Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

John Carmack Leaves Meta

facebook.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

491–500 of 1001 posts

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#491

Post by shp0ngle »

javchz wrote: post #384
shp0ngle wrote: post #27

His unscripted talks were amazing. Everytime I watched them I was thinking "ok, the official Meta announcements are corny, but there is still someone that still cares about what is the actual end result;" that's why I was still semi-positive about Meta. Well, I guess not anymore.

I know the whole Oculus / Quest has a reputation for being a gimmick, but those talks were the ones that inspire me to get a quest 2 in the first place, and I love that device, It's far from perfect and requires a lot of 3rd party accessories to be comfortable, but it made me feel the same way as when I was a kid and play a new generation console like the PlayStation for the first time, making me say "wow, this it's…

Yeah I liked how honest he was! He was the one that had the talk IN THE METAVERSE, unlike Mark. He tries to push for the conference to be in metaverse.

I literally lost confidence for the Meta experiment with his departure.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#492

Post by johnnyanmac »

BurningFrog wrote: post #205
throwaway019254 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean politics.

That's what we who aren't good at that call it :)

Politics isn't necessarily some dirty thought-terminating cliche. It did used to have an actual meaning:

>the activities associated with the governance of a country or other area, especially the debate or conflict among individuals or parties having or hoping to achieve power.

As long as you work with people, you will have to engage in some politics. But I guess another definition has become the more popular lately:

>activities within an organization that are aimed at improving someone's status or position and are typically considered to be devious or divisive.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#493

Post by Karellen »

m463 wrote: post #357
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…

It's hard to walk this line. I think some people are forthright and outspoken, but a long game persuasion might be the best strategy sometimes. I remember Linus Torvalds commenting on systemd, and accepting the work with upstanding neutrality (I wished he had rejected the binary log files) "I don't actually have any particularly strong opinions on systemd itself. I've had issues with some of the core developers that…

How could Linus have rejected a systemd feature, even one he didn't like?

Linus runs the kernel. systemd is not the kernel. They're completely different projects.

Yes, systemd runs on Linux (exclusively so) but Linus doesn't magically get veto power over separate Linux-only projects just because they run on Linux.

Heck, even if Linux weren't Free Software, and was proprietary like the Windows kernel, he still wouldn't be able to tell other people what they could and could not build on top of Linux, just like Microsoft can't tell people what to put in their Windows apps. The fact that Linux is Free Software makes the idea even weirder.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#495

Post by dvzk »

vintermann wrote: post #465
earthnail wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big corps usually prohibit their employees from expressing their personal opinions. It’s sometimes tolerated but always against the employment contract. So whenever you’re saying something, bigcorp could decide that “this one’s too far”. On a topic with as much PR as this one, it’s rather dangerous to comment on if you gave a medium-to-high level position. The reason big corps do it is so that their PR department has…

> Big corps usually prohibit their employees from expressing their personal opinions. Yes, but does that make it any better though? We understand why they have to do it anonymously, but it's still someone with nothing at stake, who we can't evaluate the claims of.

I'm not sure there is much of substance to evaluate. If we fired every technical lead who sometimes "waded into areas with no experience," issued orders, followed a conviction or two and occasionally provided disparaging feedback, there would be no good engineers left. The bullying and devaluing claims are worth investigation, but that's always very subjective and range from "my boss disagrees with me" to horrific abuse.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#496

Post by danuker »

Mistletoe wrote: post #488
throwaway_8989 wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#497

Post by P5fRxh5kUvp2th »

iforgotpassword wrote: post #485
throwaway_8989 wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

This was my interpretation as well.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#498

Post by badpun »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #302
modeless wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's less of a judgement about VR and more of a judgement about AI. If you believe AGI is within reach (as he does and I agree), working on literally anything else seems like a waste of time. It's impossible to overstate the impact it will have.

Wouldn't be surprised if SD, GPT-3, and other recent releases were what pushed him over the edge and prompted him to leave. He must have felt like he was watching a lot of cool things happen without him. If I had another 30 IQ points I'd be climbing over walls and sneaking into buildings at night to work on this stuff.

It's good to have a $50k mini-supercomputer at home though, so you can actually try out your ideas in a reasonable time.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#499

Post by johnnyanmac »

dcow wrote: post #254
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…

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…

If you want the boring answer: Money and clout.

The slightly less boring answer: some people don't necessarily have the audience's best interests at heart. Sometimes not even the company's best interests. To use a slightly less heinous example than some of the obviously malicious backstabbing: maybe you do know that Idea B is more efficient, but Idea A was yours, and it looks great on a resume to say that you achitected Idea A, that is being used in production (even if it made the company less money and the product worse off). You're gonna leave the company in 3 years anyway, so why care about some efficiency? Why even care if 6 years down the line someone else comes in and cleans up the code and ends up using Idea B in the end? You got your value out of it.

Slghtly less boring answer 2: people aren't perfect. And attach to the smallest fixations. So they fight not because the idea is bad but because their goal is to spite that particular person. You just need to be more discrete about it than back in grade school. This example was a person, but it can be extended to a group, a company, even an idealogy as a whole. Be it in zealous defense or in spite of, it has a similar effect on productivity.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#500

Post by ben_w »

CynicusRex wrote: post #479
throwaway_8989 wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Quoted post unavailable.

We're you trying to use a throwaway account for that? Because I think you used your main.
Post reply on HN