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John Carmack Leaves Meta

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Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#151

Post by FormerBandmate »

pengaru wrote: post #132
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…

The bigger the ship the smaller your rudder is.

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

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#152

Post by mjfl »

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 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?

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#153

Post by mathgladiator »

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…

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.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#154

Post by worldsayshi »

lyu07282 wrote: post #136
Gigachad wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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 crea…

>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

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#155

Post by dylan604 »

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…

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.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#157

Post by dinvlad »

chubot wrote: post #75
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 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…

> Though from what I hear the leadership there was the real problem

It almost always is.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#158

Post by nequo »

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…

> 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?

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#160

Post by Patrol8394 »

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.

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