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John Carmack Leaves Meta

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Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#101
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What are you talking about. They sold 100M quest 2s. People like it. Have you tried it? Most naysayers haven’t even tried it.

Published meta revenue numbers don’t add up. Do you have a source for the 100M Quest 2 sold?

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#102
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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 wa…

> fail whale

do you mean "whale fall"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale_fall

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

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.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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 w…

Sure they can. They choose not to do so.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#105
post #7

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 mak…

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.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#106
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What are you talking about. They sold 100M quest 2s. People like it. Have you tried it? Most naysayers haven’t even tried it.

Indeed, it's an amazing gaming platform. I love Thrill of the Fight and Pro Era!

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Just here to echo a similar experience - FAANG competitor that is (thankfully) left out of the acronym

[deleted]

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#108
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What are you talking about. They sold 100M quest 2s. People like it. Have you tried it? Most naysayers haven’t even tried it.

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.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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 w…

> 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.

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