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John Carmack Leaves Meta

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Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#981

Post by brailsafe »

Shorel wrote: post #979
moralestapia wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>who got their idea shut down by Carmack once and is still bitter about it Nice fantasy you created there to support your argument. Have you heard of "don't shoot the messenger" ? I admire Carmack as much all other hackers around. I don't sympathize with many of Meta's practices. Still, it's entirely plausible that GP's experience holds truth. I've been around the equivalent of people like Carmack in academia and all…

There's almost no one like Carmack in academia. Academic experience writing papers vs actual industry experience to the point of creating new technologies and new markets almost by himself are definitely not equivalent. So, as much as I would be a bit judgemental about academics opinions, I would definitely listen to Carmack.

Academia can mean a lot of things, some of which have obvious parallels to industry. He may deserve a pedestal in some respects, and I'd listen to him too, but it should be tempered.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#982

Post by _yb2s »

Shorel wrote: post #979
moralestapia wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>who got their idea shut down by Carmack once and is still bitter about it Nice fantasy you created there to support your argument. Have you heard of "don't shoot the messenger" ? I admire Carmack as much all other hackers around. I don't sympathize with many of Meta's practices. Still, it's entirely plausible that GP's experience holds truth. I've been around the equivalent of people like Carmack in academia and all…

There's almost no one like Carmack in academia. Academic experience writing papers vs actual industry experience to the point of creating new technologies and new markets almost by himself are definitely not equivalent. So, as much as I would be a bit judgemental about academics opinions, I would definitely listen to Carmack.

Academia is about writing papers in the same way industry is about writing ad copy…. You have to do the project before you write a paper about it.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#983

Post by creativenolo »

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…

Thanks for sharing this point of view and voice from inside Meta.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#984

Post by Jeema101 »

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 as if nobody's learned anything from the 'self-driving car' boondoggle of the last 20 years or so.

Any problem can seem easy when you don't know the things you don't know.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#985

Post by PragmaticPulp »

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…

> The transferrable and useful skills one gets out of someone trained in a FAANG is the ability to produce well explained tested well documented code incrementally and in a respectful and well discussed code review process.

That’s why I mentioned that their development skills were actually quite good.

The issue was that they were playing a full-time workplace game of not only self-promotion, but of elevating themselves over peers.

This would manifest as things like campaigning for total rewrites of other people’s code because they all but refused to participate in anyone else’s projects. We couldn’t get them to do anything unless they thought it was going to be a good line item on their resume.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#986

Post by fennecfoxy »

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…

Idk I feel like Carmack is a genius, and has done genius tech related things at id. But does he really have credentials to speak on latest modern developments in technology?

Does he have any skin in the game? Last I heard of him was Megatexturing in idtech 5 and that wasn't really a huge marvel nor necessarily did it make the engine the forefront of game tech.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#987

Post by heavenlyblue »

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…

No post body was provided.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#988

Post by cloverich »

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.

I've heard they bet on VR for the same reason Microsoft bet on a mobile phone -- they want to own a device ecosystem. It makes a lot more sense to me in that context.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#990

Post by ladyattis »

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's planning for an AGI company.

This is something I think will break the mystique around Carmack. Back in the 1990s and early 2000s he was considered the whiz kid when it came to rendering engines but in reality something that's as nuanced and still not fully understood (intelligence, especially AGI) is likely too far out of his expertise to develop. Why? Because the last 60 or so years of development in the field hasn't yield much in the way of results in pure research or practical application. Machine learning and other hat tricks aren't even in the realm of AI properly but rather probability models that work well enough on a narrow set of problems to possibly commercialize them (ex. chat bots for help desk replacements). The thought that anyone, and I mean anyone, is going to develop artificial general intelligence before the 2050s or even later is to me laughable. We barely can understand how to talk to parts of our own brains, we're still learning more from other so-called lower lifeforms with respect to how they solve problems (fun fact: it seems bumble bees like to play or at least do things that are roughly analogous to being play-like, all without any kind of human or hominid-like brain so fancy that). So, it just seems like hubris to imagine any corporation, research department, or a singular scientist cracking this nut. I think we're more in the technological Bronze Age with respect to computing than anything else. It would be nice we finally got started on our computing Iron Age.

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