an idealogy as a
| whole. Be it in zealous defense or in spite of, it has a
| similar effect on productivity.
| [deleted]
| dpkirchner wrote:
| > Certainly Carmack has the industry respect to be taken
| seriously. Why wasn't he?
|
| I wonder if his schedule played some part. He worked there
| for one day a week. I could see it being really difficult to
| understand his vision if you have to wait 7 days to ask a
| follow-up*, for example. And it's gotta be close to
| impossible to move the needle on existing culture if you're
| barely around.
|
| * and while you wait there are plenty of other people around
| to ask instead
| lazilyloaded wrote:
| He only moved into the part-time role in the past few
| years. Before then he was the legit CTO of the company.
| xyzelement wrote:
| I want to write about this topic in more depth, but in a
| nutshell I found that the more innovative and valuable your
| idea is, the harder it is to sell (because it's very value
| comes from the fact that it's a distance from bow people are
| thinking today)
|
| People are busy and attention is scarce so knowing how to
| genuinely push and sell your idea in such environments is a
| rare ability and one that needs curation.
|
| You'll find that people who rise are ones who can do this.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| You also have to be ruthless as required and not take no
| for an answer. Sometimes you have to run people over and
| leave the bodies in the ditch to get stuff done.
| JW_00000 wrote:
| And two years later, your idea fails and your boss says:
|
| > A good fraction of the things I complain about
| eventually turn my way after a year or two passes and
| evidence piles up, but I have never been able to kill
| stupid things before they cause damage, or set a
| direction and have a team actually stick to it.
|
| So serious point: if everyone is ruthless and tries to
| push their own ideas through, how can a manager know who
| is right and which direction to follow?
| doctor_eval wrote:
| It doesn't even have to be innovative in a global sense.
| Just making suggestions that are outside the experience of
| the people you need to convince can become futile.
|
| Egotistical people with power are more than happy to ignore
| maths and rationality. I don't know why. It never works out
| for them and it brings everyone else down. It's very
| frustrating.
| phplovesong wrote:
| Damn this rings home.
|
| (Im not comparing my skillset to Carmack, im my eyes hes a god
| of programming and has an insanely deep skillset and knowledge
| about so much software related)
|
| Sometimes i feel the same, a new feature is requested and i
| directly see this is an anti-feature, or just overall a bad
| decision. I voice my concern, but the client request goes
| first.
|
| Next up the feature is poorly implemented, usually "just like
| the client wanted it" without any bigger design. Testing is
| barely done, and finally it goes to prod. Next is a 3 month
| period of bugfixes, and ultimately this one feature can take up
| 60-70% of a devs time.
|
| Then the process repeats.
| zppln wrote:
| If Carmack suggested changes to my code I'd implement them in a
| heartbeat. If he suggested changes to my business I'd be a bit
| more cautious.
| sesm wrote:
| Even if he said "change this to this" without any explanation
| why?
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| It's interesting to me that, even here where people pride
| themselves on their intellectual and rational superiority, we
| can still observe the primitive human tendency to appeal to
| authority; see the top throwaway comment [1].
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34026253
| aerovistae wrote:
| Where are you quoting this from? A link would be nice, I don't
| see this in the article.
| sp332 wrote:
| After some passages were published, he put up the full text:
| https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid0iPix.
| ..
| chihuahua wrote:
| https://archive.ph/Lmu9g
| actionfromafar wrote:
| I would have been stunned if they had listened to someone wise
| and decent. They listen to quarterly reports I guess?
| zoltar wrote:
| No, they don't do that either.
| onion2k wrote:
| That's what it looks like from the outside, but the reality is
| that he works alongside people at the same level as him as far
| as the company is concerned. His experience is incredible but
| its likely that the people he works with are also deeply
| experienced engineering managers too. He's just more famous.
| posharma wrote:
| Success in the corporate world requires more than technical
| prowess. One of those things is influence. It's not for
| everyone.
| dinvlad wrote:
| I think it depends on organization. In some good ones,
| politics and engineering align well. In most, they don't.
| version_five wrote:
| That can be true, it's also definitely what people say at a
| failing org that has become bureaucratic and political and
| doesn't value technical skill. I have seen this first hand.
| There's such thing as an asshole that nobody can work with of
| course. But overall it's a red flag when accomplished people
| leave an org because "it's not for everyone".
| namdnay wrote:
| I don't think it's specific to failing orgs. I doubt
| technical skill is what gets you to the top at Goldman
| Sachs, LVMH, VW, the US government, or any other incredibly
| successful organization. At a certain point of scale, any
| organization is about politics
| hinkley wrote:
| I had a coworker once who had as an annual goal "convince
| the director of engineering of X" - given to them by the
| Director of Engineering. Dude, you should never have agreed
| to that. Responsibility for something you have no control
| over is a bad day waiting to happen.
|
| One of the people who made it on my Never Again list was a
| technical lead who somehow thought "bring me solutions, not
| problems" was a reasonable thing for a technical lead to
| say. In a large, complex system _that you built_ the person
| who 's been there for a hot minute knows enough to see
| problems but not enough of the interactions to know the
| solution. You're supposed to tell _me_ how to fix it, or
| fix it yourself, not deflect. Took a couple years before I
| could actually fix any of the problems and there are still
| bits of code that just look like a Shadow over Innsmouth to
| me.
| [deleted]
| throwaway019254 wrote:
| You mean politics.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| That's what we who aren't good at that call it :)
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Politics isn't necessarily some dirty thought-terminating
| cliche. It did used to have an actual meaning:
|
| >the activities associated with the governance of a
| country or other area, especially the debate or conflict
| among individuals or parties having or hoping to achieve
| power.
|
| As long as you work with people, you will have to engage
| in some politics. But I guess another definition has
| become the more popular lately:
|
| >activities within an organization that are aimed at
| improving someone's status or position and are typically
| considered to be devious or divisive.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| I exert influence You align strategic competences
| They play politics
| worldsayshi wrote:
| Politics or "people who don't know what they are doing
| doubling down on decisions or lack thereof and others
| aligning themselves because they are busy doing stuff and
| rocking the boat isn't useful unless you have time, mandate
| and mindshare enough to coordinate with others".
| [deleted]
| pengaru wrote:
| The bigger the ship the smaller your rudder is.
| FormerBandmate wrote:
| He was Bethesda and Oculus. He isn't Meta.
|
| Meta doesn't seem to be able to do anything at all. At
| Facebook it was an unrivaled (yet amoral) champion of social
| media, but it doesn't even seem like that now
| pengaru wrote:
| > He was Bethesda and Oculus. He isn't Meta.
|
| Meta is _gargantuan_ compared to 2009-2013 Bethesda, which
| frankly seems like a golden handcuffs-era footnote in
| Carmack 's professional history. He isn't even mentioned
| once in Bethesda's wikipedia page[0]...
|
| Oculus seemed far more apropos for a get-shit-done guy like
| Carmack. Personally I think FB acquiring him/Oculus was an
| almost certain shitty outcome for the VR technology.
|
| But I'm glad Carmack surely refilled the piggy bank in the
| process. I look forward to seeing what he manages to do
| free of the FB/Meta albatross with gas in the tank.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethesda_Softworks
| HideousKojima wrote:
| I'm hoping he brings back Armadillo Aerospace
| bobkazamakis wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id_Software
| djur wrote:
| It's confusing because the recent Doom games were
| developed by Id and published by Bethesda Softworks, and
| both of them are subsidiaries of Zenimax. Bethesda
| Softworks is just a publisher; the games Bethesda is best
| known for (The Elder Scrolls and Fallout 3+) are by
| Bethesda Game Studios.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| Meta itself only exists because of poor direction. It is an
| aberration of humanity. If good counsel and advice were
| important to Meta, it would shut down on itself because its
| very existence is an offence to common sense.
| scrame wrote:
| yeah if Carmack quits on you it's a political problem and not a
| tech problem.
| neycoda wrote:
| Seems like Meta is not a good fit for John Carmack.
| bluedino wrote:
| He might be considered by others as "boomer" that hasn't been
| relevant "since Quake III"
| [deleted]
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Respect your elders
| azinman2 wrote:
| But that's not the gen z way. Part of being young is
| thinking you'd somehow do it all differently in the same
| circumstances.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| "Beware an old man in a profession where men die young"
|
| I am in my late 20s, and I think there's plenty to learn
| from the past that still applies to the world of today.
| When a seasoned veteran says something, I shut up and
| _listen_ , because there's often a learnable tidbit
| there, or at least a fun war story.
| ryandrake wrote:
| That's an attribute of youth in general. No single
| generation owns it exclusively.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Which is why I said "part of being young." That said, I
| don't remember being so explicitly mad at previous
| generations when I grew up (as a millennial). "Ok boomer"
| is a big part of the gen z vocabulary.
| humanizersequel wrote:
| "ok boomer" in gen z speak tends to be a jab at
| millenials, not something directed seriously at the
| legitimately wisened.
| azinman2 wrote:
| What makes you say that? Certainly tiktok seems to be
| full of a lot of generational humor/videos, which must
| explicitly naming boomers and often showing people their
| age. But maybe I'm too old to understand their explicit
| gripes.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| ok, whatever.
|
| Uuuuuuh, John Carmack is a Gen-X'er...
|
| How do you insult them?
| nailer wrote:
| Say something bad about Soundgarden. *
|
| * Please don't say something bad about Soundgarden.
| majewsky wrote:
| I've seen it used by both millenials and zoomers, mostly
| directed at boomers. It captures a general sentiment that
| is widespread among those generations that the boomer
| generation uses (or used existing) systems of power to
| benefit themselves to the detriment of younger
| generations and then complains as the younger generations
| struggle to earn their place in those systems.
| spoils19 wrote:
| I wonder how many people don't value his opinion because
| (they assume) Carmack can't solve LeetCode as well as they
| can.
| pushedx wrote:
| If so, then they missed the games that used id Tech 4 and id
| Tech 5 (almost impossible given the success of Doom 3), and
| how Carmack continued to invent truly unthinkable performance
| and fidelity enhancements to real time 3D graphics until the
| day he left for Occulus.
|
| Then at Occulus he translated that engineering talent into a
| ruthless attack on latency and other issues with VR at the
| time. He was even working on this before he left.
|
| Anyone who has watched one of his QuakeCon Keynotes in the
| past 20 years knows just how much raw talent Carmack has as
| an engineer. Most of them are on YouTube, you should check
| them out.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| I think this also sums up his weakness though in a megacorp
| like Meta. He's technically brilliant, and that can go a
| very long way. But in a large corporation, technical
| brilliance is secondary to excellence in leadership.
|
| I remember reading an article in the '00s or '90s about how
| Id worked, and it just seemed not very scalable beyond
| Carmack.
|
| And while he his companies have had great success, other
| '90s era peers - Valve and Epic - are on a whole other
| level today. Technical brilliance brought his company far,
| but it can't bring you to those heights.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Are you sure you don't mean a "Gen-X'er" that hasn't been
| relevant since he stole Apple ][s with thermite and vasoline?
| ;)
| belfalas wrote:
| Whoever those others are...they are irrelevant.
| [deleted]
| Minor49er wrote:
| The man went from making the fastest 3D games ever to grace
| silicon to literally launching rockets. He's been the fastest
| nerd alive, and Meta couldn't even give him legs
| (figuratively and literally [1])
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/ouq5yyzSiAw?t=395
| DonHopkins wrote:
| I don't see what you didn't do there.
| yrgulation wrote:
| yucky wrote:
| How many people that ignorant actually work there though?
| Maybe there really is more dead weight than we thought..
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| Perhaps he hated bureaucrats meddling with engineering and user
| experience.
|
| Maybe he's condescending in a team of bright people, and sees
| the world as him and then everyone lesser?
|
| It's hard to say what blend of reasons, other than what he
| explains.
| polotics wrote:
| His writings definitely show a lot of humility.
| into_infinity wrote:
| I think we can only speculate about reasons, so everybody is
| gonna project. Maybe the Facebook culture is uniquely bad.
| Maybe Carmack isn't an effective leader. Maybe it's just how
| large corporations work. Maybe he was dealt a bad hand.
|
| Meanwhile, I admire that he had the guts to see the issue, say
| it out loud in a self-critical way, and call it quits. Most
| people don't.
| conceptme wrote:
| The metaverse is a castle in the sky nobody can make it what Meta
| or John Carmack wants it to be.
| [deleted]
| habibur wrote:
| He was talking about working on AI the other day. Artificial
| general intelligence "or die" type of challenge taking.
|
| Guess he's getting full time busy with that.
| tomxor wrote:
| As grateful as I am for his contribution to VR, I can't wait.
|
| He's not only brilliant and no BS, but seems to have a way of
| picking out and focusing on highly relevant and fruitful
| threads of progress without losing any nuance, with whatever he
| dips into. It will be exciting to see what might emerge if he
| pours all his effort into AGI.
|
| Also his talent seems wasted battling Facebook, if they don't
| want to listen to him, why bother.
| gerash wrote:
| Politics at work. The most infuriating part is when non technical
| people whose whole day to day work is about expanding their
| territory win through politics
| ur-whale wrote:
| > I have a voice at the highest levels here, so it feels like I
| should be able to move things
|
| John discovers that steering a supertanker is different from
| driving a motorcycle.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| There is a pay wall, so I haven't read the article. I just want
| to put it out there: Did this seem predictable to anyone? I had
| the sense he was unsatisfied and Meta's public perception,
| particularly in Carmack's department, seemed to be plummeting. It
| seemed very likely that this would happen, but maybe I'm
| projecting too much. I imagined myself being deeply ungratified
| in his role.
| santoshalper wrote:
| It always seemed like a poor fit to me. From the begining,
| Facebook has always been an unctuous, slimy organization and
| Carmack seems to be a relatively high-integrity human. I'm
| honestly surprised it lasted as long as it did.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Of the many things that cooled my interest in VR, the
| presence of Facebook in the space is near the top.
| sharkweek wrote:
| Agreed and maybe this is a little naive of me but I don't
| currently own or plan on owning an oculus but if it was
| still an independent product via its original founders, I'm
| almost certain I'd have one.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I'm fairly certain it started out as him expecting to have
| some sort of positive influence on the slimy mold that is
| Facebook, but in the end he found out that his advice was
| often just thrown to the wind because it didn't match
| someone's political agenda.
|
| At some point you have to decide whether it's worth it to
| keep fighting.
| pjmorris wrote:
| Jerry Weinberg had an expression "Cucumbers get pickled
| more than brine gets cucumbered" to express the influence
| environment has on individuals.
| primitivesuave wrote:
| His note to Meta: https://archive.vn/t6zQp
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Oh wow. What he's describing really resonates with me.
| Working in software, I feel it's almost dichotomous in its
| nature that people absolutely coast or absolutely give a
| damn. It can be so difficult to work on a coasting team. And
| otherwise, it's torture to your soul not to give a damn
| around people who do (if you care, I guess).
|
| In his role I can see that being a genuine struggle, arguably
| worse than what I've encountered. I've rarely had agency to
| effect change, or even the illusion of it. In his case, it
| must have felt as though he should be able to get things on
| course somehow. That would be frustrating.
| primitivesuave wrote:
| It resonates the exact same way with me. I hope our
| industry can start having higher standards, or at least
| start respecting leadership with high standards. 5% GPU
| usage is abysmal and it does seem to be reflective of the
| engineering culture (from knowing other people at Meta).
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I haven't worked in graphics so I'm not sure what
| percentage of GPU usage is good. Should it be lower or
| higher?
| sp332 wrote:
| He hasn't seemed happy since the beginning. So this was a
| surprise to me. I thought he would leave after something
| vested, but that doesn't seem to have determined the timing.
| bane wrote:
| This blogpost from 2014 has been an almost perfect predictor of
| the last few years of the Meta disaster. It misses some stuff,
| but it's not really wrong anywhere beyond some minor details.
| It calls out Carmack as being the canary that will ultimately
| predict Oculus/Meta's future.
|
| https://assayviaessay.blogspot.com/2014/03/virtual-spaces-re...
| pxc wrote:
| That was a good read. But I'm not sure about Carmack being
| the canary.
|
| The idea was then that if he left _quickly_ over ethical
| matters, it would be a sign of something was really wrong.
| But Carmack didn 't leave quickly. It's been almost 9 years.
| And none of the reasons he cites have to do with openness,
| transparency, or abuse of user data.
| jyap wrote:
| https://archive.ph/sfnzN
| dang wrote:
| We've since changed the URL from
| https://www.businessinsider.com/john-carmack-meta-
| consulting..., which that URL is a copy of. to the letter that
| everyone is responding to.
| jp57 wrote:
| The skills and talents needed to lead and influence a big
| organization are different from those needed to influence a small
| team. Once the team size surpasses Dunbar's number, a phase shift
| is required into a qualitatively different way of leading, in
| order to be effective.
|
| A few years ago I took a new role in my org, a team in a big tech
| company, where I was expected to influence the technical
| direction the key infrastructure that supports our mission. I had
| no direct authority to tell anyone what to do, except the small
| team that reported to me. But I had the endorsement of the bosses
| and a reputation as a respected technical voice from years as a
| senior IC before moving to management. No problem, I thought.
| We're small, and I know everyone and they know me. Those things
| had always been enough.
|
| During that time, though, the team headcount grew fourfold, we
| had been less than a hundred people and now we're three hundred
| or more. We stopped calling ourselves a "team" and started to say
| "org" or "department". It was impossible to have personal
| relationships with everyone, and the ways I used to influence
| change stopped working. I became ineffective. I could influence
| individuals, but without defined processes and management systems
| that cemented my authority I couldn't influence the org
| efficiently anymore. I could see things going in bad directions,
| and I could get meetings with leaders and give them my opinion
| and recommendations. The would listen and nod in agreement, but
| the ship wouldn't turn.
|
| The result for me was many months of near-burnout, the feeling of
| shouting into the void. What saved me was leaning on project and
| product management, and stepping back into a role of setting and
| influencing requirements and priorities, where I still have a
| voice people listen to. I use my one-on-one relationships to
| preview my vision for our direction and get feedback and buy-in
| from the other leaders, but the PMs manage the team-wide
| communication and execution. After almost a year of this, I think
| we're starting to be back in a good place where we have a roadmap
| and know what we're doing, but I also know we'll never be as
| nimble as we were when we were 50-75 people.
| killjoywashere wrote:
| I don't use facebook. Is this reposted somewhere?
| [deleted]
| rgrmrts wrote:
| Full memo is reproduced here https://archive.vn/Lmu9g
| dang wrote:
| We changed the URL from https://www.businessinsider.com/john-
| carmack-meta-consulting... to the letter that everyone is
| responding to. A copy is at https://pastebin.com/Jk5TrGch (via
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34030288 - thanks!)
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Godspeed John! I sure hope your next project has legs! ;)
| c7DJTLrn wrote:
| I'm surprised he's able to be this open about it. Wouldn't his
| contract have a non-disparagement clause?
| [deleted]
| hit8run wrote:
| OG Facebook Post by Carmack:
|
| ``` I resigned from my position as an executive consultant for VR
| with Meta. My internal post to the company got leaked to the
| press, but that just results in them picking a few choice bits
| out of it. Here is the full post, just as the internal employees
| saw it: ------------- This is the end of my decade in VR. I have
| mixed feelings. Quest 2 is almost exactly what I wanted to see
| from the beginning - mobile hardware, inside out tracking,
| optional PC streaming, 4k (ish) screen, cost effective. Despite
| all the complaints I have about our software, millions of people
| are still getting value out of it. We have a good product. It is
| successful, and successful products make the world a better
| place. It all could have happened a bit faster and been going
| better if different decisions had been made, but we built
| something pretty close to The Right Thing. The issue is our
| efficiency. Some will ask why I care how the progress is
| happening, as long as it is happening? If I am trying to sway
| others, I would say that an org that has only known inefficiency
| is ill prepared for the inevitable competition and/or belt
| tightening, but really, it is the more personal pain of seeing a
| 5% GPU utilization number in production. I am offended by it.
| [edit: I was being overly poetic here, as several people have
| missed the intention. As a systems optimization person, I care
| deeply about efficiency. When you work hard at optimization for
| most of your life, seeing something that is grossly inefficient
| hurts your soul. I was likening observing our organization's
| performance to seeing a tragically low number on a profiling
| tool.] We have a ridiculous amount of people and resources, but
| we constantly self-sabotage and squander effort. There is no way
| to sugar coat this; I think our organization is operating at half
| the effectiveness that would make me happy. Some may scoff and
| contend we are doing just fine, but others will laugh and say
| "Half? Ha! I'm at quarter efficiency!" It has been a struggle for
| me. I have a voice at the highest levels here, so it feels like I
| should be able to move things, but I'm evidently not persuasive
| enough. A good fraction of the things I complain about eventually
| turn my way after a year or two passes and evidence piles up, but
| I have never been able to kill stupid things before they cause
| damage, or set a direction and have a team actually stick to it.
| I think my influence at the margins has been positive, but it has
| never been a prime mover. This was admittedly self-inflicted - I
| could have moved to Menlo Park after the Oculus acquisition and
| tried to wage battles with generations of leadership, but I was
| busy programming, and I assumed I would hate it, be bad at it,
| and probably lose anyway. Enough complaining. I wearied of the
| fight and have my own startup to run, but the fight is still
| winnable! VR can bring value to most of the people in the world,
| and no company is better positioned to do it than Meta. Maybe it
| actually is possible to get there by just plowing ahead with
| current practices, but there is plenty of room for improvement.
| Make better decisions and fill your products with "Give a Damn"!
| ```
| birdymcbird wrote:
| jojobas wrote:
| Two things made me raise my eyebrows about Carmack: the way he
| let Steve Jobs talk to him (even in his own memories, so perhaps
| it was even worse) and him joining Facebook in the first place.
|
| I guess humility is even more virtuous than they say.
| flipgimble wrote:
| John Carmack leaving your organization with a resignation letter
| like that is an undeniable sign that it is permeated with the rot
| of ineffective and self-deceptive middle management. If you've
| followed John's career you know that he has enough FU money and
| respect that he doesn't care about performance reviews, your
| promotion ladders or departmental politics. As he writes, he
| cares about shipping cutting edge technology nobody else thought
| possible that delivers exceptional value, and brand new
| experiences. His ethos is egos be damned, and breaking down
| organizational and cross-corporate boundaries.
|
| Carmack should have been invaluable at Meta as the speaker of
| hard and uncomfortable truths. Likely Zuck & Boz have no idea
| whats really going on with their technology and are insulated by
| layers of self-deceptive status reporting. Once you step into
| management and away from the visceral struggle of building and
| using nascent technology daily, you are likely to make the
| stupidest and most illogical decisions. Setting that hard
| shipping deadline to coincide with your conference feels like you
| are making your team more efficient, but likely you are also
| forcing them to take on eventually crippling technical debt, or
| make rushed and ill-informed choices.
|
| Its likely that top engineering talent, the ones who actually
| know how to build the next several generation of VR technology,
| already left or will leave soon. Those that remain will drown in
| so much clueless bullshit that they will pop out another VRML or
| Second Life and call it the metaverse.
| harryVic wrote:
| It is a fad. No one really wants this. Just like 3d TVs the
| novelty fades away after a few hours.
| gordoclark wrote:
| OOPMan wrote:
| "VR can bring value to most of the people in the world, and no
| one is better positioned to do it than Meta."
|
| I'm now concerned for Carmacks sanity...
| blobbers wrote:
| Meta has made the mistake of trying to build the killer app,
| rather than building the killer App Store.
|
| Apple software is garbage for the most part; they outsource
| software dev to the entire universe and take a 30% cut.
|
| Meta should be doing the same thing but instead they are spending
| 10B to get people to play horizon world, a wii graphics chat
| world app.
|
| They should be incentivizing developers of games like world of
| Warcraft to build a quest 2 interface; 100M addicted users who
| want a more immersive world.
| htrp wrote:
| I wonder how much of this is the result of a over bloated product
| management arm.....
| option wrote:
| Can someone please paste the letter? I haven't had fb account for
| years now.
| tomalaci wrote:
| Check https://pastebin.com/Jk5TrGch
| tomalaci wrote:
| For those who don't want to view Facebook post (or can't login to
| it). I created pastebin of his resignation post:
| https://pastebin.com/Jk5TrGch
|
| Also, the other discussion (700+ comments):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34022484
| dang wrote:
| Thanks - we merged the threads, and I included your URL in a
| pinned comment.
|
| Normally I would have pinned your comment instead (sorry), but
| I needed to include the previously submitted URL and obviously
| I'm not going to edit your post to put that in.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| Switching to reader mode also works.
| shp0ngle wrote:
| His unscripted talks were amazing. Everytime I watched them I was
| thinking "ok, the official Meta announcements are corny, but
| there is still someone that still cares about what is the actual
| end result;" that's why I was still semi-positive about Meta.
|
| Well, I guess not anymore.
| darknavi wrote:
| He was wholey un-corporate. So refreshing and real.
|
| Really shows what that brings to a corporate shitshow that is
| Meta.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Were they? I stopped watching after not being able to bear the
| stuttering graphics anymore.
| javchz wrote:
| I know the whole Oculus / Quest has a reputation for being a
| gimmick, but those talks were the ones that inspire me to get a
| quest 2 in the first place, and I love that device, It's far
| from perfect and requires a lot of 3rd party accessories to be
| comfortable, but it made me feel the same way as when I was a
| kid and play a new generation console like the PlayStation for
| the first time, making me say "wow, this it's the future".
|
| Plus PCVR (something I feel meta lately doesn't push as harder
| as they should) with the quest it's just amazing, being
| wireless makes up for the loss in the visual quality of
| something like an HP Reverb or Vive.
|
| I feel sad about John his departure, he was one of the voices
| who pushed sideloading for 3rd app developers and those game
| communities are amazing, creating games that have given me more
| entertainment than most of the horizon-verse apps.
|
| Even in his last talk about the Quest Pro he was
| straightforward telling people "This device it's great, but
| still needs a lot of development and has some rough edges, like
| FOV rendering is not going to happen soon for most games" to
| have people don't over hype their expectations... while Mark
| and the official presentation was using pre-render avatars with
| legs for a feature that didn't exist.
| shp0ngle wrote:
| Yeah I liked how honest he was! He was the one that had the
| talk IN THE METAVERSE, unlike Mark. He tries to push for the
| conference to be in metaverse.
|
| I literally lost confidence for the Meta experiment with his
| departure.
| monero-xmr wrote:
| I'm a strong believer in dictatorship at companies. Every team
| has someone with ultimate decision making power, as does every
| project with a project leader, and above teams are leaders who
| have authority above them, and so on. Of course there are
| meetings and discussions but there is always someone with the
| authority to make a decision that everyone has to respect.
|
| Honestly it benefits everyone. ICs like that authority is clear.
| Effective companies are mission-focused and they are not
| democracies. FB sounds extremely bloated and ineffective.
| SicSemperUranus wrote:
| Finding good devs is hard enough without a dictatorial style of
| leadership. I find that people like democracy, for some reason.
| stuven wrote:
| As a dev in an XL org, I agree with the parent comment: if
| decision-making power isn't clear from the outset, people
| hold important-feeling weekly sync meetings for months and
| then wonder why they can't hit the deadline. Also everyone
| disagrees as to what the product that we were building in the
| first place even was because nobody was in charge of clearly
| delineating it.
| operatingthetan wrote:
| >I find that people like democracy,
|
| People like the illusion of democracy and the stability of
| dictatorship. As we can see from this and the other thread,
| when the proverbial shit rolls horizontally instead of
| vertically effectiveness goes down and leadership becomes
| impotent. The game becomes 'who can I blame this on adjacent
| to me?' instead of either up or down.
|
| The best way to make everyone happy is to have the democratic
| discussion, hear everyone out, and then let the boss
| acknowledge their help and make their decision. Loyalty to
| the boss, regardless of their decision then determines
| performance. Team members did their duty by offering their
| best insight, whether it was selected or not.
| aiwv wrote:
| I think people like the idea of democracy more than they like
| actual democracy. On some level, most people would agree that
| pure democracy as in one person one vote in every
| organization is ridiculous. Any organization of sufficient
| complexity cannot possibly be fully understood by all of its
| members. It would be absurd for example to give full voting
| rights on strategic direction to a new hire. What I think
| people actually want is the sense that their voice is heard
| by the decision makers. They also want the opportunity to
| advance to the level of decision maker in their particular
| domain as they gain experience.
|
| The problem that I think most organizations face is that they
| eventually end up with a strategic decision making level that
| is impenetrable by the rank and file. The people at this
| level only hire their friends or promote people who have
| similar viewpoints to them. This is incredibly demoralizing
| as well as toxic to the organization because you as a person
| who is actually doing the work have important context that
| the strategic leaders don't have and won't listen to.
|
| Solving this problem is one of the more interesting systems
| problems out there. I'm not aware of any large organization
| that has truly figured this out (including national
| governments).
| sieabahlpark wrote:
| Negitivefrags wrote:
| Good leadership feels like a democracy while actually being a
| dictatorship.
|
| Walk people towards the decision you want using a Socratic
| method and then let them take the credit for the decision
| making.
|
| Of course sometimes you will get a situation where someone
| doesn't arrive at the solution you want anyway so you need to
| excise a bit of hard power, but hopefully that is rare enough
| that people respect it when you do it.
| zackees wrote:
| bob1029 wrote:
| > Walk people towards the decision you want using a
| Socratic method and then let them take the credit for the
| decision making.
|
| I've been trying really hard to do this. It is an
| impressive hack when you can pull it off.
|
| If you have gigantic egos on your team, then getting
| everyone in agreement can often be expedited with a little
| bit of inception. My own ego is the biggest reason I have
| difficulty engaging in the socratic technique. And, as you
| note there are definitely cases where you kind of have to
| beat the sense into everyone else.
|
| I am at a point where I kind of don't give a shit about the
| intermediate decisions and exact correctness anymore. I am
| far more interested in getting further down the product
| roadmap and seeing my entire vision unfold. Money has
| _almost_ become a secondary concern to me. As long as the
| appropriate steps are taken, I don 't even care if my name
| is on it anymore.
|
| It is a lot easier to move an elephant when it performs of
| its own volition. The most advanced and effective forms of
| people management seem to involve manipulation of egos.
| krona wrote:
| Most people like the idea of taking decisions and hate the
| idea of taking responsibility for them.
| grahar64 wrote:
| Sure you can have a good dictator, but there is much greater
| room for a bad one.
|
| Carmack (by his own admission) doesn't want to be a manager, he
| wants to be a programmer. So he would probably not make a good
| dictator. He might have had less sway precisely because someone
| above him is a dictator who didn't like his input, no room for
| decent in a dictatorship.
| electrondood wrote:
| I've come to agree, 100%.
|
| Every company needs a benevolent dictator with exceptional
| taste who is addicted to simplicity. This can be a platform
| architect, this can be a product person, etc.
|
| But without that person, with design-by-consensus, you end up
| with a company that is addicted to complexity, building a
| product that looks like it was disparate components that have
| been continually stuck on the end with duct tape.
|
| This is why we have the bystander effect, and why in EMS, you
| need to point to someone and assign them the responsibility of
| calling 911. There needs to be one person accountable,
| otherwise there is no one accountable.
| bick_nyers wrote:
| How does one effectively filter for these types of companies
| while doing a job search?
| theptip wrote:
| Ask your hiring manager questions about decision making. Some
| I like:
|
| "How do product/feature decisions get made? Walk me through
| the lifecycle of a new feature from customer/stakeholder to
| release and evaluation"
|
| "What's the org approach to tech debt? How do various
| proposed fixes get prioritized and worked on?" (In a top-down
| org even tech debt will be centrally groomed. In a fully
| distributed org the answer is something like "what? Folks
| just fix stuff that needs to be fixed.")
|
| "How do you align your teams to the company's / org's
| objectives?"
|
| Basically you need to treat interviews as two-way. You are
| interviewing the company too, and you can always ask for
| another Hiring Manager chat at the end of the process if you
| still have Qs you didn't get to.
| monero-xmr wrote:
| Not sure as it is more of a culture thing. When interviewing
| you can ask how decisions are made. "Mission focused" is the
| term I use but I'm sure it means different things to
| different companies.
| gardenhedge wrote:
| Agreed. Hierarchy is important. Someone asked me to do
| something? Directly above me in the hierarchy - done. Someone
| at my level or under me? Add it to the backlog along with 100s
| of other things.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Phrases like "benevolent dictator for life" have become pretty
| widespread, and they are cute, but I think the slightly obscure
| the issue or focus on the wrong thing.
|
| A dictator can function with a small, powerful core of
| supporters (usually the military and then some key demographic
| or powerbrokers depending on the situation), and then keep the
| rest of the populace in their place through violence if
| necessary.
|
| I think when we talk about somebody like Linus or Guido, they
| aren't really dictators so much as consensus leaders. Everybody
| might not agree with their individual decisions, but there's
| widespread agreement that somebody has to lead, and everyone
| can agree that there isn't anyone who can do a better job.
|
| And we should also note that Democracy isn't some self-
| perpetuating system that can actually impose itself.
| Functionally, we don't have a democracy because there's 51%
| support for the leaders. We have a democracy because there's
| broad consensus in the idea that, while we don't always agree
| with the individual decisions of the democracy, we don't have a
| better way of making decisions.
|
| Honestly I don't think it really matters so much how the
| decision making process works. Functional systems are ones in
| which the decision making process has broad consensus support.
| It could be tied to an idea, it could be tied to a person, it
| could even be tied to some abstract idea like following the
| rules of a religion. What matters is that people broadly think
| the system is good, follow it when nobody is checking, and are
| ok with following the spirit of the rules rather than getting
| hung up on process and technicalities. In open source, these
| tend to be personalized systems because somebody will just
| start a personal project and it will grow, but that's very tied
| to the nature of programming and the fact that an individual
| can easily get a minimum viable product for many programming
| ideas.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| > Phrases like "benevolent dictator for life" have become
| pretty widespread
|
| I dont think anyone said "for life" here. The thing about
| business "dictatorships" is that they are naturally
| temporary. These people will leave of their own accord or be
| fired if they're incompetent at some point. And if the very
| top doesn't fire these people, making themselves incompetent,
| then their business will struggle to sustain itself.
|
| It's not like a dictatorial government which can rewrite laws
| and use military force.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Like how twitter is run right now
| martin82 wrote:
| Sounds like the perfect structure to end up with an utterly
| dysfunctional company ruled by the Peter Principle.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| The trade off is decision cycle time. In a dictatorship, the
| dictator (and getting their attention) becomes a bottleneck.
| lolinder wrote:
| OP isn't saying that the person with ultimate authority has
| to be involved in every decision, just that when they do make
| a decision everyone respects it. You can have the kind of
| authority that OP is describing while still delegating most
| decisions to the individual contributors. You just need
| someone who is officially empowered to make the final call in
| cases where there's disagreement.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| I disagree, they are fundamentally different cultures. You
| can have a blend of them I suppose. But you are either top
| down or bottoms up, and one of the top down trade offs is
| that people begin optimizing for what they think will pass
| approval by the decision maker.
|
| This can obviously work, see apple under Jobs. But
| companies kind of have to pick a lane because the culture
| is either "drive to what I think is impactful" or "drive to
| what I think boss thinks is impactful".
| philwelch wrote:
| A democratic or consensus-based approach to making decisions
| can be even slower though, which is when it's handy to have a
| dictator.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| Yes, especially with big groups. In smaller groups,
| decision making is usually faster and done by people with
| more local context in bottoms up organizations. See Team of
| Teams as a decent reference.
| kqr wrote:
| When has the decision been made? When the dictator says
| "make it so" or when the software developers understand the
| rationale and are able to implement it successfully?
|
| Because the time to the latter is sometimes infinite in the
| dictatorships I've been in.
|
| (In contrast, when a decision is made democratically, most
| people are already on board with the implementation details
| and rationale.)
| philwelch wrote:
| If you can't effectively communicate the rationale and
| intention behind your decisions, you're failing as a
| leader. A dictatorship doesn't work without a competent
| dictator, just as a democracy doesn't work without a
| competent demos.
| namuol wrote:
| I'm blanking on the name of the essay, but there's a compelling
| argument for the only viable alternative to a Benevolent
| Dictator being a very thoroughly and precisely defined shared
| terminology of the underlying product/software system.
| Basically you can achieve a shared vision only by relentlessly
| checking the assumptions of the group and codifying everything,
| or using a singular visionary as the stand-in for a cohesive
| shared vision. Hoping someone here can share the original essay
| since it does a much better job than I can...
| nonethewiser wrote:
| But does "what is" really beget "what should be?" I'm sure
| what you describe would be very helpful but I don't see how
| it could eliminate disagreements on direction.
| namuol wrote:
| Yeah that's an important distinction! Iirc, the essay
| distinguishes between singular visionary vs decision-maker
| roles. A decision maker is there to break ties and contain
| bike shedding, and you pretty much always need one, whereas
| a singular visionary is really there to steer high level
| design decisions cohesively. There's a spectrum here of
| course.
| ramphastidae wrote:
| Please share if you remember!
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Does anyone else on iOS get a browser alert "cannot open the
| page, URL is invalid" when the page seems to load perfectly? Any
| idea what's up with that? Not something I've seen from safari.
| [deleted]
| AtNightWeCode wrote:
| Isn't the core problem VR. It will never fly. I remember I had
| some glasses that you put your phone in. Worked perfectly. But VR
| is even more annoying than home 3D movies.
| Shorel wrote:
| Good. He deserves better.
|
| I still wait for when he moves to Valve.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| I am not surprised.
|
| He is not leaving Meta to focus on AGI and build a new company.
|
| This is other way around, he is so tired and disgusted that he is
| throwing the towel and focusing on something else.
|
| This is not a vote of confidence.
| cletus wrote:
| The real problem here is the memtaverse. This is a solution to a
| problem no one has and it's costing a vast amount of money for,
| well, nothing really.
|
| Why does it exist? Simple. Meta needs a new monopoly since FB
| usage is declining and IG is getting eaten alive by Tiktok.
| Messaging (ie FB Messenger, IG Direct, WhatsApp) is not enough.
|
| Meta has long seen VR then AR as the natural evolution from text
| -> image -> video. I think it's clear that the VR part of this at
| least is in error. Personaly I see VR as never being anything
| more than a niche. Somehow spending $20B+ a year on that without
| any kind of product-market fit or a vision for what problem this
| will solve for people is the problem.
|
| AR is way more likely to have a future but the tech isn't there
| yet and there are doubts it'll be anything more than a niche
| either. This is a deep topic but projecting things onto real
| vision isn't exactly simple. Even something as simple as the
| color black is a problem. Focus is another giant problem.
|
| For anyone surprised how a project can spend billions without
| producing anything, this is classic big company poorly defined
| project type stuff. A project will expand to fill available
| resources. Writing a blank check just increases the head count.
| It doesn't produce more just because you have more head count.
| People without clear direction will invent fake work for
| themselves. They'll solve non-problems, creates frameworks, add
| processes and so on as necessary.
|
| Disclaimer: ex-Facebooker.
| justbored123 wrote:
| wucaworld wrote:
| I'm very curious what he means about the software not being
| right. I haven't played with the Meta Quest but my experience
| with HoloLens 2 is absolutely shit on the software side.
| Microsoft used to be decent at software (this is opinion but I
| quite liked Win32 and MFC back in their day). The HoloLens 2
| software stack is just ridiculous on so many levels (they try to
| shoehorn Windows and Universal Apps, for the actual innovative 3D
| apps, you just use Unity or Unreal???). I could not believe my
| eyes when Microsoft's developer documentation tells me to use a
| different commercial entities software framework for 3D app
| development.
|
| This is again a controversial point (but hey ... so is the letter
| being discussed) .. isn't the software framework for the 3D
| rendering, spatial awareness the future software platform (what
| Windows was or Android and iOS are today)???
|
| I'm curious if this is the issue Carmack seems pissed about.
| Clearly there is a story here.
| lostgame wrote:
| Why Carmack was involved with Facebook/Meta when he joined was
| pretty confusing to me. Even if VR is pretty interesting
| technology to work on, where's the joy in it if you're
| effectively working for the Empire?
| runevault wrote:
| Keep in mind he joined Oculus BEFORE the purchase, he didn't
| chose Meta specifically, he just chose to stick around because
| he believed in the VR mission enough to try and make it work.
| leeoniya wrote:
| > [edit: I was being overly poetic here, as several people have
| missed the intention. As a systems optimization person, I care
| deeply about efficiency. When you work hard at optimization for
| most of your life, seeing something that is grossly inefficient
| hurts your soul. I was likening observing our organization's
| performance to seeing a tragically low number on a profiling
| tool.]
|
| as someone who spends a lot of time in a profiler, this resonates
| with me. the irony that i work in JS/TS is not lost on me, but
| most React apps make me sad, most node_modules make me sad.
| V8/JSC/SpiderMonkey are _amazing_ JITs, and seeing them get
| bogged down by inefficient JS is painful. i see many devs jumping
| to Web Workers or even WASM when in fact their existing JS and
| algos can be orders of magnitude faster with just a tiny bit of
| forethought.
|
| > it is the more personal pain of seeing a 5% GPU utilization
| number in production
|
| yikes, is it that low?
| ericmcer wrote:
| I think the 5% was a metaphor for how the org is barely able to
| utilize its resources.
|
| Also wouldn't React JS/TS be an instance where you are fully
| utilizing resources? Not from a raw machine performance
| standpoint, but from a developer efficiency standpoint. Using
| nested for loops instead of a series of JS array functions is
| way more efficient but it is not even close to worth it.
| Machines are so powerful these days also that sacrificing
| readability/maintainability for performance doesn't really make
| sense to me.
| leeoniya wrote:
| > Using nested for loops instead of a series of JS array
| functions is way more efficient but it is not even close to
| worth it.
|
| i work with canvas rendering and 2M-datapoint arrays, so for
| me it's almost always worth it. but yes, for < 1K elements it
| isn't. i wrote a 4x faster version of _.groupBy() recently to
| process our datasets. is a hand-rolled function worth it for
| 100 elements? not really, but that's not our use case. so, as
| with everything in life, it depends!
| fsdjkflsjfsoij wrote:
| > but it is not even close to worth it
|
| It's often extremely worth it. Most people don't profile
| though and don't care that their web apps are horrendously
| inefficient at almost every level.
| dorolow wrote:
| Sure if you work on something where performance doesn't
| matter
| WA wrote:
| So what do you use? Vanilla JS?
| leeoniya wrote:
| at work we use React, though i tend to work on lower-level JS
| code and don't have to touch it very often.
|
| my OSS code (almost 100% libs) is vanilla JS with zero deps.
|
| for my own projects i've been moving to fine-grained
| reactivity libs, like Solid or Voby:
| https://krausest.github.io/js-framework-
| benchmark/current.ht.... the numbers here are a bit
| misleading since the benchmark is dominated mostly by DOM
| layout/rendering, so a difference of even 10% is actually
| quite significant because it's typically pure JS / GC
| overhead.
|
| React has many benefits for large, diverse teams (e.g.
| ecosystem, hiring, docs/google-able answers), but performance
| is not one of them; it has many performance footguns and
| landmines, especially with hooks.
| euiq wrote:
| I'm interested in learning more about how to optimize
| JavaScript programs. Do you know of any good examples or other
| resources in this area?
| leeoniya wrote:
| nothing specific, just do a google search.
|
| generally i think advice that will always be applicable:
|
| - learn and use a profiler before there are performance
| issues, not after (dont treat performance as an
| afterthought).
|
| - internalize which patterns are faster and which are slower,
| and when it matters.
|
| - for any runtime with a GC, reduce repetitive memory
| allocation and GC pressure. prefer shallow structures.
| mutation instead of immutability (thus, mem allocation).
|
| - cache/memoize whenever possible.
|
| - don't use algorithms that scale poorly with data size.
|
| finally, beware of following any performance advice older
| than 6 months; JITs advance constantly, so make sure to re-
| bench/measure continuously to avoid doing unnecessary
| refactors, and test with real code; there are lies, damned
| lies, and micro-benchmarks.
| mikestaub wrote:
| I lost massive respect for Carmack after he testified in court
| that he downloaded ZeniMax emails after leaving for Oculus. He
| also claimed he rewrote all the code from scratch but it's
| possible much of the IP was in those emails. This is dishonorable
| behavior. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/02/oculus-execs-
| liable-f...
| kelsolaar wrote:
| From his Facebook account:
|
| I resigned from my position as an executive consultant for VR
| with Meta. My internal post to the company got leaked to the
| press, but that just results in them picking a few choice bits
| out of it. Here is the full post, just as the internal employees
| saw it:
|
| ------------- This is the end of my decade in VR.
|
| I have mixed feelings.
|
| Quest 2 is almost exactly what I wanted to see from the beginning
| - mobile hardware, inside out tracking, optional PC streaming, 4k
| (ish) screen, cost effective. Despite all the complaints I have
| about our software, millions of people are still getting value
| out of it. We have a good product. It is successful, and
| successful products make the world a better place. It all could
| have happened a bit faster and been going better if different
| decisions had been made, but we built something pretty close to
| The Right Thing.
|
| The issue is our efficiency.
|
| Some will ask why I care how the progress is happening, as long
| as it is happening?
|
| If I am trying to sway others, I would say that an org that has
| only known inefficiency is ill prepared for the inevitable
| competition and/or belt tightening, but really, it is the more
| personal pain of seeing a 5% GPU utilization number in
| production. I am offended by it.
|
| [edit: I was being overly poetic here, as several people have
| missed the intention. As a systems optimization person, I care
| deeply about efficiency. When you work hard at optimization for
| most of your life, seeing something that is grossly inefficient
| hurts your soul. I was likening observing our organization's
| performance to seeing a tragically low number on a profiling
| tool.]
|
| We have a ridiculous amount of people and resources, but we
| constantly self-sabotage and squander effort. There is no way to
| sugar coat this; I think our organization is operating at half
| the effectiveness that would make me happy. Some may scoff and
| contend we are doing just fine, but others will laugh and say
| "Half? Ha! I'm at quarter efficiency!"
|
| It has been a struggle for me. I have a voice at the highest
| levels here, so it feels like I should be able to move things,
| but I'm evidently not persuasive enough. A good fraction of the
| things I complain about eventually turn my way after a year or
| two passes and evidence piles up, but I have never been able to
| kill stupid things before they cause damage, or set a direction
| and have a team actually stick to it. I think my influence at the
| margins has been positive, but it has never been a prime mover.
|
| This was admittedly self-inflicted - I could have moved to Menlo
| Park after the Oculus acquisition and tried to wage battles with
| generations of leadership, but I was busy programming, and I
| assumed I would hate it, be bad at it, and probably lose anyway.
|
| Enough complaining. I wearied of the fight and have my own
| startup to run, but the fight is still winnable! VR can bring
| value to most of the people in the world, and no company is
| better positioned to do it than Meta. Maybe it actually is
| possible to get there by just plowing ahead with current
| practices, but there is plenty of room for improvement.
|
| Make better decisions and fill your products with "Give a Damn"!
| baby wrote:
| I see a lot of negative comment on the other thread and on
| twitter so I feel the need to comment as well. It'd be great to
| get the perspective from someone who worked there, but I can
| offer mine as an outsider (worked on a different team at fb).
|
| Back then, I would religiously read every workplace posts from
| Carmack (that wasn't hidden to other orgs). I loved everything he
| was saying, I always found it really insightful. It also seemed
| clear (much before he went part time) that he was saying that on
| the outskirt of the project.
|
| There's a big culture of flatness at fb (and now meta). No titles
| are public, and you're supposed to respect everybody's opinion in
| the room. You're supposed to lead without authority: by
| convincing people. You're also quite free to explore things, as
| long as you can make a case for it.
|
| There's upsides and downsides to such environment. You can really
| multiply yourself if you create trust and clout. On the other
| hand, authority and a big title doesn't always gives you room for
| directing a project.
|
| I was always wondering how effective Carmack was going to be in
| such an environment. He doesn't seem to be the type to lead, but
| I can see this happening in a small team, but an entire org
| that's growing extremely quickly? For the kind of things he
| wanted to happen you'd have to make sure to hire people who cared
| about exactly the same kind of stuff, which doesn't really happen
| when you're in a diverse environment. Extremists must then spend
| their time pulling the group in one direction or the other.
| naillo wrote:
| I feel like Metas 'flatness' is revealing itself as suboptimal
| now that its stock is tanking. While the product is generating
| money and productivity doesn't really matter, the organization
| can afford to have masses of engineers doing not much of
| anything. But when things are going bad and clear top down
| organization is needed, then this culture suddenly turns into
| massive friction and might end up killing the company.
| lll-o-lll wrote:
| Top down organisation is slow, bureaucratic, and often is
| bottlenecked for decisions. Inevitably, unless you have
| monopoly or other form of stickiness, you are quickly
| outcompeted by the newer nimble organisation. (Hence why
| companies spend a lot on the stickiness aspect, e.g. Word
| proprietary format)
|
| Not saying that "flat" works better (or scales). What does
| work better (with some other downsides) is a distributed
| system of companies (each internal company operating
| independently). Still lots of politics around getting the
| "budget", still plenty of places to fall down with cross
| cutting concerns and integrations. Much like a microservice
| arch vs a monolith, the trade offs can be beneficial at
| scale.
|
| I'm not sure if Meta is trying to run this way.
| baby wrote:
| The stock tanking really have no relation with the
| performance or the engineering happening inside.
| albinofrenchy wrote:
| I don't claim to understand corporate structures or the best
| way to organize a large group of employees but metas problems
| seem to stem more from betting on the wrong thing which
| seemed like a decision that came from the top.
| troupe wrote:
| > You're supposed to lead without authority
|
| John seems to be particularly calling out that he was not able
| to influence the people with high enough rank to make
| decisions. So it sounds like he at least thought there was an
| authority structure there wasn't as flat as you describe.
| heather45879 wrote:
| Something that popped into my mind is the role of Linus in
| the Linux Kernel development. Imagine how things would be
| without him? Or if a bunch of business exec ran things?
|
| A lot of millennials value freedom of choice and open
| collaboration ad nauseam, but this is the danger of too many
| voices--nothing gets done. No singular purpose. No authority
| --or rather, no respect for authority. The reality is: we are
| not all equal. Some people are just better at what they do
| than others. Perhaps we should listen to what they say?
|
| But that's how politics goes--some schmucks who have no idea
| nor vision, nor experience, nor know-how, rise up on the
| backs of engineers who do all the work. Typically out of
| insecurity or over-ambition they trample on-up.
|
| And who would want to deal with the cutthroat bullshit of
| trying to deal with these people?
|
| Go Carmack--create something amazing with your startup. Meta
| will rot away in the next ten years because someone else will
| invent a better VR headset. Just like Linus helped invent a
| better OS--free to use, open to collaborate, with vision and
| focus. With attention-to-detail and quality-engineering as a
| first-class citizen.
| travisporter wrote:
| No need to bash millennials here. He also admitted he could
| have pushed more but decided to code instead.
| rajman187 wrote:
| He wasn't talking with senior managers and directors but
| almost certainly VP level and CxO
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| Valve is a great example of how this doesn't work in
| practice. Jeri Ellsworth got fired and revealed that the
| supposedly flat hierarchy at Valve is really composed of
| informal cliques - with the most influential groups having a
| direct line to the CEO/
|
| Kinda what happened to communism in Russia, if you think
| about it
| savanaly wrote:
| Can we really expect an employee who was fired to paint the
| most accurate picture though? What are the thoughts of
| folks that left on good or neutral terms?
| qaq wrote:
| How is it even remotley like communism in USSR? Russian
| empire had the same governance structure since the time of
| the Golden Horde to present day e.g. very hierarchal top
| down ...
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| Right there in the title - Union of Soviet Socialist
| Republics (USSR) Soviets are worker's councils and the
| individual republics are supposed to have some degree of
| autonomy on paper. For at least a couple of months in
| 1917, some amount of collective decision making did
| happen, although (as you stated) with virtually all
| Russian governments, it quickly devolved into one-man
| personality cult enforced by brutality and the
| machinations of the NKVD.
| bee_rider wrote:
| As humans we _do_ have built-in hardware for forming
| informal cliques, so this could be seen as leveraging our
| built-in strengths (although you have to consciously work
| against some of the built-in cognitive biases that people
| have so it might be a risky thing, maybe not worth it).
| kqr wrote:
| This is an old observation:
| https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm
|
| I would argue it _does_ work in practise, at least with a
| higher success rate than a formal authority hierarchy.
| baby wrote:
| The flat org of fb I described is not really flat the way
| Valve is. Valve is truly flat from what I understand,
| whereas the one at facebook is not but encourage people to
| behave like it is.
| cachvico wrote:
| I think I read that it's not flat since a few years back
| anyway
| mattarm wrote:
| There is always an authority structure in these kinds of
| companies. I'm personally familiar with Google, but this
| description of Facebook makes it sound similar...
|
| The upside is that people, in theory, don't need to wait to
| be promoted to (attempt to) have an outsized influence on
| what actually happens on their team, in their org, etc. The
| downside is that the "real" power/influence structure can be
| a more nebulous/social game, rather than something concrete
| that is diagrammed out in a visible org structure. It was
| often said at Google that you get promoted to level X after
| already doing work at that level, which implies that the
| people with influence are running around influencing/leading
| before they've been anointed with an official title that
| "gives" them authority.
|
| Reading Carmack's letter, it sounds like he consciously chose
| to prioritize his personal programming/engineering work over
| his social/influence/leadership at Facebook. In all my
| observations, past a certain level, you kinda have to choose
| one or the other. Both are valid choices.
| fknorangesite wrote:
| > authority structure there wasn't as flat as you describe.
|
| It never is. In the absence of formal authority, people will
| unconsciously build an ad hoc structure on their own.
| svieira wrote:
| See also: _The Tyranny of Structurelessness_
| https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm
| civopsec wrote:
| I don't understand what the problem would be for him if this
| was the environment. He's respected as a technologist and had
| strong opinions on technology. He's not merely a tech. savant
| without social skills.
|
| Again, this assumes that this was what the environment was
| like. Not that it was just like that in name only.
| baby wrote:
| I think he probably expected to be able to lead by authority,
| and tbh maybe he could have been such a steve jobs-like
| leader? But who knows. It's also possible that there were
| much more talented people than him, not as public or beloved
| as him, who ended up winning technical decisions.
|
| Large organizations all have all sorts of issues, and from
| the outside the devices that RL released were huge
| technologicL successes. I think we should acclaim the
| progress we've made so far in the field.
| [deleted]
| kleinsch wrote:
| I worked at Meta. Yea, there was a promoted culture of
| flatness, but that only applied to the IC side. Within
| engineering there are separate levels but everyone has the same
| title "Software engineer" so that (supposedly) level shouldn't
| be a factor in whose argument is correct. In practice, everyone
| knows who's high-vs-low level, so it's mostly a charade.
|
| On the management side, there are clear titles, reporting
| hierarchies, and areas of ownership. They decide what gets
| prioritized, staffed, and shipped. As an IC, you can make
| technical decisions and recommend product ideas, but you'll
| never ship functionality to users without PM, design, and eng
| leadership approval.
|
| Within RL, like everywhere else at Meta, there are VPs and
| Directors whose job was to set strategy and create roadmaps. RL
| had a multi-year roadmap aggregating roadmaps from all the sub-
| orgs within RL. There's no world where a single IC, even at
| Carmack's level, is going to subvert that hierarchy. The job of
| a senior IC is to influence and check their management
| counterparts to make sure they're prioritizing the right
| things. Clearly he wasn't able to do that to the extent he
| wanted.
|
| When I was there a couple years ago, I looked into joining RL a
| couple times but got advice from coworkers that the rotating
| carousel of leadership led to changing roadmaps/priorities, so
| it was a thrashy place to be.
| jahlove wrote:
| IC? RL?
| neon_electro wrote:
| IC = Independent Contributor
|
| RL = Reality Labs
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_Labs)
| grogenaut wrote:
| Individual contributor aka not a manger likely an engineer
|
| Reality labs (I think)
| naillo wrote:
| The thing about 5% gpu utilization makes me wonder if all this
| talk about training LLMs on multi A100 clusters is largely
| unecessary and that it might be possible for everyday GPUs to
| reach say A100 levels simply by going from 5% utilization to 90%.
| kleinsch wrote:
| He's not literally talking about 5% GPU utilization. It's a
| metaphor for the eng org being inefficient.
| jshaqaw wrote:
| TLDR: It's everyone's fault but mine
| jasonhansel wrote:
| Honestly, I suspect that many people at Meta know that the whole
| VR/metaverse thing isn't going to pan out, leading people in that
| department to (say) spend time engaging in office politics rather
| than working on developing the product.
| solardev wrote:
| I hope he joins Valve instead. Facebook was the wrong choice from
| the get go.
| TheDudeMan wrote:
| He didn't chose Facebook. At the time of the Oculus
| acquisition, they must have made him an offer he couldn't
| refuse.
| pengaru wrote:
| "He is a well known and regarded game designer, who moved to a
| new consulting role at Oculus in 2019"
|
| Err, _WAT_? In the context of gamedev, game _design_ is not what
| I 'd say Carmack is known for. He's firmly in 'down in the weeds
| implementation detail and optimization' territory. How does one
| write anything about Carmack and get something so fundamentally
| wrong about who he is and what he's done professionally?
|
| Game designer credit in this context (id software) generally goes
| to Romero, if anyone.
|
| Edit: Just look at Carmack's wikipedia page FFS, he hasn't been
| credited for design since _SOFTDISK_ :
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carmack#Games
| bombcar wrote:
| People take "game designer" to mean "anyone who worked on one
| of them thar computer game things".
| yellow_lead wrote:
| It's business insider so
| javchz wrote:
| That's like calling Schwarzenegger a GYM owner... I mean yeah
| it's not a lie, but it's underselling a lot.
| Havoc wrote:
| Was always a bit of an odd fit
| dumbotron wrote:
| This isn't going to make me friends. John Carmack hasn't be
| relevant for years, and this doesn't move me one way or another.
| There was a time when game engines were simpler and the work of
| incredible engineers who could make something happen five years
| sooner, but we're past that, and I'm not sure Carmack is.
|
| > it is the more personal pain of seeing a 5% GPU utilization
| number in production. I am offended by it.
|
| For a high-level badge post, I'm not sure why he's calling out a
| low-level metric like this. It's also a complicated metric.
| Keeping GPU utilization low improves battery life. Delivering
| jaw-dropping graphics might have been the goal in 1993, but we're
| past that, and for all its flaws, I doubt Wii-level graphics are
| the reason no one uses Horizon Worlds.
|
| Which brings me to why he left now. The company doesn't want
| Quest to be just a gaming headset any more, but Carmack does.
| It's a fair disagreement to have, and investors are even with
| Carmack on this, but a mature leader would disagree and commit or
| quietly step aside. Carmack isn't a mature leader, he's a
| talented, high-level IC you hire as a mascot.
| yedpodtrzitko wrote:
| I'm surprised/sad he didnt decide to join Valve. VR is a big bet
| for them as well and I'd assume he'd have more freedom/power
| there than in Meta.
| TheDudeMan wrote:
| At his age and level, you lose all interest in having a boss.
| paxys wrote:
| He didn't have much of a role anyways. His title was "consulting
| CTO". He has primarily been running his own startup for a while
| now.
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