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John Carmack Leaves Meta

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Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#441

Post by zwaps »

fs111 wrote: post #398
dev_tty01 wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think Portal is a perfect example of how slow to adapt the company has become. It's a fantastic video conferencing device, certainly the best at its price point. We happened to enter the pandemic with this device already available for sale, but we completely failed to capitalize on it. Thanks for your insight, but the Portal failure shouldn't be surprising. There are a large number of people who would never want t…

> There are a large number of people who would never want to have a private conversation or meeting using Facebook infrastructure Have you ever heard of Whatsapp? More than a billion people use it for private communication daily. Maybe not in the US, but elsewhere on the planet. You know who owns Whatsapp? Meta does.

Whatsapp was hugely popular before Meta bought it.

In fact, it lost quite a bit of users when Facebook bought it, as many tried to move their networks to Signal, Threema etc

So what was said is exactly right: nobody trusts Meta, rightly so

By the way, case in point, look what happened about Facebooks promise to keep Whatsapp data separate and private

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#442

Post by berniedurfee »

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…

This sounds like “Success Theater,” where everyone always reports green lights up the chain of command, until it’s too late and the show ends abruptly and poorly.

It’s a poison that seems to seep into organizations as they get larger.

I once gave a talk about “Enterprise Entrepreneurs” after being labeled as one. It can be a good approach to prevent stagnation as grass-roots initiatives often generate great ideas in large companies.

Unfortunately the practice requires executive sponsorship, which can be hard to attain if executives feel *their position and stature is being undermined by subordinates.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#443

Post by marvin »

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.

It’s not exactly a bold predction that someone will fail to solve a grand, millennia-old problem of philosophy and science.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#444

Post by vertis »

mattlondon wrote: post #434
icoder wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone on Reddit coined the term 'institutional inertia', which probably applies here too.

That term predates Reddit. https://trends.google.co.uk/trends/explore?date=all&q=Instit...

Was going to say the same thing. I don't think it was coined on Reddit. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I like your use of trends though to prove it.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#445

Post by badpun »

lukemercado wrote: post #420
urthor wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With those big companies, commonly there simply isn't a productive way to walk the line. Saving face and preserving "decision making credibility" means that taking advice is simply not on the cards for a large portion of the middle management class.

> Saving face and preserving "decision making credibility" means that taking advice is simply not on the cards for a large portion of the middle management class. While I'm happy to admit that this construct may be true in practice; it is _deeply_ infuriating that so many people's calculus nets out in this manner. It's infuriating to me, primarily, because I simply don't understand. By my understanding, "decision mak…

In any large company, everything is so complex and connected with each other that it's close to impossible to hash out the actual output (positive or negative) of any big decision. So, decisions are not based on merit because it's impossible to reason what is good what is not. Instead, there's a leader who has some kind of vision and the company follows that vision, for better or worse.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#446

Post by vintermann »

mathgladiator wrote: post #153
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.

I've heard that before about Facebook, that there's a taboo against "cynicism".

But sometimes lack of cynicism can be disastrous. I'm reminded of a story, recounted in Francis Spufford's "Red Plenty", of Leonid Kantorovich who invented linear programming, and wrote a letter to Stalin politely suggesting he was doing economics wrong, he should do things his way instead. At the time Stalin was in his paranoid phase and had a tendency to murder anyone he noticed. Luckily for Kantorovich, a much more cynical bureaucrat intercepted the letter before Stalin could read it, and didn't pass it on.

When things are unacceptably bad, it's actually necessary to realize things are unacceptably bad, and not pretend that there's always a nice and right way out of it.

People who suppress their own doubts force others to carry their doubts for them.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#447

Post by UncleMeat »

RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u wrote: post #265
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…

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 bureau…

Carmack is famous externally, especially among a generation that grew up with Doom/Quake. But it isn't like Facebook employs a bunch of ordinary engineers and then Carmack. There are a lot of people with extraordinarily impressive resumes and a long history of massive technical success there. It is not a surprise to me that it didn't just become the "do what Carmack says" show when he joined. Consensus-building becomes even harder at larger institutions.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#448

Post by pharmakom »

berniedurfee wrote: post #442
dmix wrote: post #189

Earlier 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…

This sounds like “Success Theater,” where everyone always reports green lights up the chain of command, until it’s too late and the show ends abruptly and poorly. It’s a poison that seems to seep into organizations as they get larger. I once gave a talk about “Enterprise Entrepreneurs” after being labeled as one. It can be a good approach to prevent stagnation as grass-roots initiatives often generate great ideas in…

I’ve never understood “enterprise entrepreneurs” or “intrapreneurship” from the perspective of the employee. The massive potential upside for a success just isn’t there compared to founding your own start-up, so why do it?

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#449

Post by XorNot »

dev_tty01 wrote: post #352
adamsb6 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>I think Portal is a perfect example of how slow to adapt the company has become. It's a fantastic video conferencing device, certainly the best at its price point. We happened to enter the pandemic with this device already available for sale, but we completely failed to capitalize on it. Thanks for your insight, but the Portal failure shouldn't be surprising. There are a large number of people who would never want t…

This comment could not be more wrong. The Portal failed because for exactly the reason the parent pointed out: it can't run the video conferencing apps people need it too.

If it's just Android then yeah, intercept the camera API to let the portal stuff work with any app and you've got yourself a killer product getting put on every grandparents TV.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#450

Post by tgv »

ww520 wrote: post #191
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…

He believes that AGI is an engineering problem because of the vast compute resource required for it. Being an engineering problem he believes he can make an impact.

That would be utterly wrong.
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