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John Carmack Leaves Meta

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Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#281
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"

If so, then they missed the games that used id Tech 4 and id Tech 5 (almost impossible given the success of Doom 3), and how Carmack continued to invent truly unthinkable performance and fidelity enhancements to real time 3D graphics until the day he left for Occulus.

Then at Occulus he translated that engineering talent into a ruthless attack on latency and other issues with VR at the time. He was even working on this before he left.

Anyone who has watched one of his QuakeCon Keynotes in the past 20 years knows just how much raw talent Carmack has as an engineer. Most of them are on YouTube, you should check them out.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Respect your elders

But that’s not the gen z way. Part of being young is thinking you’d somehow do it all differently in the same circumstances.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#283
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…

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…

Yeah. I feel like this a lot. I don't know if it's a bias of some kind but it feels right.

I suppose it's selection bias. I don't know how to market, but apparently the marketing people do because we have customers. I do know about my corner of the system though, and when my advice is ignored it usually turns out I was right in the end.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is that quotation from? I don't see that in the linked article.

His internal badge (ie. goodbye) post. This is definitely not in the article. Edit: The article has a link to some other paywalled link that may contain the full contents of the note. I don't have a subscription so I can't tell but the quote is real at least.

https://archive.ph/Lmu9g

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#286
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…

Where are you quoting this from? A link would be nice, I don't see this in the article.

https://archive.ph/Lmu9g

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#287
post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that how Google ended up with eight chat apps while Search gets worse and worse every year?

Monopolies tend to stick around much longer than other industries despite their lack of competence. Clayton’s book was mostly about Intel which operated in a competitive market with AMD and others. DuckDuckGo is great but it’s not nipping at their heels meaningfully.

It takes a long time for any company to die, period. WeWork (or I guess now Twitter) style rapid flameouts are very rare.

Most corporate deaths look like Sears. The writing on the wall was there for over two decades.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is that quotation from? I don't see that in the linked article.

His internal badge (ie. goodbye) post. This is definitely not in the article. Edit: The article has a link to some other paywalled link that may contain the full contents of the note. I don't have a subscription so I can't tell but the quote is real at least.

Ah ok, thanks

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His internal badge (ie. goodbye) post. This is definitely not in the article. Edit: The article has a link to some other paywalled link that may contain the full contents of the note. I don't have a subscription so I can't tell but the quote is real at least.

https://archive.ph/Lmu9g

Thank you

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#290
post #254
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…

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…

I want to write about this topic in more depth, but in a nutshell I found that the more innovative and valuable your idea is, the harder it is to sell (because it's very value comes from the fact that it's a distance from bow people are thinking today)

People are busy and attention is scarce so knowing how to genuinely push and sell your idea in such environments is a rare ability and one that needs curation.

You'll find that people who rise are ones who can do this.

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