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

> 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.

meta was a weird place for a while. because of psc (the performance rating stuff) being so important… a public post could totally demoralize a team because if a legend like carmack thinks that your project is a waste of resources, how is that going to look on your performance review?

impact is facebook for “how useful is this to the company” and its an explicit axis of judgement.

But... That's not an HR violation. If something a team is working on is a waste of resources, it's a waste. You can either realize that and pivot to something more useful (like an effort to take the improvements of the current OS project and apply them to existing OSes), or stubbornly insist on your value.

Why is complaining to HR even an option on the table?

One could argue that if it’s not in your swim lane, you just let it fail. And if you aren’t that person’s manager, you tell them the code or design that you are reviewing and thus the gatekeeper is not adequate. Politely. You said your part and no need to get yourself in trouble. Document and move on. If the company won’t listen then you move on. No need to turn it into a HR issue.

Carmack's swim lane was exceptionally wide. My understanding was that this sort of criticism was actually his main job duty.