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

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521 points OlympicMarmoto | 10 comments | 29 Aug 25 16:45 UTC | HN request time: 0s | 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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randall ◴[29 Aug 25 21:27 UTC] No.45069589[source]▶
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.

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aprilthird2021 ◴[29 Aug 25 22:26 UTC] No.45070105[source]▶
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?

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1. bongodongobob ◴[30 Aug 25 03:02 UTC] No.45071577[source]▶
Just because something isn't an HR violation doesn't mean it's not wrong, rude, or unprofessional. Society is not a computer program. Being tactful is important to well adjusted people.
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2. lll-o-lll ◴[30 Aug 25 03:10 UTC] No.45071603[source]▶
Hard disagree. Being tactful is only relevant when dealing with people, criticise an idea, a project, a solution as much as you like. Intellectual debate is the fire from which genuinely good ideas are forged.
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3. LPisGood ◴[30 Aug 25 06:04 UTC] No.45072260[source]▶
Unfortunately people have ideas, projects, and solutions that they care deeply about. Like it or not, some tact when dealing with these things goes a long way.
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4. lll-o-lll ◴[30 Aug 25 07:33 UTC] No.45072672{3}[source]▶
> Unfortunately people have ideas, projects, and solutions that they care deeply about.

This is true of course, but this is also true for the “search for truth” in science. Do we fail to point out the flaw in the reasoning of someone’s life's work for fear of offence? The truth is the higher ideal that must be strived for!

In the same way, an idea is only good once it has been challenged. It may fail and dissolve, it may survive, it may morph into something that can no longer be assailed. This is the forgers fire, and it is necessary.

I know this isn’t as black and white as I’m painting it, but the ideal is still something worth striving for.

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5. izacus ◴[30 Aug 25 07:43 UTC] No.45072714{3}[source]▶
I mostly notice that those people aren't emotionally grown up enough to actually produce good results.

When your emotions over your work become more important than the quality of the work you're outputting, you become a problem for people who use your work.

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6. jvuygbbkuurx ◴[30 Aug 25 08:03 UTC] No.45072822{3}[source]▶
It will be easy to dismiss any critisism when it's forced to be vague.
7. LPisGood ◴[30 Aug 25 13:53 UTC] No.45074705{4}[source]▶
Yeah, yeah all that’s true. Ideas are better if they’re challenged, etc. but the fact is people don’t like being challenged.

Also, software engineering is a field where there’s rarely some ideal truth we’re trying to achieve, and indeed even in science, people do often fail to point out flaws in reasoning for fear of offense.

8. rvba ◴[30 Aug 25 16:56 UTC] No.45076098{3}[source]▶
Projects to land them a fat salary while delivering no value.

No wonder they used any means necessary (including HR) to defend their source of money.

They probably knew very well they are a net loss for the company.

Lots of big orgs have such crooks. It's a failure of management not to fire them.

9. LPisGood ◴[30 Aug 25 18:58 UTC] No.45077109{4}[source]▶
Well unfortunately even relatively high quality organizations are filled with people like that.
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10. izacus ◴[30 Aug 25 19:12 UTC] No.45077199{5}[source]▶
sigh I know, I know. :/