John Carmack Leaves Meta • Hacker News Board

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#81

Post by 29athrowaway » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 1:26 AM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #5

“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 u…

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.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#82

Post by zrail » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 1:26 AM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #28

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #5

“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 u…

> 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 them…

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.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#83

Post by nomel » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 1:26 AM UTC

pas wrote: post #38

nebulous1 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lex's guest list is absurd. I'm honestly not sure how he's managed to pull it off.

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)

> 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.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#84

Post by mentat » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 1:26 AM UTC

ggm wrote: post #39

ilyt wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Completely agree. Some fundamentals about VR aren't going away either. Headset weight for instance

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.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#85

Post by salawat » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 1:27 AM UTC

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #37

cokeandpepsi wrote: post #13

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

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.

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.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#86

Post by jmacd » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 1:28 AM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #28

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #5

“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 u…

> 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 them…

That's a lesson we all learn, and most of us learn it the hard way.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#87

Post by ablatt89 » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 1:28 AM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #28

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #5

“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 u…

> 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 them…

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.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#88

Post by throwabayhay » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 1:28 AM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #28

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #5

“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 u…

> 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 them…

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.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#89

Post by Razengan » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 1:30 AM UTC

srajabi wrote: post #9

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #5

“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 u…

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.

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".

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#90

Post by sgrove » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 1:30 AM UTC

a9h74j wrote: post #69

LarsDu88 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 co…

> warped incentives Has anybody suggested "term limits" as a solution? Not that I assume they would be.

"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.