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John Carmack Leaves Meta

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Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#851

Post by throwaway743 »

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.

Their use of 'there' instead of 'their' could've been done purposely as a means of not being unmasked. A tool was posted the other week that took HN usernames and found accounts that it deemed as being alt accounts/similar writing styles.

Could be an attempt to throw something like that off

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#852

Post by mathgladiator »

AgentOrange1234 wrote: post #749
mathgladiator wrote: post #722

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 be…

If your leadership chain is good, then it is easy to have a great experience and good scope to grow.

As you get higher up, the politics and limits become very visible. Strategy and focus are really hard to scale up which creates limited scope for continued growth.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#853

Post by andirk »

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.

We talking pronouns? This/these? Who's Cramack? That quote from his letter sounds like someone who constantly overstepped their bounds.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#854

Post by throwaway675309 »

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.

What a fatuous argument. Have you considered that they may have used speech to text to dictate there (sic.) response from a mobile device, or that perhaps their (sic.) not a native speaker?

I find that the people who are overly concerned about semantics tend to be the people who have the least to offer in terms of substance. The idea that you can draw a correlation between one's technological aptitude and the inability to distinguish between various possessive adjectives is patently absurd.

Here's a pithy quote I created just for you: "it doesn't matter how many languages you can speak if you have nothing to say."

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#855

Post by dpe82 »

AgentOrange1234 wrote: post #749
mathgladiator wrote: post #722

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 be…

Come back in 5 years and let us know if that's still your opinion. Maybe you'll get lucky, but most people aren't.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#856

Post by lukasb »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #201
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #28

Earlier 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 did Google for ten years and I'd say this: SRE culture at Google is solid, with excellent skills and knowledge about how to build and run services at scale. Unfortunately it's mostly their own custom bespoke stuff, so those skills don't immediately translate into a new org. But they can. SWE is more of a mixed bag. There are obviously incredibly bright people doing cutting edge software development at Google. But o…

Underrated comment.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#858

Post by Matthias247 »

ablatt89 wrote: post #87
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #28

Earlier 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…

Working for 2x FAANGs, management incentives engineers to work on new features and not on integration testing and optimization. Quality, testing, automation are highly looked down upon and generally don't give huge refreshers come review time. However QA, automation, and testing are not only looked down in FAANG, but the majority of companies and engineers. How often do you see engineers in any company call themselve…

I've worked as a principal engineer at Amazon before, and I can tell that testing and quality there isn't looked down upon. You can definitely get promoted just for improving products and never building any new feature.

However it will matter a lot on where you spend your effort on, and whether your environment understands why it matters. If you just mention "I'm writing integration tests" - and nobody knows why it's important to do that right now - it will likely not go too far. However if it's along "we have this regular operational issue that everyone in my org including the director was aware about, I fixed it, added integration tests, and made sure I added automation that will catch further regressions before our customers will observe them" - it will go a long way.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#859

Post by maxgashkov »

nvarsj wrote: post #588
JohnBooty wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly no one really cares about VR that’s the problem. I feel like this is definitely the elephant in the room everybody is ignoring. Almost nobody gives a hoot about VR! I'm a software engineer with a lot of (surprise, surprise) nerdy/geeky/whatever friends and interest in VR is close to zero. A few friends vouched for various games like Half-Life:Alyx and Beat Saber, but nobody was claiming it was a life alterin…

I don't know about your friends, but playing Alyx opened my eyes to the level of immersion VR can achieve. It's a kind of gameplay that can't be repeated with 2d screens. I really do think it could be revolutionary, based on playing that game alone. If you can get ahold of a headset and a powerful gaming PC - I recommend giving it a try. The problems right now are very fundamental. The quest 2 out of the box is supre…

Nausea issue is not solvable by any standalone device. We'll either have direct brain jack-in that can override full range of sensory input (so there will be no dissonance between your sense of balance and vision) or we're stuck with mostly static experiences (teleporting point-to-point instead of moving etc.) which are not immersive.

Not seeing the first one delivered within 5 years for sure and probably not within 50.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#860

Post by nickstinemates »

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…

> Can you think of some examples where tech was obviously ahead of its time and not accepted?

Webvan. 2000 era shopping as a service. Predates instacart, uber eats, etc. World wasn't ready for it.

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