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John Carmack Leaves Meta

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Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#211

Post by cmrdporcupine »

wpietri wrote: post #45
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…

> self-promotion, office politics, and collecting wins for themselves A pal who was a manager at a FAANG said, "If you give people one game to play, they're going to play it very energetically." He was speaking of the promotion game, of course.

My impression when I was there was that most people hated the game. But one still had to play it. Well, I didn't, but that wasn't to my advantage at all.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#212

Post by Forge36 »

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…

Where did this come from? This quote only resolves to this post.

Edit: A little more searching and I found the full memo

https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-john-carmack-scathing-e...

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#213

Post by BurningFrog »

lolinder wrote: post #126
throwabayhay wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I left FAANG basically because you had to play the politics and self-promotion game to get promoted. I have no reason to doubt that in the particular corner of your organization that may well have been the case, but you cannot generalize this over the whole field. As stated elsewhere, I never played any game to be promoted, I simply never consciously sought the goal of promotion, and I was promoted anyway just beca…

We have multiple people giving their anecdotes saying big tech positions emphasize self-promotion, and one anecdote (yours) saying they don't. So, sincere question: for those of us who haven't worked at a FAANG, why should we believe that your experience is the norm while the other people's is the "corner"?

I'll state the obvious: FAANG isn't a place. It's 5 gigantic tech companies lumped into a cute acronym.

Each of the 5 is a huge sprawling organization with 1000s of separate teams, working in very different ways.

Anything you can say about "working at FAANG" will be true of some parts and untrue of others.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#214

Post by mnky9800n »

dmix wrote: post #189
mathgladiator wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is this a classic middle management malaise where everyone gets paid so well they don’t want to stir the pot? The bureaucracy and protection of today’s money cows which only clouds them from seeing tomorrow’s cows that will rescue them from certain obscurity? The Clayton M Christensen solution to big companies ignoring obvious problems is to have isolated small teams “infrapreneurship” who aren’t under the pressures…

How does this solution work? Does every team work this way? Is there no HR but only local administration? Or is it only a few teams who get this privilege? How do you avoid us vs. Them mentality in that situation?

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#215

Post by krainboltgreene »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #184
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…

> I wish Elon didn't get sucked into culture wars, because slimming down Twitter's workforce wasn't a bad idea I don't know how you're relating those two things, but it's funny you should say that. At the time he was firing people, throngs of self-proclaimed "experts" started pontificating about how Twitter was going to implode and crash and burn. There was about two weeks of non-stop posts from various acquaintances…

A lot of experts also said it would be a slow fall over with things not working over time.

They were right.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#217

Post by ricardobeat »

dylan604 wrote: post #155
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…

The PlayStation has had the ability to keep itself up-to-date while in sleep mode for almost a decade now.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#218

Post by fudgefactorfive »

Razengan wrote: post #105
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…

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 sit…

I completely agree with this sentiment.

I think VR has the same issue that smartphones had at the start of their cycle, the UI/UX is not designed to intuitively mesh with how users actually want to use the system. Even things like keyboard inputs are just not quite there yet, resorting to clunky index-finger typing at best and type-by-laser at worst.

I think we are moving towards a usable version of AR eventually (with tech still needing to catch up on weight/latency/tracking) but full VR is almost only useful for games.

As much as I'm not an Apple-enthusiast, the one thing they (used to) get right is the sort of UX where you almost don't even need to explain how to do things, they just intuitively make sense and you can just let intent directly flow. Given their current trends though I'm not convinced their alternative AR/VR UI will be that though.

I'm essentially waiting for glasses that go full VR when they need to, and otherwise just allow me to overlay a GUI on reality with minimal effort.

E.g. a video player following me around while I do normal stuff. Helpful, and importantly, optional popups overlayed on real objects to enhance my interactions, not completely replace them with a crude 3D facsimile.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#219

Post by flipgimble »

John Carmack leaving your organization with a resignation letter like that is an undeniable sign that it is permeated with the rot of ineffective and self-deceptive middle management. If you've followed John's career you know that he has enough FU money and respect that he doesn't care about performance reviews, your promotion ladders or departmental politics. As he writes, he cares about shipping cutting edge technology nobody else thought possible that delivers exceptional value, and brand new experiences. His ethos is egos be damned, and breaking down organizational and cross-corporate boundaries.

Carmack should have been invaluable at Meta as the speaker of hard and uncomfortable truths. Likely Zuck & Boz have no idea whats really going on with their technology and are insulated by layers of self-deceptive status reporting. Once you step into management and away from the visceral struggle of building and using nascent technology daily, you are likely to make the stupidest and most illogical decisions. Setting that hard shipping deadline to coincide with your conference feels like you are making your team more efficient, but likely you are also forcing them to take on eventually crippling technical debt, or make rushed and ill-informed choices.

Its likely that top engineering talent, the ones who actually know how to build the next several generation of VR technology, already left or will leave soon. Those that remain will drown in so much clueless bullshit that they will pop out another VRML or Second Life and call it the metaverse.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#220

Post by anonymoushn »

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…

Maybe you should try having impactful projects assigned to you instead of not-impactful ones, haha!
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