Hacker News Reader

Comment by jakear | Hacker News Reader

I suspect it’s not his decision to make.

That's totally absurd. Luminaries like Carmack are anything but prisoners; any firm in SV would pay big bucks to say "John Carmack works here".

Facebook may be a big conglomerate these days, and they may not be the cool kid on the block anymore, but that doesn't mean that they're idiots. If anything, they treasure the presence of someone like Carmack all the more, because it's no longer reputionally-free for people like him to come on board. I'm sure that Facebook is appreciative when he blogs on their platform, but it's patently ridiculous to pretend that anyone would -- or could -- force it.

In fact, Facebook has already been forced to pay at least dozens of millions of dollars essentially as a direct consequence of employing Carmack [0], and I'd be willing to bet they'd happily pay (at least) dozens of millions more.

If you want your mind blown even harder, look up some of the paperwork around the Waymo / Uber debacle [1]. SV companies pay big bucks for this type of talent, even the ones you haven't heard of, like Anthony Levandowski.

If the roll of the dice is in your favor, SV stardom is at least as valuable as Hollywood stardom (and, for the most part anyway, you still get to walk around in public unharrassed).

Disclaimer: I have no special connection with any of the companies or people mentioned, I don't know the inside baseball, and this is all conjecture. But at least it's better supported than yours. ;)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZeniMax_v._Oculus

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/03/waymos-uber-lawsuit-reveals-...

Picturing The Zuck leading two mutant mandogs on leashes: the audience is horrified to realize they're Yann LeCun and John Carmack, though 'heavily modified' and almost unrecognizable in their snarling ferocity.

"This fist holds the Ego. This fist holds the Id. I bring you a new existence: the GlobalCoin. I came up with that myself. As Super-Ego."

I appreciate your imagination.

[not the person you responded to]

Hero worship aside, in the grand scheme of things Facebook, Carmack is of almost 0 importance.

Sure, but in the grand scheme of things Facebook, whose market cap currently sits at 526 billion dollars, the correspondingly inconsequential sum of something-something-millions of dollars is worth the potential benefit.

In exchange for their patronage, employers to the world's technical stars get to use their name in recruitment and other types of marketing, and they're well-positioned to profit from the star's next great achievement, if indeed one ever occurs. This is very similar to the benefit to a record label or a movie studio in signing a deal with the current one-hit wonder or starlet of the hour.

As in any employment transaction, there can be no true guarantees. None of us can promise that we'll be here tomorrow. But the value of investments in strong personal brands has proven profitable enough over the last several decades that many companies are eager and willing to make them. Entire industries are built around them. I don't think it's going to stop any time soon. cf. the Lindy Effect [0]

There is surely some limit to Facebook's tolerance of a single man's foibles, regardless of star power. I would bet my bottom dollar that "blogged off-Facebook" is nowhere near it.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect

I don’t mean to say he’s “held prisoner”, more that the company culture is to post things using the company’s platform, and he’d rather not stick his head out too far from that path. (Which I guess could be seen as “him making a decision”. But it’s not a decision made in a vacuum.)

I don't think the statement is entirely unreasonable given that JC is a facebook employee, he's one of the tech masterminds behind their VR initiatives and the optics of having the tech face of Occulus dog-food your social media platform is important to at least some of the brass there.

John Carmack can blog about ffmpeg bugs wherever he wants. Like there is no way stopping him from doing that is even remotely legal. He probably just posts on facebook because it's convenient and reaches a lot of people.

I distinctly remember him saying he was only creating a facebook account because Oculus was bought by them. I strongly doubt he would be on there at all if it wasn't for the acquisition.

I don’t mean that he is legally bound to the platform. Just that the company culture is to use the platform, and he may see not using the platform as making a statement he does not want to make.

You think someone is telling Carmack where he can and can't post? Why one earth would they do that? And why on earth would he put up with it?

It doesn't have to be coercive. Some of us would like to know what the people who hire us are up to even if we don't personally have any interest in it.

More that the company’s culture says you should post things using the company’s platform, and to not do so might be making a statement he doesn’t want to make.

Otherwise, why would he move away from .plan?

Could it be that a lot of people don't know what a .plan file is, or how to read content from one?

If John Carmack started updating a .plan, people would figure out how to check a .plan.

You said 'it wasn't his decision to make' not 'perhaps he wants to use his employer's platform'. If you don't want to imply it's coercive, you should phrase it in a way that doesn't imply it's coercive.

I believe it’s a “perhaps he feels he should be using his employer’s platform”. A murky coercion middle ground.

Ok, but "I don't think it's his decision" is then a weirdly overwrought (or less charitably, thoughtlessly provocative) thing to say. It's totally his decision. Nor do I think anyone at FB would be stupid enough to tell him where to post random ffmpeg things. He's also active on twitter - as you can see in the post we're discussing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com