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Comment by grabcocque | Hacker News Reader

That these guys are a bunch of snake oil merchants has been obvious from day zero. Sometimes the overwhelming stench of bullshit is a little too difficult to ignore.

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What makes you think that?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8J5BWL8oJY

This was amazing

Wow. Do we know for certain that Magic Leap isn't KLFs new project? They have a track record:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_Foundation_Burn_a_Million_Qu...

Dada capitalism at its finest.

Wow that TED talk really explains everything. I get it now.

For those of you who don't want to waste 6 minutes of your life: Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz trying to play rockstar by starting his talk with 4 minute silly buildup music, then he comes in wearing a space suit trying to look cool and staying silent for another 1 minute trying to buildup to something even more, then just repeats the word "fudge" 15 times accompanied by shitty punk music. Essentially it's just a very long "fuck you everybody".

I look forward to seeing the parody in HBOs Silicon Valley

Ringling College who is sharing the video with us, of course is an institution founded philanthropically in early Sarasota arising from earnings made by the Ringling Bros. Circus.

Long associated with Barnum & Bailey, this is the legendary traveling spectacle whose touring will soon be permanently cancelled for the first time in over 100 years.

Anyway, when it comes to Magic Leap, I don't see any way that PTBarnum would be disappointed in their profitability so far.

Without even touring or entertaining very many people at all, they've brought in enough money to start a number of colleges.

Wow. Thank you for sharing those James Burke quality Connections!

TEDxSarasota [1] => Saratosa, Florida [2] => Ringling College of Art & Design [3] => Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus [4] => P T Barnum [5] => Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College [6] => Magic Leap [7]

[1] http://www.tedxsarasota.com/surprises-abound-in-this-multime...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarasota,_Florida

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringling_College_of_Art_and_De...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringling_Bros._and_Barnum_%26_...

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._T._Barnum

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringling_Bros._and_Barnum_%26_...

[7] https://www.magicleap.com

But one wonders why there has yet to be an exodus of talent from Magic Leap.

I suspect the work is interesting for the engineers but nobody has the heart to tell the C level execs that what they are trying to sell the public is bullshit.

A job's a job, and with the funding ML has got it's probably a pretty safe one for now.

I see that they are based in Florida. Maybe part of the problem is that they just couldn't recruit the right tech talent in the first place.

They're based in Dania Beach, Florida. I'd guess the job market is not quite as liquid as in the Bay Area.

People get locked in, family commitments etc. etc.

And this is a great example for why people stomach the cost of living of the Bay when that argument arises...

Lower employment risk due to more high paying jobs and increased job liquidity.

Yes, it's a trade off. Living somewhere expensive where there's little liquidity sucks.

Living somewhere cheap, where you can get occasional well paid work and save money can also work.

There has already been an exodus of talent. I know one personally, and know of a lot more. They lock them down with non-disclosure settlements. Bad management, internecine politics, the whole caboodle. A pity, because it could have been very good, but they went with exactly the wrong team, and insisted people move from the Bay to Florida, which didn't help with retention.

Can confirm. Work there now. Major leadership failures across the board. Engineering talent is mostly there. The "wrong team" starts at the C-level.

Looking for an out in FL now -- finding it very hard to maintain salary. May move back to west coast, but not quite ready for that yet.

Are they at least paying you a Bay Area dev salary? Curious if they used retention bonuses with a big cliff? I for one will never take a job with a vesting cliff if I can help it.

NDAs of anything about the company for departing employees too, which is what I meant to say

A 4 year vesting with a 1 year cliff is standard, is that not what you're referring to?

>But one wonders why there has yet to be an exodus of talent from Magic Leap.

Was there ever an ingress of talent in the first place? I haven't seen a single technical blog, white paper, conference talk, or anything else of any substance from their engineering department. Every time I see them at a trade show it is nothing but marketing folks with zero technical information. Who is even really working on this?

They don't toot their technical horn, they go for more of the Hollywood flair (they work closely with weta workshop, the guys behind props and CG in Lord of the Rings/District 9 for example). I know some excellent technical people working there, but that side of things is very hush hush.

"And there's another factor involved, which is that you can divide our industry into two kinds of people: those who want to go work for a company to make it successful, and those who want to go work for a successful company. Netscape's early success and rapid growth caused us to stop getting the former and start getting the latter." -JWZ Resignation and Postmortem: https://www.jwz.org/gruntle/nomo.html

"But one wonders why there has yet to be an exodus of talent from Magic Leap."

Mostly because they are getting paid :).

And it's not entirely implausible that they get 'something' to work, and are able to sell that.

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