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

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521 points OlympicMarmoto | 1 comments | 29 Aug 25 16:45 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | 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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dagmx ◴[29 Aug 25 22:42 UTC] No.45070238[source]▶
John can be quite blunt and harsh in person, from everyone I know who’s interacted with him.

If he doesn’t believe in something, he can sometimes be over critical and it’s hard to push back in that kind of power imbalance.

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daseiner1[dead post] ◴[30 Aug 25 01:18 UTC] No.45071105[source]▶
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kid64 ◴[30 Aug 25 02:22 UTC] No.45071392{3}[source]▶
Are you arguing that everyone's power is equal? What an asinine position.
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dagmx ◴[30 Aug 25 02:31 UTC] No.45071437{4}[source]▶
It must either be a belief that everyone is equal, and that they would be comfortable telling Carmack that he’s wrong.

Or it’s an appeal to authority in that if a person of authority says it then they must be right so there’s no reason to push back in the first place.

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1. daseiner1 ◴[30 Aug 25 18:25 UTC] No.45076904{5}[source]▶
i would absolutely feel comfortable challenging him in a well-intentioned and non-disruptive manner. it's entirely possible i'd get shitcanned afterwards and if so, that's fine, it wouldn't've worked out anyways for me if that's the environment. i've personally never been afraid to challenge people above me on the org chart who have the ability to fire me with a snap of their fingers (again, in appropriate, non-grossly confrontational ways). it's generally worked out quite well for me and tends to gain me respect in the eyes of my superiors. successful people tend not to have great respect for sycophants.

the good news is that in this hypothetical i'd be skilled and talented enough to be working with john fucking carmack so i wouldn't exactly be concerned about my ability to find a new gig in about 3 days. that's my point. now if there were evidence he'd be liable to blackball me in some way (no evidence of that to my knowledge), then the power disparity argument has more legs in my opinion.