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Good thing that he's only 39 years old and seems more energetic than ever to run his company. Having a passionate founder is, imo, a big advantage for Meta comp
by noiseinvacuum 2y ago
Good thing that he's only 39 years old and seems more energetic than ever to run his company. Having a passionate founder is, imo, a big advantage for Meta compared to other big tech companies.
- tmalsburg2 2y agoLove how everyone is romanticizing his engineering mindset. But have we already forgotten that he was even more passionate about the metaverse which, as far as I can tell, was a 50B failure?
- RamblingCTO 2y agoI swear, this feels like people get paid to write positive stuff about him? Have you forgotten his shitty leadership and practices around data and lock-ins?
- lannisterstark 2y agoYes how dare different people have different opinions about different people? It's almost as if we all should be a monolithic voice that agrees with you.
- RamblingCTO 2y agoThe thread was suspiciously positive, like almost exclusive. Your comment adds nothing to the discussion, you're just snarky and nothing else. So get off my back
- lannisterstark 2y ago>Your comment adds nothing to the discussion, and yours did? This comment, Christian? >>I swear, this feels like people get paid to write positive stuff about him? ---- >you're just snarky and nothing else Please re-read your own comment. See above. >So get off my back Absolutely not. You said something that was decidedly ignorant(how dare people praise x good thing done by omg horrible y people!), and I called you out on it. I expect better discussion and people skills from someone who holds position of a CTO rather than just "haha you're all paid shills!"
- ravetcofx 2y agoWhat's wrong with someone playing with millennia equivalent of millions of human life times worth of income like a disposable toy? /s
- dntrkv 2y agoYeah because all that research and knowledge completely dissipates because the business hasn’t recouped its R&D costs. Apple famously brought the iPhone into existence without any prior R&D or failed attempts to build similar devices.
- filoleg 2y agoHaving an engineering mindset is not the same as never making mistakes (or never being too early to the market). The only way you won’t make those mistakes and keep a perfect record is if you never do anything major or step out of the comfort zone. If Apple didn’t try and fail with Newton[0] (which was too early to the market for many reasons, both tech-related and not), we might’ve not had iPhone today. The engineering mindset would be to analyze how and why it happened the way it did, assess whether you can address those issues well, decide whether to proceed again or not (and how), and then execute. Obsessing over a perfect track record is the opposite of the engineering mindset imo. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Newton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Newton
- tmalsburg2 2y agoHis engineering mindset made him blind to the fact the metaverse was a product that nobody wanted or needed. In one of the Fridman interviews, he goes on and on about all the cool technical challenges involved in making the metaverse work. But when Fridman asked him what he likes to do in his spare time, it was all things that you could precisely not do in the metaverse. It was baffling to me that he failed to connect the dots.
- torginus 2y agoI don't think that was the issue. VRChat was basically the same idea but done in a more appealing way and it was (still is) wildly popular.
- dntrkv 2y agoI think that part of his bet is that AI is a key component of getting the metaverse to take off. E.g. generating content for the metaverse via AI
- HWR_14 2y agoIt's hard for me to imagine AI really helping Meta. It might make content cheaper, but Meta was not budget limited.
- bsenftner 2y agoThink of it as a 50B spending spree where he gave that to VR tech out of enthusiasm. Even I, with the cold dark heart that I have, has to admit he's a geek hero with his open source attitude.
- FrustratedMonky 2y agoIt isn't necessarily a failure "yet". Don't think anybody is saying VR/AR isn't a huge future product, just that current tech is not quite there. We'll see if Apple can do better, they both made tradeoffs. It is still possible that VR and Generative AI can join in some synergy.
- freedomben 2y agoIt's a bit too early IMHO to declare the metaverse a failure. But that said, I don't think it matters. I don't know anybody who hasn't been wrong about something, or made a bad bet at times. Even if he is wrong about everything else (which he's not, because plenty of important open source has come out of facebook), that doesn't change the extreme importance that is Llama and Meta's willingness to open things up. It's a wonderful gift they have given to humanity that has only barely started.
- asadotzler 2y ago$50B for <10M MAU is absolutely a failure, today, as I'm typing this.
- lannisterstark 2y agoYou're everywhere in this thread man. Did zuck steal your lunch or something?
- YetAnotherNick 2y agoThat's the point. He does things because he is excited about something, not to please shareholders. Shareholders didn't liked Metaverse at all. And shareholders likely don't like spending billion dollar in GPUs just to give the benefit away for free to others.
- 999900000999 2y agoThe Quest is the top selling VR headset by a very large margin. He's well positioned to take that market when it eventually matures a bit. Once the tech gets there, say in a decade we might see most people primarily consume content via VR and phones. That's movies, games, TV, sporting events, concerts.
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- simonklitj 2y agoI just can’t imagine sitting with a headset on, next to my wife, watching the NFL. It could very well change for me, but it does not sound appealing.
- 999900000999 2y agoWhat if you're on a train, at home alone, etc. For me the tech isn't they're yet. I'd buy a Quest with an HDMI input today if they sold it. But for some reason these are two different products
- agar 2y agoNor could I. And I can't imagine sitting next to my wife watching a football game together on my phone. But I could while waiting in line by myself. Similarly, I could imagine sitting next to my daughter, who is 2,500 miles away at college, watching the name together on a virtual screen we both share. And then playing mini-golf or table tennis together. Different tools are appropriate for different use cases. Don't dismiss a hammer because it's not good at driving screws.
- simonklitj 2y agoYes, these are all very good points. You’ve got me awaiting the future of the tech a bit more eagerly.
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- brigadier132 2y agowas a failure? they are still building it, when they shut down or sell off the division then you can call it a failure
- michaelt 2y agoUnsuccessful ideas can live on for a long time in a large corporation. Nobody wants to tell the boss his pet project sucks - or to get their buddies laid off. And with Facebook's $100 billion in revenue, nobody's going to notice the cost of a few thousand engineers.
- asadotzler 2y ago10 years, $50 billion, fewer than 10 million MAU. It's a failure today, right this minute it's a failure.
- baby 2y agoDisagree from VR
- runjake 2y agoZuck's job is to have vision and take risks. He's doing that. He's going to encounter failures and I doubt he's still looking in the rearview mirror about it. And overall, Zuck has a tremendous amount of net success, to say the least.
- zmmmmm 2y agoThat's almost the point isn't it? He still believes in it, just the media moved on. Passion means having a vision that isn't deterred by immediate short term challenges because you can "see over the mountain". Will metaverse be a failure? Maybe. But Apple doesn't think so to the tune of $100B invested so far, which is pretty good validation there is some value there.
- paxys 2y agoHaving a nerdy vision of the future and spending tens of billions of dollars to try and make it a reality while shareholders and bean counters crucify you for it is the most engineer thing imaginable. What other CEO out there is taking such risks?
- com2kid 2y agoBill Gates when he was at Microsoft. Tablet PC (first iteration was in the early 90s!), Pocket PC, WebTV and Media Center PC (Microsoft first tried Smart TVs in the late 90s! There wasn't any content to watch and most people didn't have broadband, oops), Xbox, and the numerous PC standards they pushed for (e.g. mandating integrated audio on new PCs), smart watches (SPOT watch, look it up!), and probably a few others I'm forgetting. You'll notice in most of those categories, they moved too soon and others who came later won the market.
- agar 2y agoIf you actually listen to how Zuck defines the metaverse, it's not Horizons or even a VR headset. That's what pundits say, most of whom love pointing out big failures more than they like thinking deeply. He sees the metaverse as the entire shared online space that evolves into a more multi-user collaborative model with more human-centric input/output devices than a computer and phone. It includes co-presence, mixed reality, social sites like Instagram and Facebook as well as online gaming, real-world augments, multiuser communities like Roblox, and "world apps" like VRChat or Horizons. Access methods may be via a VR headset, or smart glasses, or just sensors that alert you to nearby augmented sites that you can then access on your phone - think Pokemon Go with gyms located at historical real-world sites. That's what $50B has been spent on, and it's definitely a work in progress. But it sure doesn't seem dead based on the fact that more Quest headsets have been sold than this gen's Xboxes; Apple released Vision Pro; Rayban Smart Glasses are selling pretty well; new devices are planned from Google, Valve, and others; and remote work is an unkillable force. The online and "real" worlds are only getting more connected, and it seems like a smart bet to try to drive what the next generation looks like. I wouldn't say the $50B was spent efficiently, but I understand that forging a new path means making lots of missteps. You still get somewhere new though, and if it's a worthwhile destination then many people will be following right behind you.
- asadotzler 2y ago50 billion dollars and fewer than 10 million MAU. That's a massive failure.
- dlandau 2y agoA chunky portion of those dollars were spent on buying and pre-ordering GPUs that were used to train and serve LLaMa
- tmalsburg2 2y agoYes, he got incredibly lucky that he found an alternative use for his GPU investment.
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- baby 2y agoI get so annoyed by this every time I see it. It’s not because AI took over the news cycle that the idea of a Metaverse is a failure. If you could have predicted that Internet was going to change our lives and that most people would spend most of their waking hours living their lives on the Internet people probably would have told you that you were a fool in the early days. The same is true with this prediction of VR. If you think in the next decade that VR is not going to be the home for more and more people then you are wrong.
- whywhywhywhy 2y agoIt would have been if the bet that AR glasses in a spectacle form factor could have been solved. But the lens display just isn’t possible today. Apple made the same bet too and had to capitulate to a VR headset + cameras in the end. The Zuck difference is he pivoted to AI at the right time, Apple didn’t.