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John Carmack Leaves Meta

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Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#741

Post by adamsb6 »

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…

As a recent insider, this is one of those things where the outside perception doesn't match the inside at all.

Privacy is taken more seriously at Facebook than any other place I've ever worked. It's drilled into you from day one that we have systems in place to catch you accessing things you shouldn't and you will be immediately fired if you do.

You can make mistakes that bring the entire site down and cost the company millions and they won't fire you. If you try to bypass privacy controls on an ex-girlfriend's post, you're gone.

Yes, they hoover up a ton of personal data. But they guard it like the crown jewels. If you do want your data deleted, they'll delete it. I've worked on the systems responsible for this where we had to reason through what to do with things like offline backups.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#742

Post by grogenaut »

jahlove wrote: post #734
kleinsch wrote: post #714

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at Meta. Yea, there was a promoted culture of flatness, but that only applied to the IC side. Within engineering there are separate levels but everyone has the same title "Software engineer" so that (supposedly) level shouldn't be a factor in whose argument is correct. In practice, everyone knows who's high-vs-low level, so it's mostly a charade. On the management side, there are clear titles, reporting hier…

IC? RL?

Individual contributor aka not a manger likely an engineer

Reality labs (I think)

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#743

Post by DoingIsLearning »

gompertz wrote: post #620
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…

Quoted post unavailable.

> trying to be convincing on technical issues when you can't understand fundamentals of English is not persuasive at all.

Note to disprove your point but there are plenty of very technically capable people who learn English as a second, third, fourth language. In fact I would say in technical settings, such as here, that this is statistically more common than a native English speaker with poor writing skills.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#744

Post by someperson »

UncleMeat wrote: post #447
RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 becom…

He joined Facebook with the Oculus acquisition and he's the position was Chief Technology Officer of Oculus.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#745

Post by snovv_crash »

krisoft wrote: post #659

I think Carmack is a great engineer. Part of that is being great at communication. And he is! Usually. But this paragraph is quite hard to follow: > If I am trying to sway others, I would say that an org that has only known inefficiency is ill prepared for the inevitable competition and/or belt tightening, but really, it is the more personal pain of seeing a 5% GPU utilization number in production. I am offended by i…

Low GPU utilisation is a serious issue.

Either you massively over-specced your hardware and should have chosen something cheaper and with less power consumption, or your graphics quality is far below what it could be.

Let's not beat around the bush: wasted resources are expensive, in some way or another.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#746

Post by percentcer »

beambot wrote: post #336
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…

> I feel sorry for those FAANG engineers... 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,…

> the work is confined to 9-5

tell me you haven't worked in FAANG without telling me you haven't worked in FAANG

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#748

Post by neon_electro »

jahlove wrote: post #734
kleinsch wrote: post #714

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at Meta. Yea, there was a promoted culture of flatness, but that only applied to the IC side. Within engineering there are separate levels but everyone has the same title "Software engineer" so that (supposedly) level shouldn't be a factor in whose argument is correct. In practice, everyone knows who's high-vs-low level, so it's mostly a charade. On the management side, there are clear titles, reporting hier…

IC? RL?

IC = Independent Contributor

RL = Reality Labs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_Labs)

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#749

Post by AgentOrange1234 »

mathgladiator wrote: post #722
drewg123 wrote: post #634

"I have never been able to kill stupid things before they cause damage" One of the most important things an organization can have is a "no man". A project that I was involved in when I worked at Google was completed on time primarily because we had a very senior (DE level) engineer tangentially involved in the project. He was near the end of his career, and he just didn't give a f* about politics. He'd sit in design…

These dumb things emerge because of two forces: first, the promotion game of people trying to get theirs. Second, price's law. Price's law is what constrains scope, and the boundary between engineers can often be the luck of having the right opportunity. As such, all the stupid things emerge trying to invent scope. I'm guilty of this, but that was the game. There is no solution except accept that big companies kind o…

Maybe I am unusually lucky. After managing a small team for a year in a FAANG, I am considerably less jaded.

I think it is entirely possible to be truly focused on the customer, to have a vision and a strategy, and to balance working toward this goal with experimentation.

It is of course also very hard work, it’s easy to make mistakes, and nothing is perfect. But I really don’t see that this is all doomed from the beginning just because of bad incentives and structural forces.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#750

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

gompertz wrote: post #620
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…

Quoted post unavailable.

Perhaps the poster is trying to befuddle identification of their main account through stylography?

One can get quite paranoid on the internet, you know.

(I am not a dog).

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