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John Carmack Leaves Meta

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Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#971
post #957

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn this sounds similar to a project manager I'm working with, except he doesn't have any of the technical/engineering merit.

Are project managers expected to have technical/engineering merit? Or are they expected to be experts in managing complex projects at a high level?

I don't think they are expected to have technical merit, but Carmack at least has that going for him.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#972

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…

> Can you think of some examples where tech was obviously ahead of its time and not accepted? Smartphones. Microsoft and Symbian were at least 7 years ahead of Apple. The manner in which they squandered the opportunity aside, most people simply didn't care about having email on their phone.

Most people still don't care about having email on their phone: that's not what they use their phone for most of the time. They use it for text chats, taking photos, playing games, navigating, etc. I'd say email ranks pretty low in importance.

Those other companies failed because they had clunky UIs and thought that most people really cared about typing emails on their phones; they didn't. Apple finally proved that people want something easy to use that does things they want to do (which isn't email).

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#973
post #958

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am pretty sure the big sticking point is Carmack thinks they should be doing the opposite of putting out $1500 headsets. He was pretty much taking shots at people during his Meta Connect talk this year. There is nothing shocking about him leaving.

Perhaps this is the point of criticizing 5% utilization of the gpu. Why not have 90% gpu utilization of a $400 headset? Which strategy is more likely to succeed in gaining more adoption?

Is battery life a checkbox with this hypothetical? VR/AR and battery life can be very important for many applications.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#974
post #10

John Carmack did a 5 hr podcast with Lex Fridman recently [1]. Moving away from Meta seemed like something that had been happening slowly over a long period of time. [1] https://lexfridman.com/john-carmack/

Lex's guest list is absurd. I'm honestly not sure how he's managed to pull it off.

i mean, first you target important no name scientists, there are so many scientists doing amazing work that the general public has no idea about and i'm sure these people are easier to convince to come on the show than high profile people, once you build up a following you start trying to contact higher level profile people and even if you get one, the next one will be easier.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#975
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…

Can people not see the big flashing warning lights of his attitude right there in his faux self deprecating comment? When one talks about killing 'stupid things', that's actually a colleague's initiative, or possibly some project in flight, with a team of people working on it. People putting in blood sweat and tears. Not everyone in the organisation gets to choose what they are working on. For us adults in the room, who have worked our entire careers treating our colleagues with respect, this is not how you effect change in an organisation. Sure, privately one may think this or that is stupid, but you don't go around using that language. It just offsides people. To bring change you need to bring people with you.

I mean the guy came up in the gaming industry, which by many reports is somewhere on the spectrum between techbro dominated monoculture (not unlike this forum), through to just abusive of its employees, so his bar is very low. And yes I know he was brilliant, but there's no special rules for him because he made Quake run fast.

At the level he was brought on, something more than technical skills were required. He failed.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#976

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…

Can you think of some examples where tech was obviously ahead of its time and not accepted Mobile devices with clunky resistive touchscreens come to mind. The iPhone was hardly the first "smartphone," but Jobs's key insight was to have people sitting by the river waiting for decent touchscreen technology to come floating by. When capacitive multitouch happened, it was a classic example of apparent "good luck" being e…

>Analog laserdiscs as a home video format. It was the right basic idea, and boasted some exotic technology under the hood -- but disc-based A/V needed to wait for digital techniques before it really made sense.

I'm not it really needed to; analog laserdiscs were a huge improvement over existing videotapes, at least for distribution of movies (not for recording obviously). The main problem was the price: they were expensive as hell. Not sure if that was due to technical limitations, or the players pricing it high because it was a "premium" format and they priced themselves into irrelevance and obscurity. I've seen this with many other technologies over the years: someone introduces something really cool, but it's so damn expensive no one buys it, so it goes nowhere, and eventually some cheaper alternative comes along and becomes the new standard.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#977
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

#978

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

> 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?

Google glass as an AR device

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#979

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#980

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I so wish I could "kill stupid things before they cause damage", "set direction" and have people follow, but it seems especially difficult for technical people. We spend all-day every-day talking to our subservient (a compiler) but a human is fuzzy and unreliable which is compounded by team size. Carmack can realize something in an instant but it is amazing how long it can take an entire team. One thing I've noticed…

That's so true. Carmack is working on AI. He started Keen Technologies.

It's very confusing that a company by that name [1] seems to exist already, in an adjacent/near area ("Keen Technologies Pvt Ltd. is a comprehensive repository for online courses offering high quality state-of-the-art IT and Business related e-learning and training related courses.").

Didn't he check first, or what?

[1]: https://www.keentechnologies.com/

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