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John Carmack Leaves Meta

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Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#541

Post by [deleted] »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #499
dcow wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a genuine question about what to do when one finds oneself in this type of position and one is surrounded by people who seemingly do give a damn (and one isn't compelled to just give up and leave). In my experience, the software industry, in it’s aggressive desire to be egalitarian, has an authority problem. I have encountered the “I told you so one year ago but we just had to learn the hard way didn't we” sit…

If you want the boring answer: Money and clout. The slightly less boring answer: some people don't necessarily have the audience's best interests at heart. Sometimes not even the company's best interests. To use a slightly less heinous example than some of the obviously malicious backstabbing: maybe you do know that Idea B is more efficient, but Idea A was yours, and it looks great on a resume to say that you achitec…

[deleted]

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#542

Post by guerrilla »

kubb wrote: post #466
throwaway_8989 wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Throwaway because it could be easy to identify my position from my normal account name. Carmack is many thing, engineering genius above them. However, he would frequently wade into areas where he had no experience, demand others do what he said, ignore evidence he was wrong, bully people, and disparage entire teams who were doing good, and in some cases legally required, work. When data proved his idea was wrong, he…

HN is all about that cult of personality, we want to believe in heroic programmers (or founders) who singlehandedly change the world with their geinus clarity. Paul Graham said this, John Carmack said that and we lap it all up. It's been this way since the ancient times, and the stories of Hercules and Theseus. We mythologize these personalities, and in our mind they become demigods. But there's a reason the folk wis…

> HN is all about that cult of personality, we want to believe in heroic programmers (or founders) who singlehandedly change the world with their geinus clarity.

I'm not one to defend the culture here but this isn't fair. Everyone is like this and it has nothing to do with HN. They do it with politicians, rock stars, capitalists, etc. Just look at the cult of Elon Musk. And they do it because all of those people put a lot of money and work into making sure they do it. Worship is paid for. That's what PR and image firms do, not to even mention that it's the default culture of the media in pretty much every country on the planet.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#543

Post by heather45879 »

throwaway_8989 wrote: post #452
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…

Throwaway because it could be easy to identify my position from my normal account name. Carmack is many thing, engineering genius above them. However, he would frequently wade into areas where he had no experience, demand others do what he said, ignore evidence he was wrong, bully people, and disparage entire teams who were doing good, and in some cases legally required, work. When data proved his idea was wrong, he…

Honestly no one really cares about VR that’s the problem.

It’s cool in concept but whose going to shell out cash to be tethered to a machine wearing goggles sitting in a chair?

AR has potential but even that is marginally better than alternative solutions.

Also, I don’t know about y’all but I don’t trust Facebook so I don’t trust Meta. They are a data-leach.

We still probably have a decade or more to go with this technology it has to be affordable, lightweight, AR glasses not tied to a company that sells peoples data!

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#544

Post by ChildOfChaos »

kubb wrote: post #466
throwaway_8989 wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Throwaway because it could be easy to identify my position from my normal account name. Carmack is many thing, engineering genius above them. However, he would frequently wade into areas where he had no experience, demand others do what he said, ignore evidence he was wrong, bully people, and disparage entire teams who were doing good, and in some cases legally required, work. When data proved his idea was wrong, he…

HN is all about that cult of personality, we want to believe in heroic programmers (or founders) who singlehandedly change the world with their geinus clarity. Paul Graham said this, John Carmack said that and we lap it all up. It's been this way since the ancient times, and the stories of Hercules and Theseus. We mythologize these personalities, and in our mind they become demigods. But there's a reason the folk wis…

As you mention, the world is about cult of personality, not just hacker news. Look at the situation with influences and such and why brands are following over themselves to link there products with some personality.

We like to think it's some super human person that is some for of genius, but there are very real limits to human intelligence and while there are some admittedly great and lucky people in that regard, they are still very limited and would likely be disappointing if we knew what the rest of there lives were like outside of what we see.

In some ways we seem to love the idea that others are just somehow more gifted than we are and then idolize them, we don't like to accept that everyone is just making it up as they go along all the time, maybe it's a defense mechanism in some ways as it keeps us from doing some of the more exciting things that we could do, because that's only for these special people that we somehow idolize and of course to make it worse, these people generally love the attention so play up to that even more.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#545

Post by michpoch »

richliss wrote: post #534
throwaway_8989 wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Throwaway because it could be easy to identify my position from my normal account name. Carmack is many thing, engineering genius above them. However, he would frequently wade into areas where he had no experience, demand others do what he said, ignore evidence he was wrong, bully people, and disparage entire teams who were doing good, and in some cases legally required, work. When data proved his idea was wrong, he…

I worked with someone who was a bona fide development genius about 10 years ago and he was a CTO and co-founder at the time and considered himself to be able to input into any conversation with people who were domain experts in fields that he wasn't. I remember him overruling the Head of Design and enforcing Arial to be the typeface used for the corporate brand because it was the typeface was present on more computer…

Ok, that is an example where his advice was apparently incorrect.

Was that a rule though? If you give advice in 100 different meetings, you'll be wrong in some of them for sure, even if you're a domain expert.

If he was the CTO and co-founder it seems that his approach worked well, at least to get him and the company to that level.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#546

Post by kennyadam »

_the_inflator wrote: post #462
wpietri wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very interesting to me that he's giving up on VR entirely. If he thought it was just an issue with Facebook, presumably he'd jump in somewhere else and get the impact he was looking to have. That's another sign to me that VR is once again not going anywhere. Or rather, half of it isn't. Oculus-style VR is two best in one: 3D persistent virtual worlds and stereoscopic facehugger interfaces. The former has had gre…

Try it yourself. Strap something 8 hours or longer around your head, don't move, because every small tremor distorts the vision of the device. VR in its current form is eye cocaine, nothing more. Why watch poppy avatars hop around in a virtual reality, while you are bound to do nothing? In every way, VR should be restricted to very few use cases, not to - hello Zuck - rebuild reality completely and hereby track every…

Don't move? Have you ever played Superhot VR or Beat Sabre or Pistol Whip or... etc.? You're jumping around all over the place for some VR games and it's extremely fun and the experience can't be reproduced on a monitor.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#547

Post by fxtentacle »

throwaway_8989 wrote: post #452
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…

Throwaway because it could be easy to identify my position from my normal account name. Carmack is many thing, engineering genius above them. However, he would frequently wade into areas where he had no experience, demand others do what he said, ignore evidence he was wrong, bully people, and disparage entire teams who were doing good, and in some cases legally required, work. When data proved his idea was wrong, he…

I know someone who built a solid business around using the Oculus Go to show off kitchen designs to prospective buyers. The fact that the Go was a cheap-ish stand-alone Android device was really valuable for them.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#548

Post by ChildOfChaos »

comfypotato wrote: post #516
iforgotpassword wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah well, you're anonymous, so you might as well be someone with a huge ego who got their idea shut down by Carmack once and is still bitter about it. More often than not, when people think they "prove something wrong with data" it's more that they're "taking some data and interpret in a way that fits their standpoint". Carmack has proven enough times in the past that he's able to deliver, that he can push technolog…

At risk of upsetting this thread’s balance and reducing it to negativity: I prefer your parent comment’s interpretation of the Go. “Ahead of its time”? Technology is the last space where a newfangled product would lose momentum by being released to early. I’m open to being proved ignorant here. Can you think of some examples where tech was obviously ahead of its time and not accepted? Subscription music services like…

Stadia is a great example. I am still using it today before the shut down, it's amazing how it's actually got me into playing games again and it's fantastic for casual games with friends since everyone can play no matter there hardware and the multiplayer features are fantastic for this.

It works and it is fantastic, but it's ahead of it's time and most people don't know what it is. That and Google's mismanagement of the service, but if it was an accepted thing, Google wouldn't have had to push it ahead so much, but since it wasn't they did and they failed.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#549

Post by eddiewithzato »

danuker wrote: post #496
Mistletoe wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe Oculus Go was a failure in all those areas because VR will always be a failure in those areas.

Indeed. I couldn't believe Facebook bet so much on VR, and especially a low-quality 3D MMORPG full of micropayments. With no LEGS. How long have video game characters had legs?? I feel dizzy even playing Minecraft on a plain screen. I won't ever buy VR goggles. Let alone ones bound to a Facebook account.

Zuck must’ve been high when OKing VR, I still think Google Glass is the way forward with augmented reality. Very comfortable and isn’t trying to rewrite how humans communicate.

I have VR and it is immersive, but way too uncomfortable.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#550

Post by camillomiller »

throwaway_8989 wrote: post #452
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…

Throwaway because it could be easy to identify my position from my normal account name. Carmack is many thing, engineering genius above them. However, he would frequently wade into areas where he had no experience, demand others do what he said, ignore evidence he was wrong, bully people, and disparage entire teams who were doing good, and in some cases legally required, work. When data proved his idea was wrong, he…

Oh, VR is currently successful? Must have missed some sales reports then…
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