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The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

ericlippert.com

341–350 of 482 posts

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#341
post #81

> Speaking of cutting costs, the company is still pouring multiple billions of dollars into vaporware called “the metaverse”. News flash: no one wants to wear VR goggles to spend any time in a digital heaven where the role of God is played by Mark Zuckerberg and you can do anything you can imagine, including “work” and “shop”. Sounds like this guy was totally opposed to the company's new focus, to the point of descri…

I was regretted attrition. And very, very far from the most vital person on my team.

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#342
post #81

> Speaking of cutting costs, the company is still pouring multiple billions of dollars into vaporware called “the metaverse”. News flash: no one wants to wear VR goggles to spend any time in a digital heaven where the role of God is played by Mark Zuckerberg and you can do anything you can imagine, including “work” and “shop”. Sounds like this guy was totally opposed to the company's new focus, to the point of descri…

I have no data to back this up, but if I had to bet I’d guess that the large majority of Meta employees - along with shareholders - are also strongly opposed to the company’s new focus.

Well, there are plenty of talented engineers who would be happy to work on AR and VR …

You are off though. I know plenty of Meta people both inside and outside of the Reality Labs division and they love it.

No offense, but “I have no data to back this up, but … (shareholders and employees of a company I don’t have inside knowledge of think X)” is lame discourse.

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#343
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So Facebook doesn't have something like memegen? I worked at Google when it was created and "went viral". Before memegen there was a strain of what I would call inauthentic positivity I think memegen made it a lot more acceptable to be cynical, which was probably good, because the company was definitely drinking a lot of its own Kool-aid

Oh we definitely do -- the shitposting workplace group serves this purpose. Also the private nonmanagers group.

I think a private non-manager group is pretty neat. What happens when an IC gets promoted to manager? Do they get the boot from the group?

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no one wants to wear VR goggles I would be curious how many people are willing to wear VR goggles for any amount of time. I spend easily 10-12 hours a day at my computer. I am absolutely someone who is happy working, socializing, playing, and learning all at the same desk. But I can't wear those goggles for even 2 hours. Are there people who can wear them for 12?

I can manage 15 minutes or so on my aging Oculus Quest but that's about it. There's a Netflix option on there, I can relax in a virtual cinema with surround sound and a screen sized big enough to feel like a cinema screen and I've not been able to watch anything because of the vertigo. I thought my kids would go crazy on it, perhaps I'm too old, out of touch etc. but they can do 15 mins max too. It's a novelty toy, q…

TiltFive AR (formerly Cast AR) is still a thing. they are shipping product to early backers and people are working on games for it.

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#345
post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see your point and don't mean to be argumentative, but a couple small corrections. First, the pivot to "meta" was just over a year ago, so it hasn't been quite years. Second, I haven't been shy about sharing my opinion internally, though I haven't been broadcasting it either. The first thing I said in our team group chat when we'd heard this announcement was (context, I am much older than most people on the team) "…

> Third, this opinion is indeed extremely common internally. It is intensely weird to me that people hold the opinion that their company is building something that is bad for the world, and yet they stay there and continue to help build it. I know that's easy to say as someone not in that situation, but not always easy to do for someone who is. I get that people don't always have a ton of choice about their employmen…

I've often wondered this, especially when I quit a company out of principle, expecting that I wouldn't be the only one. But even when an entire department quits en masse, it turns out that none of us are ever as important as we thought we were. The guys on the top who make the real decisions are on the top because they are experts at driving their vision forward regardless of whatever happens underneath or around them. They might make pretenses toward being servant leaders or listening to upward feedback, but the reality is if they have convinced enough investors or board members to back them, or if they independently own a majority stake, they can and will do whatever they like. The rank and file employees do not matter.

I think most workers have accepted this reality. Workplaces are not a democracy. Even if most of the workforce disagrees with a policy that was approved from on high, there is little they can do to change it. Especially in the tech industry, where jobs are so highly-paid and sought-after, there isn't really the option of collective bargaining. And that's even assuming the kinds of snowflakes who tend to work in this industry would accept that Break The Build Joe deserves the same pay as Rewrote It In Rust Rob.

Personally I maintain my own principles around what will drive me to leave, but I have long given up hope that my decision to quit will have any impact whatsoever on the direction of the company. In the past it's barely even had an impact on the people I directly worked with. I'm just not that important, and neither is any other IC or low-level manager. I think most of us try to find a company whose direction we can tolerate just enough to continue working there for the cash. And, I suppose, there are thousands of people for whom Meta still passes that bar.

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#346
post #91

> Speaking of cutting costs, the company is still pouring multiple billions of dollars into vaporware called “the metaverse”. News flash: no one wants to wear VR goggles to spend any time in a digital heaven where the role of God is played by Mark Zuckerberg and you can do anything you can imagine, including “work” and “shop”. You can somehow feel that he has been dying to say this for years, but couldn't while he wa…

I see your point and don't mean to be argumentative, but a couple small corrections. First, the pivot to "meta" was just over a year ago, so it hasn't been quite years. Second, I haven't been shy about sharing my opinion internally, though I haven't been broadcasting it either. The first thing I said in our team group chat when we'd heard this announcement was (context, I am much older than most people on the team) "…

I'm fascinated by the amounts spent on this metaverse. Is it really USD 20 Billion? How is it partitioned across domains?

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#347
post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's accounting bias/culture. Say you have a 100 developers and you reason each should get a second monitor worth 300$, because this increases productivity by 20%. According to an accountant, you just added 30K in costs to the books, with nothing to show for it. You can't eat productivity nor is it a line item in the books. Who is to say that this 20% of freed up time is used productively? Or used on things that incr…

If you can't quantify it, it doesn't exist, and when you start to quantify it, the numbers turn into targets that must continually improve.

Yep, and I think we can apply the accounting logic to the original article.

A team that regularly saves costs for other business units is a promise of cost savings. Dropping the entire time is an immediate and factual cost saving.

Short-sighted? Yes.

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#348
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no one wants to wear VR goggles I would be curious how many people are willing to wear VR goggles for any amount of time. I spend easily 10-12 hours a day at my computer. I am absolutely someone who is happy working, socializing, playing, and learning all at the same desk. But I can't wear those goggles for even 2 hours. Are there people who can wear them for 12?

But I can't wear those goggles for even 2 hours. Are there people who can wear them for 12? As someone who has never seen or held a pair (I don't have a facebook account), what is the long term barrier? Weight? Size? Such as, if they were sunglass sized, would they be longer term wear? Or is it still the resolution/disconnected feeling/etc?

I think the problem is something that we dont actually understand yet. Like there needs to be some kind of psychologist to study it to figure out what is going on.

When I am in the goggles, Its kind of cool, but Im completely disconnected from the real world.

Its not a group activity either, like board games connect you to other people. VR connects you to the matrix. When one person in a family puts on the goggles, everyone else just leaves the room. There is nothing to see or share. (if you have a TV on, maybe its interesting but you are still like watching a person move their head around and look at things that arent there like a person whose mentally ill, its a strange experience)

And the physical barrier is always there. You walk up to the zone you have defined in your real life room, which is probably a few dozen square feet. You can touch invisibility, some bizarre barrier exists to your hands but your eyes tell you the exact opposite - you see infinite space, but are trapped inside a tiny grid whose barriers appear when you walk too far. Your eyes and ears tell you theres a whole world, your hands and feet understand you are still in your living room or whatever.

So when I come out of VR i have this bizarre, uneasy, queasy, unpleasant, feeling, for which I have not the word to describe. It is not like waking up from a dream. It's like shifting uncomfortably from one reality to another, one you have been to by yourself, completely alone.

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#349
post #91

> Speaking of cutting costs, the company is still pouring multiple billions of dollars into vaporware called “the metaverse”. News flash: no one wants to wear VR goggles to spend any time in a digital heaven where the role of God is played by Mark Zuckerberg and you can do anything you can imagine, including “work” and “shop”. You can somehow feel that he has been dying to say this for years, but couldn't while he wa…

> no one wants to wear VR goggles I would be curious how many people are willing to wear VR goggles for any amount of time. I spend easily 10-12 hours a day at my computer. I am absolutely someone who is happy working, socializing, playing, and learning all at the same desk. But I can't wear those goggles for even 2 hours. Are there people who can wear them for 12?

I spend about 40 minutes-1 hour/day with my Oculus 2 (just did a 40 minute Fall Out Boy Beatsaber session). But just playing. I've done 2 hour sessions before and they are pretty intense, but not in the eyes (maybe the weight becomes a bit of a strain after 1 hour?).

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#350
post #153

> Then said Jesus unto him, "Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword". I'm a big fan of Eric Lippert's work, but this blog post comes across as whiny and evinces a completely unwarranted sense of entitlement. This is a person who voluntarily chose to get paid (I can only assume) a very large amount of money to work on something that he found to be exciting a…

This comment conveys to me Asperger's levels of superrational thinking and lack of empathy. "How could someone be resentful at losing their job to a nonsensical decision making process? How could someone possibly be frustrated to be shown zero gratitude for their very profitable work for someone else? I simply don't understand, on paper it is the logical outcome." Okay spock.

I appreciate the sentiment behind your post, but in the future could we all please not conflate "neurodivergent people's difficulties in expressing empathy" with "being a jerk on the internet"?

I've had many gentle, kind, thoughtful and loving friends, classmates and coworkers who have lived with autism, and it's unfair and unkind to compare them to internet trolls. Thanks!

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