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John Carmack's arguments against building a custom XR OS at Meta

(twitter.com)
521 points OlympicMarmoto | 16 comments | 29 Aug 25 16:45 UTC | HN request time: 0.528s | source | bottom
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Aurornis ◴[29 Aug 25 21:23 UTC] No.45069549[source]▶
> They also got me reported to HR by the manager of the XROS effort for supposedly making his team members feel bad

I've only seen John Carmack's public interactions, but they've all been professional and kind.

It's depressing to imagine HR getting involved because someone's feelings had been hurt by an objective discussion from a person like John Carmack.

I'm having flashbacks to the times in my career when coworkers tried to weaponize HR to push their agenda. Every effort was eventually dismissed by HR, but there is a chilling effect on everyone when you realize that someone at the company is trying to put your job at stake because they didn't like something you said. The next time around, the people targeted are much more hesitant to speak up.

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jamra ◴[29 Aug 25 22:57 UTC] No.45070347[source]▶
I followed his posts internally before he left. He was strict about resource waste. Hand tracking would break constantly and he brought metrics to his posts. His whole point was that Apple has hardware nailed down and it’ll be efficient software that will be the differentiator. The bloat at Meta was the result of empire building.
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1. influx ◴[29 Aug 25 23:48 UTC] No.45070663[source]▶
I followed his posts internally too. It's amazing how many people were arguing against fucking John Carmack. What a waste of talent.
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2. ignoramous ◴[30 Aug 25 01:12 UTC] No.45071077[source]▶
> were arguing against fucking John Carmack

I am sure Carmack himself encourages debates and discussions. Lionizing one person can't be expected of every employee (unless that person is also the founder or the company is tiny).

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3. Aeolun ◴[30 Aug 25 01:46 UTC] No.45071229[source]▶
Can’t really imagine a better person to argue against?
4. eru ◴[30 Aug 25 06:00 UTC] No.45072244[source]▶
I don't think you should treat the founder more special than eg John Carmack.

But I agree that civil discussion is good.

5. monkeyelite ◴[30 Aug 25 06:14 UTC] No.45072312[source]▶
I disagree that you should just defer - but it’s sad that politics was obviously consuming and inhibiting his ability to help the product.
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6. flr03 ◴[30 Aug 25 09:28 UTC] No.45073248[source]▶
Damn, that's medieval. Anyone should be able to challenge anyone regardless of status.
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7. influx ◴[30 Aug 25 11:20 UTC] No.45073720[source]▶
No one should just defer, but you better be right. In the end do they have a better product without him?

Don’t think so.

8. rollcat ◴[30 Aug 25 11:52 UTC] No.45073858[source]▶
I was one month into my first full-time job, when I've (unknowingly of his rank) challenged the CTO in a technical discussion - in a public email exchange. Regardless of the outcome - I've been treated like an equal. This one short exchange has influenced not only the rest of my career, but my entire worldview.
9. sarchertech ◴[30 Aug 25 12:47 UTC] No.45074180[source]▶
I mean to some extent sure. But also you need to respect expertise and experience. So much of what we do is subjective, and neither side going to have hard data to support their arguments.

If it comes down to someone saying “I’ve been doing this for 30 years, I’ve shipped something very similar 5 times, and we ran into a problem with x each time”. Unless you have similar counter experience, you should probably just listen.

What happens in tech is you get a very specific kind of junior who wants to have HN comment arguments at work constantly and needs you to prove every single thing to them. I don’t know man it’s a style guide. There’s not going to be hard quantitative evidence to support why we said you shouldn’t reach for macros first.

10. kelipso ◴[30 Aug 25 13:33 UTC] No.45074550[source]▶
Ugh. Can we as an industry stop blowing people up like this? It’s a clear sign that the community is filled with people with very little experience.

I remember this guy wanted $20 million to build AGI a year ago (did he get that money?), and people here thought he would go into isolation for a few weeks and come out with AGI because he made some games like that. It’s just embarrassing as a community.

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11. bckr ◴[30 Aug 25 17:13 UTC] No.45076300[source]▶
> $20 million

That’s a pittance for such a project. I wish we could see what he’d have come up with.

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12. bckr ◴[30 Aug 25 17:14 UTC] No.45076305[source]▶
I think the implication is that they were arguing poorly and wasting time
13. dehrmann ◴[30 Aug 25 17:33 UTC] No.45076461[source]▶
Carmack's best work was between Keen and Quake, and it was mostly optimizations that pushed the limit of what PC graphics could do. He's always been too in-the-weeds to have a C-level title.
14. kelipso ◴[30 Aug 25 19:26 UTC] No.45077287{3}[source]▶
He is just a guy who can write game code well and has good PR skills online. I wouldn’t give him a cent if he promised anything in the AI field, no matter how much a bunch of online people gas him up.
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15. spauldo ◴[31 Aug 25 01:55 UTC] No.45079640{4}[source]▶
He's a guy that knows a lot of math and how to turn that math into code. I don't know if he'd be able to come up with some brand new paradigm for AI but I'd want him on my team and I'd listen to what he has to say.
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16. kelipso ◴[31 Aug 25 13:19 UTC] No.45082953{5}[source]▶
AI math is not game code math. There are plenty of actual experts in AI who know “how to turn math into code” with years of experience. I would not want this guy, his ego, his lack of social skills, his online fanbase, and his lack of experience in AI to be anywhere near my AI team.