John Carmack Leaves Meta • Hacker News Board

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#571

Post by rightbyte » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 2:41 PM UTC

jauer wrote: post #325

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…

Part of the problem is that Oculus has all the overhead from Meta’s regulatory compliance burden, so they can’t escape some of the most frustrating pressures.

Regulatory compliance would be quite easy by just not doing spywares.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#572

Post by JohnBooty » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 2:43 PM UTC

germinalphrase wrote: post #104

jackosdev wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sure they can. They choose not to do so.

Ultimately, yes - nobody should feel bad for FAANG employees or anybody else who has chosen the golden handcuffs of the "cushy IT salary life." It was a choice and we are all responsible for our own choices... and in a world where people are starving, we shouldn't feel bad for somebody making a cushy living.

But it gets complicated.

A typical scenario is somebody choosing that life and after X years realizing it's not for them. But by then it's too late. You've got a partner, mortgage, pets, kids, whatever. And even if you haven't chosen any of that baggage, maybe you have a few hundred grand in student debt.

Yes, these were all choices. But it's awfully tough to know how you'll feel X years later when you are making those choices and by then there's no escape.

(FWIW, I have not worked at a FAANG. Just your average HN engineer type in a less glamorous part of the country.)

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#573

Post by s-lambert » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 2:47 PM UTC

mach1ne wrote: post #529

bsenftner wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't work with John Carmack, but I had a meeting with him once. He is brilliant, no doubt, but he is exactly like every single engineer with no professional communications training. He struggles to make his points in everyday developer language, when he needs to speak more calculated, more measured, and with significantly more audience empathy. Just like 99% of us technologists. We're an industry of weak communica…

I think the notion of developers being 'weak communicators' is a bit too simplified. It suggests that if developers were better communicators, then things would move faster & better forward. But the fact is that the audience of non-developers tends to have a completely different mode of thinking, and indeed a different set of targets. Developers would like to see organizations as machines to give instructions to. Non…

I think it's weird that people don't talk about non-developers being weak communicators because they often are as well. I guess it's because if a product manager is a bad communicator then they're just a bad product manager. While a developer can be a bad communicator but still a good developer.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#574

Post by DonHopkins » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 2:47 PM UTC

bluedino wrote: post #138

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 might be considered by others as "boomer" that hasn't been relevant "since Quake III"

Are you sure you don't mean a "Gen-X'er" that hasn't been relevant since he stole Apple ][s with thermite and vasoline? ;)

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#575

Post by DonHopkins » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 2:48 PM UTC

Minor49er wrote: post #225

bluedino wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He might be considered by others as "boomer" that hasn't been relevant "since Quake III"

The man went from making the fastest 3D games ever to grace silicon to literally launching rockets. He's been the fastest nerd alive, and Meta couldn't even give him legs (figuratively and literally [1]) [1] https://youtu.be/ouq5yyzSiAw?t=395

I don't see what you didn't do there.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#576

Post by NAHWheatCracker » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 2:49 PM UTC

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…

Damn this sounds similar to a project manager I'm working with, except he doesn't have any of the technical/engineering merit.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#577

Post by abecedarius » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 2:52 PM UTC

chrisco255 wrote: post #523

comfypotato wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Can you think of some examples where tech was obviously ahead of its time and not accepted? Uh yeah, VR itself as a concept and models of VR have been live since the 80s but were especially hyped in the 90s but never went anywhere beyond amusement parks and arcades. And no one wanted to touch VR in the 00s despite huge leaps in processing power. I would even argue the original Macintosh was ahead of its time, maybe…

Expensive and hard to upgrade are both separate from being ahead of your time design-wise. (Apple had healthy margins on Macintosh from the start, and the 128k no-slots aspects were both argued against by people on the team. I guess there's a sense of "ahead of its time" that fits, where Jobs consistently aimed for more "upscale consumer" type products but wasn't yet able to make that work for a big market.)

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#578

Post by osigurdson » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 2:55 PM UTC

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…

Interesting perspective. One ominous anecdote is I've noticed that kids seem to have lost interest in the Oculus / VR. I'm assuming the business model needs to be bootstrapped with games and then move into other areas. I hope it is successful however, the world will be kind of boring if all we ever have is screens.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#579

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 2:59 PM UTC

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…

[deleted]

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#580

Post by osigurdson » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 3:02 PM UTC

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #570

kubb wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

More than that, I think it's important to remember that no one, even a technologist as strong as Carmack, is going to get more right than wrong. Carmack has been a huge inspiration for me over the years. I grew up eagerly reading his plan files. But if we look at the big picture, a lot of his big calls haven't in fact worked out. His vision for the future of graphics was to stick closer to the original OpenGL state m…

Is it possibly because he lacks the academic rigour? I don't think casually reading math (or any) texts as a $50M+ net worth individual is remotely the same as having to study and pass tests like a regular person.