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John Carmack Leaves Meta

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Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#881

Post by savanaly »

LarsDu88 wrote: post #675
troupe wrote: post #635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You’re supposed to lead without authority John seems to be particularly calling out that he was not able to influence the people with high enough rank to make decisions. So it sounds like he at least thought there was an authority structure there wasn't as flat as you describe.

Valve is a great example of how this doesn't work in practice. Jeri Ellsworth got fired and revealed that the supposedly flat hierarchy at Valve is really composed of informal cliques - with the most influential groups having a direct line to the CEO/ Kinda what happened to communism in Russia, if you think about it

Can we really expect an employee who was fired to paint the most accurate picture though? What are the thoughts of folks that left on good or neutral terms?

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#882

Post by sundvor »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #480
kubb wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN is all about that cult of personality, we want to believe in heroic programmers (or founders) who singlehandedly change the world with their geinus clarity. Paul Graham said this, John Carmack said that and we lap it all up. It's been this way since the ancient times, and the stories of Hercules and Theseus. We mythologize these personalities, and in our mind they become demigods. But there's a reason the folk wis…

Carmack aside, I think the "never meet your heroes" thing is even simpler: no one's perfect. Your hero could have cured cancer but maybe they're a nervous wreck in public. Or aren't native to your area and may commuicate badly face to face for culture clashing reasons. Or maybe they are great in a small intimate team but completely fall apart in a large setting. Heck it could be as simple as finding out they are a he…

To me it would be the opposite; we all have our faults, so how do they manage the feats that they do?

There's no point idolizing people for their accomplishments in the "they must be perfect" kind of way.

Ie I look at John and see someone amazingly fit for their age (very close to mine - only a few years older, yet he appears younger); I'd like to learn more about his routines (running and judo?) to see how I might benefit from the same.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#883

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

throwaway675309 wrote: post #854
gompertz wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 inabili…

Sic is not an abbreviation, placing a full stop/period inside the brackets after the word sic is erroneous.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#884

Post by nvarsj »

theteapot wrote: post #666
slickrick216 wrote: post #650

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely depends on the person. The amount of projects I’ve worked on that were dismissed by such people done anyway and invariably became the saving of the team/org/company is laughable. These always took longer as they were under resourced and the people working on it did because of belief not because it was good for their status in the company. The hallmark of these is the last minute surge in resourcing when ma…

> The amount of projects I’ve worked on that were dismissed by such people done anyway and invariably became the saving of the team/org/company is laughable. That's intriguing. I would love some examples of these projects / products. > The hallmark of these is the last minute surge in resourcing when management figures out they got it wrong. Got what wrong? That they've heard the yeas and nays and chosen to undertake…

> That's intriguing. I would love some examples of these projects / products.

It's literally the definition of skunkworks projects. Many companies have been saved by a small few ignoring all the "Nos" and just doing what they believe in at personal risk.

I really disagree with the general notion of people saying No. This is actually, imo, the death of big companies and very common. It is not heroic to say no, it is maintaining the status quo. People who talk about such things with glowing eyes probably have spent their careers only at big companies.

Experienced people tend to have narrow vision and will shoot down ideas because they can't think outside of their worldview. That's why new ideas are so rarely born at large orgs. And the most innovation tends to come out of scrappy startups from kids who don't know that what they're doing is impossible.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#885

Post by tcmart14 »

ChildOfChaos wrote: post #548
comfypotato wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Stadia is a great example. I am still using it today before the shut down, it's amazing how it's actually got me into playing games again and it's fantastic for casual games with friends since everyone can play no matter there hardware and the multiplayer features are fantastic for this. It works and it is fantastic, but it's ahead of it's time and most people don't know what it is. That and Google's mismanagement of…

I don't know if we really pin the blame on that for stadia. Maybe portions, but I also suspect that a big reason for stadia's "failure" wasn't necessarily Google's/Stadia's fault. Lots of homes still have really bad internet connections. I tried stadia, I think the concept is great and most everything is there except I can't get a decent enough internet connection from any ISP in my area to make it usable at home. But I know people is places with really good internet connections and have heard nothing but good things about it before I tried.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#886

Post by martin82 »

monero-xmr wrote: post #649

I’m a strong believer in dictatorship at companies. Every team has someone with ultimate decision making power, as does every project with a project leader, and above teams are leaders who have authority above them, and so on. Of course there are meetings and discussions but there is always someone with the authority to make a decision that everyone has to respect. Honestly it benefits everyone. ICs like that authori…

Sounds like the perfect structure to end up with an utterly dysfunctional company ruled by the Peter Principle.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#887

Post by throwaway0asd »

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…

> When data proved his idea was wrong, he would say words to the effect of "I don't care, because I still believe I'm right from an ideological background".

I cannot imagine commercial software in any form where that is not the prevailing sentiment. I have heard of developers who actually measure things in the capacity of their corporate employment but in 20 years of doing this work I have only seen it once.

As such I don’t even bother mentioning performance or correctness at work (across all my employers) where evidence is so hastily discarded and inconvenient conclusions are a suicide pill.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#888

Post by pyinstallwoes »

whimsicalism wrote: post #605
pyinstallwoes wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who else can bridge the neurotypical spectrum? Maybe Eric Weinstein from the portal but he stopped that.

Is that the finance guy who claimed he solved a theory of everything for physics? This whole section of the so-called "intellectual dark web" should be treated with lots of skepticism.

Oh, please indulge me on why? How much are you aware of his actual work compared to what you are told of it? And his projects don’t reflect on the nature of his ability to do other things. One must be careful to generalize an assumption over cohorts. If an individual has different political views than you, they aren’t suddenly more dumb. This is a hard thing for our species to work through at the moment.

I encourage you to look deeper into Eric Weinstein and less the memetic construct encapsulating a particular ideology and agenda through symbolic word.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#889

Post by yownie »

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…

> there expertise, there experience, and there thoughts because

their*

I do not believe you worked where you say solely from this.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#890

Post by [deleted] »

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…

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