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”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 en
by Arjuna 4y ago
”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 think my influence at the margins has been positive, but it has never been a prime mover.”
It is simply stunning that the seasoned direction and counsel that someone of John Carmack’s caliber is capable of delivering was not being followed.
- Forge36 4y agoWhere did this come from? This quote only resolves to this post. Edit: A little more searching and I found the full memo https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-john-carmack-scathing-exit-memo-derides-bureaucracy-2022-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-john-carmack-scathing-e...
- jjtheblunt 4y agoPerhaps he hated bureaucrats meddling with engineering and user experience. Maybe he’s condescending in a team of bright people, and sees the world as him and then everyone lesser? It’s hard to say what blend of reasons, other than what he explains.
- polotics 4y agoHis writings definitely show a lot of humility.
- hn_throwaway_99 4y ago> It is simply stunning that the seasoned direction and counsel that someone of John Carmack’s caliber is capable of delivering was not being followed. I'd be very careful about making that assertion when you're only hearing one side of the story. There is a good quote from the Dowager Countess in Downton Abbey about why she never takes sides in a broken marriage: "Because however much the couple may strive to be honest, no one is ever in possession of the facts." I strongly think that applies here.
- VoodooJuJu 4y agoIt's interesting to me that, even here where people pride themselves on their intellectual and rational superiority, we can still observe the primitive human tendency to appeal to authority; see the top throwaway comment [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34026253 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34026253
- throwaway99rtq 4y agoCan 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.
- fennecfoxy 4y agoIdk I feel like Carmack is a genius, and has done genius tech related things at id. But does he really have credentials to speak on latest modern developments in technology? Does he have any skin in the game? Last I heard of him was Megatexturing in idtech 5 and that wasn't really a huge marvel nor necessarily did it make the engine the forefront of game tech.
- bluedino 4y agoHe might be considered by others as "boomer" that hasn't been relevant "since Quake III"
- belfalas 4y agoWhoever those others are…they are irrelevant.
- yucky 4y agoHow many people that ignorant actually work there though? Maybe there really is more dead weight than we thought..
- spoils19 4y agoI wonder how many people don't value his opinion because (they assume) Carmack can't solve LeetCode as well as they can.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Minor49er 4y agoThe man went from making the fastest 3D games ever to grace silicon to literally launching rockets. He's been the fastest nerd alive, and Meta couldn't even give him legs (figuratively and literally [1]) [1] https://youtu.be/ouq5yyzSiAw?t=395 https://youtu.be/ouq5yyzSiAw?t=395
- yrgulation 4y ago
- DonHopkins 4y agoI don't see what you didn't do there.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
- actionfromafar 4y agoI would have been stunned if they had listened to someone wise and decent. They listen to quarterly reports I guess?
- zoltar 4y agoNo, they don't do that either.
- posharma 4y agoSuccess in the corporate world requires more than technical prowess. One of those things is influence. It's not for everyone.
- dinvlad 4y agoI think it depends on organization. In some good ones, politics and engineering align well. In most, they don't.
- throwaway019254 4y agoYou mean politics.
- worldsayshi 4y agoPolitics or "people who don't know what they are doing doubling down on decisions or lack thereof and others aligning themselves because they are busy doing stuff and rocking the boat isn't useful unless you have time, mandate and mindshare enough to coordinate with others".
- BurningFrog 4y agoThat's what we who aren't good at that call it :)
- 082349872349872 4y agoI exert influence You align strategic competences They play politics
- johnnyanmac 4y agoPolitics 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.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- pengaru 4y agoThe bigger the ship the smaller your rudder is.
- FormerBandmate 4y agoHe was Bethesda and Oculus. He isn’t Meta. Meta doesn’t seem to be able to do anything at all. At Facebook it was an unrivaled (yet amoral) champion of social media, but it doesn’t even seem like that now
- pengaru 4y ago> He was Bethesda and Oculus. He isn’t Meta. Meta is gargantuan compared to 2009-2013 Bethesda, which frankly seems like a golden handcuffs-era footnote in Carmack's professional history. He isn't even mentioned once in Bethesda's wikipedia page[0]... Oculus seemed far more apropos for a get-shit-done guy like Carmack. Personally I think FB acquiring him/Oculus was an almost certain shitty outcome for the VR technology. But I'm glad Carmack surely refilled the piggy bank in the process. I look forward to seeing what he manages to do free of the FB/Meta albatross with gas in the tank. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethesda_Softworks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethesda_Softworks
- bobkazamakis 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id_Software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id_Software
- djur 4y agoIt's confusing because the recent Doom games were developed by Id and published by Bethesda Softworks, and both of them are subsidiaries of Zenimax. Bethesda Softworks is just a publisher; the games Bethesda is best known for (The Elder Scrolls and Fallout 3+) are by Bethesda Game Studios.
- HideousKojima 4y agoI'm hoping he brings back Armadillo Aerospace
- Redoubts 4y ago> This was admittedly self-inflicted – I could have moved to Menlo Park after the Oculus acquisition and tried to wage battles with generations of leadership, but I was busy programming, and I assumed I would hate it, be bad at it, and probably lose anyway.
- klabb3 4y agoI interpret this as strong circumstantial evidence that companies who start out as engineering centric and claims to be meritocratic eventually deteriorate into good ole nepotistic power play and a sea of bureaucracy. It’s quite entertaining to observe even John Carmack go through this very relatable frustration.
- agumonkey 4y agoIt's interesting how universal this pattern seems to be.
- spaceman_2020 4y agoIt only seems universal because the management universe has ben captured by the MBAs. All upper management feels the same way because they were all largely trained at the same few MBA schools.
- stocknoob 4y agoDo you think the schools taught people to think that way, or is there a selection bias for people with that personality to do an MBA?
- majewsky 4y agoI don't see that distinction mattering all that much. What matters is that people with a specific mindset come out of these MBA schools that also have formed strong networks there which help them win the power and status games later on.
- mathgladiator 4y agoHe isn't alone. A core problem is that FB culture is way too positive and happy, and hard criticism is received poorly. The politics to get anything done if your name isn't Mark is borderline impossible. I left a year ago, and I've become beyond happy.
- shultays 4y agoThat is a problem in every company to be honest. And bigger problem as it gets bigger
- dmix 4y agoIs this a classic middle management malaise where everyone gets paid so well they don’t want to stir the pot? The bureaucracy and protection of today’s money cows which only clouds them from seeing tomorrow’s cows that will rescue them from certain obscurity? The Clayton M Christensen solution to big companies ignoring obvious problems is to have isolated small teams “infrapreneurship” who aren’t under the pressures of the larger org. With Meta’s push towards VR it’s obvious Oculus’s purpose is now Meta’s purpose. And all the downside that comes with such a thing.
- mathgladiator 4y agoThis is it. No one is restless, and ruthless pragmatism runs things. I was fortunate as I joined a team that was growing and had heat under them which gave me opportunities to go ham in a space I care about.
- osigurdson 4y ago>> ruthless pragmatism I hadn't heard this this term before but I think it is pretty accurate in many organizations. Nothing is worth doing as its impossible to prove ROI conclusively - just do what the boss says instead.
- dinvlad 4y agoSadly, there're very few modern examples of big companies following this solution.
- vouaobrasil 4y agoMeta itself only exists because of poor direction. It is an aberration of humanity. If good counsel and advice were important to Meta, it would shut down on itself because its very existence is an offence to common sense.
- vkou 4y agoI don't work at Meta, but I assume that, like any other bureaucracy It's a large company, with home-grown political feifdoms - and technical merits for ideas aren't good enough to get things your way. Even if he is a big cheese in the world of actually knowing things, that doesn't really matter to his executive peers. You need to both know things, and be very good at politicking to be successful.
- ericzawo 4y agoThis would surprise nobody who has any experience behind the FB curtain.
- mandevil 4y agoThis is why there are so many leaks from Facebook. My sister is a reporter and she says that people leak when they feel they can't influence the decision of the org, that they are a Cassandra who is being ignored by the organization. That there is so much leaking from Facebook- much of it from seemingly senior and highly respected people- suggests major problems in the decision making process there.
- ecshafer 4y agoYour reference to people being a Cassandra inside Facebook is extra funny considering they made CassandraDB.
- underwater 4y agoFacebook leans into making everyone feel like their opinions matters: "Nothing at Facebook is someone else's problem". But not everyone can be right, so of course you end up with people being ignored and feeling shirty. At other companies I've worked at the norm is that the rank and file feel powerless, and it doesn't even occur to them to offer their opinion.
- into_infinity 4y agoI think we can only speculate about reasons, so everybody is gonna project. Maybe the Facebook culture is uniquely bad. Maybe Carmack isn't an effective leader. Maybe it's just how large corporations work. Maybe he was dealt a bad hand. Meanwhile, I admire that he had the guts to see the issue, say it out loud in a self-critical way, and call it quits. Most people don't.
- xwowsersx 4y agoWhere is that quotation from? I don't see that in the linked article.
- rawrfml 4y agoHis 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.
- chihuahua 4y agohttps://archive.ph/Lmu9g https://archive.ph/Lmu9g
- xwowsersx 4y agoThank you
- xwowsersx 4y agoAh ok, thanks
- sp332 4y agoHe finally posted the full note himself. https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid0iPixEvPJQGzNa6t2x6HUL5TYqfmKGqSgfkBg6QaTyHF5frXQi7eLGxC7uPQv5U5jl&id=100006735798590 https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid0iPix...
- dcow 4y agoI 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” situation more times than it seems efficient. I am not unaware that I may be selectively remembering things and I’m not so prideful to ignore that I’ve also made calls that turn out to need adjusting down the road… but it baffles me why people put in positions of power and leadership are so often ignored almost on the whim of some well meaning but misguided other party. Certainly Carmack has the industry respect to be taken seriously. Why wasn’t he?
- xyzelement 4y agoI 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.
- SoftTalker 4y agoYou also have to be ruthless as required and not take no for an answer. Sometimes you have to run people over and leave the bodies in the ditch to get stuff done.
- JW_00000 4y agoAnd two years later, your idea fails and your boss says: > 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. So serious point: if everyone is ruthless and tries to push their own ideas through, how can a manager know who is right and which direction to follow?
- aerovistae 4y agoWhere are you quoting this from? A link would be nice, I don't see this in the article.
- chihuahua 4y agohttps://archive.ph/Lmu9g https://archive.ph/Lmu9g
- sp332 4y agoAfter some passages were published, he put up the full text: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid0iPixEvPJQGzNa6t2x6HUL5TYqfmKGqSgfkBg6QaTyHF5frXQi7eLGxC7uPQv5U5jl&id=100006735798590 https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid0iPix...
- RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u 4y agoIronically 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 bureaucracy this way, then it's folly for me to try the same. I should accept that we're playing checkers not chess.
- Buttons840 4y agoYeah. 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.
- ryandrake 4y agoAt MegaCompanies, being right, having evidence, and trying to persuade just isn’t enough, as John Fucking Carmack figured out. It’s more like High School. You need to be in the right clique or have the ear of the right Very Important Person. When you send that E-mail and say “We should do X because Y and Z…” people stop reading at “because” and just go look in the company directory for your name. If you’re high enough on the totem pole, they’ll respond to you. If you’re even higher, they might suggest a meeting to discuss X! And if you are really high up, they will stop what they are doing and do X right away. What’s surprising to me is how someone like Carmack didn’t have enough totem-pole clout just from who he is! He’s practically a celebrity, and I’d have thought that would go a long way in the High School Drama Club but I guess not.
- TheRealDunkirk 4y agoModern capitalism has ushered in a new age of modern fuedalism, at first just inside big companies, but it’s spreading to society in general now.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- neycoda 4y agoSeems like Meta is not a good fit for John Carmack.
- kernal 4y ago>It is simply stunning that the seasoned direction and counsel that someone of John Carmack’s caliber is capable of delivering was not being followed. He worked for an Ad company that voraciously mined through their user's data. Unless he was able to find new ways to monetize their users or bypass iOS's opt in app tracking, I see no reason why they would even care.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- labrador 4y agoI'm as shocked as you are. What a wasted opportunity by petty people with big egos. And I paid for it literally. I bought a Oculus set and stopped using soon after. What a disappointment. I wanted to support the technology, but my good will was squandered. At least I feel vindicated by every thing John Carmack says because I thought some similar things.
- hinkley 4y agoThat saying about how teenagers and twenty year old think they're immortal? There's some variant of that for programmers. That failure mode is something that happens to other people, to suckers, so I don't have to change direction because some guy who's going grey at the temples tells me I'm walking toward a cliff. I've been in places where my job became a bit of a cleaner, for things that shouldn't have needed to be cleaned in the first place. When I realize that's what I'm doing - when it's most or all of what I'm doing - I leave. Sounds like John might have similar boundaries, and found himself standing at the edge of one. I'd really like to see him try his own thing again, and either not sell it this time or be quite a bit more precious about what he's willing to part with and for how many zeroes.
- HideousKojima 4y agoI dunno man. I think I'm a pretty good dev, but if John Carmack told me I was wrong about a technical issue/overall technical direction I'd give him some serious consideration. The only time I can recall disagreeing with him was a few years ago when he said people who want better gaming on Linux should focus on improving Wine instead of native support. And it turns out he was largely correct there and I was wrong, if Valve's success with Proton is any indication.
- rightbyte 4y agoThe joke goes that Win32 is the best and most stable cross platform api for Linux.
- phplovesong 4y agoDamn this rings home. (Im not comparing my skillset to Carmack, im my eyes hes a god of programming and has an insanely deep skillset and knowledge about so much software related) Sometimes i feel the same, a new feature is requested and i directly see this is an anti-feature, or just overall a bad decision. I voice my concern, but the client request goes first. Next up the feature is poorly implemented, usually "just like the client wanted it" without any bigger design. Testing is barely done, and finally it goes to prod. Next is a 3 month period of bugfixes, and ultimately this one feature can take up 60-70% of a devs time. Then the process repeats.
- oreally 4y agoIt's only stunning because programmers view him as a god, when in reality, he is a just a fallible human being. Just goes to show even programmers are susceptible to idolism. The signs were all there. He entered a den where he doesn't hold founder status anymore, and that the value of his contributions to the company does not hold as much weight.
- khazhoux 4y ago> It is simply stunning that the seasoned direction and counsel that someone of John Carmack’s caliber is capable of delivering was not being followed. This doesn't actually surprise me in the least bit, and that's not a criticism of either FB/Meta or Carmack. It's simply that after a couple of decades in industry, I now see that effective organizational leaders are exceedingly rare, and I've seen now many super-experts --legends in their fields-- join big companies and not find their footing. I also don't really buy the "you gotta be good at cutthroat politics." I have plenty of examples across multiple top-tier companies, of senior leadership who were smart, thoughtful, effective... and still reasonable and compassionate. I think it's simply that it's tough to move people, plain as that. And in Carmack's case, I will wager that his expertise and track record were not enough to get everyone to drop what they're doing and follow his lead. After all, there are many other legends at Meta too. And, there's an abundance of good ideas all fighting for limited mindshare and limited ability to act.
- icoder 4y agoSomeone on Reddit coined the term 'institutional inertia', which probably applies here too.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mattlondon 4y agoThat term predates Reddit. https://trends.google.co.uk/trends/explore?date=all&q=Institutional%20inertia https://trends.google.co.uk/trends/explore?date=all&q=Instit...
- vertis 4y agoWas going to say the same thing. I don't think it was coined on Reddit. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I like your use of trends though to prove it.
- 4y ago
- scrame 4y agoyeah if Carmack quits on you it's a political problem and not a tech problem.
- throwaway_8989 4y agoThrowaway 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 would say words to the effect of "I don't care, because I still believe I'm right from an ideological background". He would devalue people, there expertise, there experience, and there thoughts because "I'm John Carmack". Truthfully, I have never worked with someone before who was somehow so politely toxic to a workplace. Carmacks work in VR was absolutely invaluable from a technical standpoint, but VR now is as successful as it is in spite of his influence, not because of it. When I hear people say "If only Meta would let Carmack do what he wants we'd see his ideal VR experience and it would be amazing". You already saw it. It was Oculus Go, and by every metric is was a commercial, financial, and technical, disaster.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- enqk 4y agoWhat comes to mind is how hard it is to get low-latency user experiences out of a comglometate of teams exchanging data via blocks. I would expect someone like Carmack to have to interact with such teams in ways that they’ll find intrusive
- felipellrocha 4y agoIf i had nickel for every time i had been in a conversation where someone “proved they were right” even though they were nowhere near there, ok, i wouldn’t have millions but I’d have somewhere in the $50s which is a lot higher than you’d expect
- d0100 4y agothere
- lyu07282 4y agoI feel like this post would have more credibility if the Quest and Horizons wasn't such a technical and privacy disaster.
- zppln 4y agoIf Carmack suggested changes to my code I'd implement them in a heartbeat. If he suggested changes to my business I'd be a bit more cautious.
- sesm 4y agoEven if he said “change this to this” without any explanation why?
- loppg 4y agoThat's the norm these days I think. No one is supposed to be an expert, everyone is equal, everyone's voice matters. If you are an expert and demand high code quality, you are a class traitor and the bureaucrats will come after you. This shows in the code quality of the OSS examples I have seen from Facebook.
- onion2k 4y agoThat's what it looks like from the outside, but the reality is that he works alongside people at the same level as him as far as the company is concerned. His experience is incredible but its likely that the people he works with are also deeply experienced engineering managers too. He's just more famous.
- freddref 4y agoI 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 really does not work is "complaining", if Carmack thinks he is complaining, then magnify that by 10 for others on the team. Rather than attacking an idea directly, I'm wondering if ignoring the idea may be more effective. This way there's no one to fight and the idea can slip away without any ego or drama, there's no face to lose. If you really can't help the situation, then leaving is the last resort. Oh well, on to the next thing, very curious to see what Carmack gets into next.
- joanfihu 4y agoThat's so true. Carmack is working on AI. He started Keen Technologies.
- unwind 4y agoIt'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/ https://www.keentechnologies.com/
- turtleyacht 4y agoCommander Keen was one of id Software's first games.