Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
> He was Bethesda and Oculus. He isn’t Meta. Meta is gargantuan compared to 2009-2013 Bethesda, which frankly seems like a golden handcuffs-era footnote in Carmack's professional history. He isn't even mentioned once in Bethesda's wikipedia page[0]... Oculus seemed far more apropos for a get-shit-done guy like Carmack. Personally I think FB acquiring him/Oculus was an almost certain shitty outcome for the VR technolo…
John Carmack Leaves Meta
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Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta
#262”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 might be considered by others as "boomer" that hasn't been relevant "since Quake III"
How many people that ignorant actually work there though? Maybe there really is more dead weight than we thought..
Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta
#263Was always a bit of an odd fit
Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
It wouldn't surprise me if he has a noncompete in play that prevents him from continuing his VR work for a few years.
They don't exactly need a non-compete (those are hard to enforce in CA anyway), they can just buy any up-and-coming VR companies. And they do.
You don’t need a noncompete when any investor is going to be scared that a major company will sue over “pilfered secrets”.
Combine that with being burned out and I can see trying something else.
Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta
#265”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…
Ironically I felt reassured reading this. "[...] I'm evidently not persuasive enough. A good fraction of the things I complain about eventually turn my way after [...] evidence piles up" especially resonates with me. While I rationally understand it's just corporate bureaucracy / politics, sometimes I still wonder if I were just a bit more capable I'd be more persuasive.
If John fucking Carmack cannot move the bureaucracy this way, then it's folly for me to try the same. I should accept that we're playing checkers not chess.
Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta
#266”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 is that quotation from? I don't see that in the linked article.
His internal badge (ie. goodbye) post. This is definitely not in the article.
Edit: The article has a link to some other paywalled link that may contain the full contents of the note. I don't have a subscription so I can't tell but the quote is real at least.
Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
> FB culture is way too positive and happy oh wow.. never thought they could be happy at FB
I interpreted this as coerced positivity and forced happiness. Not organic actual emotion from feeling fulfilled and successful within their role.
Yes, the atmosphere at most big tech companies is this way. Everyone writes their emails with a plastered-on fake smile.
The worst part is when people pretend that things are difficult. You can't just suggest that someone not waste time on an obviously bad idea; you must acknowledge that the team's development strategy is a complex, multifaceted governance problem, and many quarters of sync meetings will be necessary to drive the appropriate alignment with all stakeholders and establish prioritization and scheduling on an action item to form a spot committee that will deliberate on the necessity of a course correction.
It's suffocating, it produces terrible products, but it pays really well.
Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Why don't you just turn on auto updates?
I don’t know what it is but those don’t seem enough. Maybe it fights with sleep somehow but my Xbox is supposed to keep games updated and if I haven’t played in a week I seem to have a download. Annoying.
Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta
#269[deleted]
Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Sadly, there're very few modern examples of big companies following this solution.
There are lots of companies that entertain this solution. There are just very few examples of it working for the simple reason that this advice generally doesn't work. We look at the one company that succeeds and "say why didn't we just do that?" without remembering that there were 10 other startups that failed. The more reliable solution is to use the same wisdom of hindsight to pick winners and just buy out the one that succeeds. Facebook bought instagram, but none of their internal efforts have produced anything so useful.