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John Carmack Leaves Meta

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Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#111

Post by Arjuna »

”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.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#112

Post by thomasahle »

arcticbull wrote: post #79
kentm wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 rewa…

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 yo…

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.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#113

Post by throwabayhay »

jackosdev wrote: post #57
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #28

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.

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.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#114

Post by FormerBandmate »

srajabi wrote: 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…

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

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#115

Post by borkt »

rhaps0dy wrote: post #102
chubot wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No, op didnt

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#116

Post by pjmorris »

Aeolun wrote: post #23
santoshalper wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Jerry Weinberg had an expression "Cucumbers get pickled more than brine gets cucumbered" to express the influence environment has on individuals.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#117

Post by arcticbull »

thomasahle wrote: post #112
arcticbull wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 yo…

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…

> 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.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#118

Post by vedran »

rhaps0dy wrote: post #102
chubot wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#119

Post by actionfromafar »

Arjuna wrote: post #111

”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…

I would have been stunned if they had listened to someone wise and decent. They listen to quarterly reports I guess?

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#120

Post by worldsayshi »

hajile wrote: post #29
modeless wrote: post #4

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://twi…

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.

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.
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