Earlier quoted context omitted.
Respect your elders
But that’s not the gen z way. Part of being young is thinking you’d somehow do it all differently in the same circumstances.
John Carmack Leaves Meta
331–340 of 1001 posts
Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta
#332They own unreal. They understand immersion. They want to have their own App Store eon mobile devices. They just don’t know “social”, but heck.. meta doesn’t anymore either.
Maybe GREE was right about seeing Facebook as their competitor after all.
Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta
#333Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wouldn't be surprised if SD, GPT-3, and other recent releases were what pushed him over the edge and prompted him to leave. He must have felt like he was watching a lot of cool things happen without him. If I had another 30 IQ points I'd be climbing over walls and sneaking into buildings at night to work on this stuff.
I believe he talked about starting work on AGI at the time he went part-time at Meta, long before GPT-3. I encourage anyone to try out some AI related stuff, genius IQ not required. It's still a young field so there aren't yet huge towers of knowledge to climb before you can do anything. The core ideas are actually super simple, requiring nothing more than high school math.
Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta
#334Earlier 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.
I joined back in 2014 and left this year. I feel like I got to enjoy a couple of years before the company started to lose its nimbleness. Feedback groups used to get responses from the people that actually built the things instead of contractors whose primary function is feedback group triage. Sometimes you could actually have an impact by giving feedback, and you could see others having those impacts as well. When I…
What's that?
Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta
#335Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah. I feel like this a lot. I don't know if it's a bias of some kind but it feels right. I suppose it's selection bias. I don't know how to market, but apparently the marketing people do because we have customers. I do know about my corner of the system though, and when my advice is ignored it usually turns out I was right in the end.
At MegaCompanies, being right, having evidence, and trying to persuade just isn’t enough, as John Fucking Carmack figured out. It’s more like High School. You need to be in the right clique or have the ear of the right Very Important Person. When you send that E-mail and say “We should do X because Y and Z…” people stop reading at “because” and just go look in the company directory for your name. If you’re high enoug…
Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta
#336Earlier 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…
Imagine that you're paid 2-3x, the work is confined to 9-5, gourmet meals on the 2x days you're not wfh, generous vacation policy, world-class benefits, and ample time to pursue side hobbies or family.
I know so many exceptional engineers that went this route... after they got over the perfectionism, imposter syndrome, and wild ambitions to just accept the status quo. Now, their lives are comparably stress-free compared to their startup brethren, and many of them live vicariously through angel investments using the delta in comp.
Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta
#337Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh Meta 100% has some sort of non-compete in writing, especially after his lawsuit with Bethesda when he left Id to work at Oculus[1]. [1] https://www.pcgamer.com/zenimax-accuses-john-carmack-of-thef...
There is absolutely no such thing as a non-compete in California.
Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta
#338Earlier 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"?
Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta
#339Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh Meta 100% has some sort of non-compete in writing, especially after his lawsuit with Bethesda when he left Id to work at Oculus[1]. [1] https://www.pcgamer.com/zenimax-accuses-john-carmack-of-thef...
There is absolutely no such thing as a non-compete in California.
> California employers can sidestep non-competes in the following instances:
> EXCEPTION 1: If the employee sells business goodwill
> EXCEPTION 2: If the owner sells his or her business interests
> EXCEPTION 3: If the owner sells all operating and goodwill assets
> Upon the business’ dissolution, a member of the company may agree to a non-compete if operating a similar business in the geographic area. Goodwill is the company’s name and brand reputation. Employees with stock options are not considered company owners for purposes of non-competition agreements.
Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta
#340Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lex's guest list is absurd. I'm honestly not sure how he's managed to pull it off.
network effects mostly. how Joe Rogan did it? not by being a genius. (by being mostly entertaining and a bit informative, and Lex built on this by being mostly informative and almost completely anti-entertaining)