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

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520 points OlympicMarmoto | 3 comments | 29 Aug 25 16:45 UTC | HN request time: 0.418s | source
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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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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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1. 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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2. 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.
3. 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.