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The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

ericlippert.com

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Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#151

Post by WorldMaker »

Kiro wrote: post #129

> News flash: no one wants to wear VR goggles to spend any time in a digital heaven where the role of God is played by Mark Zuckerberg and you can do anything you can imagine, including “work” and “shop”. I'm sure no-one here likes the idea of the Metaverse but from Meta's perspective I definitely think it's the correct bet. This doesn't make it less dystopian but that's exactly the point. If they can pull it off the…

I haven't watched this particular video yet, but a similar explainer video that I came across this week has me feeling a lot like "Those who have forgotten Second Life seemed doomed to repeat it (badly)". I had a bit of a rough moment realizing that statistically most of the engineers at Meta are probably too young to remember Second Life. (And some of the ones that are old enough like Mark Zuckerberg were too busy in other parts of the internet to have learned the realest lessons, which were not technical but sociopolitical.)

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#152

Post by MikusR »

landswipe wrote: post #124
echelon wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a fan of Meta, but they're doing the cutting edge research in VR/AR that nobody else is [1]. Hardware, algorithms, attention to details like blend key-based lip syncing, markerless tracking algorithms, low latency posture correction, mocap compression and keyframing, fresnel optics, thin layer physics... They're going to own this space for decades to come, and everyone will license from them. It may seem impr…

No one company will own this space, for it to succeed, it needs open standards like the browser.

Like the open standards of iPhones?

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#153

Post by defen »

> Then said Jesus unto him, "Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword".

I'm a big fan of Eric Lippert's work, but this blog post comes across as whiny and evinces a completely unwarranted sense of entitlement. This is a person who voluntarily chose to get paid (I can only assume) a very large amount of money to work on something that he found to be exciting and fulfilling. The only catch: it all belonged to Mark Zuckerberg.

Why does Mark Zuckerberg owe him an explanation for why his services are no longer needed? Why does he think that the decision process should be visible and rational (cost vs benefit) to him? It suggests that he has a fundamental misunderstanding of the world. Instead of being "vexed" that he was fired instead of the people building toys for Mark Zuckerberg, perhaps he should be thankful for the two years he spent working on the PPL team.

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#154

Post by mannykannot »

astrange wrote: post #141
a4isms wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's the same thing as people say about fires. When you put out a fire you are a hero. When you prevent the fire in the first place, everybody thinks it's business as usual and nobody understands why you are needed. I got a dose of very cold water about this thirty years ago when I was building payware that improved developer productivity. I gave a presentation about its ROI, and afterwards, a developer walked up t…

What actually happens with vitamins is people love taking them (because they’re colorful and some of them are food preservatives) but there’s like no evidence they have health benefits.

...unless you actually have a deficiency.

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#155

Post by kalkin »

tasuki wrote: post #122
kalkin wrote: post #104

"Everyone was kind, smart, dedicated, thoughtful, generous with their time and knowledge, and a genuine pleasure to work with." I know this is what everyone says after leaving a company if they don't want to burn bridges, and I bet it's even fairly true to Eric's experience. I'm also entirely sympathetic to his frustration with both the immediate experience of being laid off for any reason and the broader large-organ…

I use Facebook to keep in touch with old friends and sometimes people organize events and they invite me on Facebook and it works and makes my life a tiny bit better.

I used to try to do that and yet I found it was net negative for my mental health in practice, with infinite scroll etc.

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#156

Post by com2kid »

ericlippert wrote: post #33
musk_micropenis wrote: post #9

Sorry to hear about the lay-off. I can't stress enough how influential Eric Lippert was on my early career. His work on C# and .NET, but more importantly his openness and engagement with the community played a big part in me continuing on the Microsoft stack. Just jumping into any random month[1] in his blog archive from my formative years is incredible nostalgia for me. It's not the kind of high-concept "a monad is…

Thank you, that's kind of you to say.

Your blog was a huge influence on me, and it, along with The Old New Thing, led to me working at Microsoft for almost a decade. I learned more about software engineering and programming from your blog than from any set of college classes or textbooks, and what you taught directly impacted so many project I've worked on.

Thank you so much, and I hope that someday in the future you will return to blogging!

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#157

Post by maxbond »

dnissley wrote: post #140
rob74 wrote: post #91

> Speaking of cutting costs, the company is still pouring multiple billions of dollars into vaporware called “the metaverse”. News flash: no one wants to wear VR goggles to spend any time in a digital heaven where the role of God is played by Mark Zuckerberg and you can do anything you can imagine, including “work” and “shop”. You can somehow feel that he has been dying to say this for years, but couldn't while he wa…

> You can somehow feel that he has been dying to say this for years, but couldn't while he was still working for Meta... It's a pretty common sentiment in my experience here, de rigueur even. Expressing it in the way he does here is definitely frowned upon though -- one of the most interesting cultural traits I've noticed that Meta has fostered is an awareness and avoidance of cynicism. When people comment internally…

You say "cynicism", I say "acknowledging nudity".

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#158

Post by kalkin »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #132
kalkin wrote: post #104

"Everyone was kind, smart, dedicated, thoughtful, generous with their time and knowledge, and a genuine pleasure to work with." I know this is what everyone says after leaving a company if they don't want to burn bridges, and I bet it's even fairly true to Eric's experience. I'm also entirely sympathetic to his frustration with both the immediate experience of being laid off for any reason and the broader large-organ…

This is something I still find as kind of a culture shock on HN honestly. The idea that pursuing work that is personally interesting and remunerative is at worst neutral is basically an in-built assumption here. There is often pretty intense policing of it if there's a whiff of deviation. FWIW I don't think it's true either. A lot of engineers can be convinced to work on basically anything if it's "a hard problem" in…

Right. I've seen this parodically phrased as "I just make the rockets go up, it's the Luftwaffe's business where they come down" and I don't get that attitude at a gut level but it's clearly common (even if people don't like to imagine themselves in that particular scenario).

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#159

Post by MattGaiser »

rob74 wrote: post #91

> Speaking of cutting costs, the company is still pouring multiple billions of dollars into vaporware called “the metaverse”. News flash: no one wants to wear VR goggles to spend any time in a digital heaven where the role of God is played by Mark Zuckerberg and you can do anything you can imagine, including “work” and “shop”. You can somehow feel that he has been dying to say this for years, but couldn't while he wa…

> no one wants to wear VR goggles

I would be curious how many people are willing to wear VR goggles for any amount of time. I spend easily 10-12 hours a day at my computer. I am absolutely someone who is happy working, socializing, playing, and learning all at the same desk. But I can't wear those goggles for even 2 hours. Are there people who can wear them for 12?

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