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Comment by firesteelrain | Hacker News Reader

One could argue that if it’s not in your swim lane, you just let it fail. And if you aren’t that person’s manager, you tell them the code or design that you are reviewing and thus the gatekeeper is not adequate. Politely. You said your part and no need to get yourself in trouble. Document and move on. If the company won’t listen then you move on. No need to turn it into a HR issue.

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Carmack's swim lane was exceptionally wide. My understanding was that this sort of criticism was actually his main job duty.

Imagine being a meta engineer and not taking Carmack's advice seriously.

Why the fuck is he even hired there if you are not going to listen to him.

Dude has forgotten more things about game development than you will ever know...

There were quite a few of high-caliber individuals with equally impressive resumes in the organization to match Carmack's wisdom and ego.

The metaverse has really showcased that.

They finally have feet now, right?

Only light fun. I'm just a little perplexed at their progress and direction over the past 7-8 years. I don't understand how they can have so many high caliber people and put out...that.

First of all, AR/VR is a tough problem space, often for reasons not immediately obvious to common folk. Second, Facebook in my opinion is a wrong home for long-term efforts that may not bear fruit for many years, with its 6-month attention span of employee performance management and its "move fast and break things" culture (both of which clashed with the meticulous hardware-oriented Oculus culture). And finally, a significant portion of people working in AR/VR didn't believe in AR/VR as a product. Some were there for the gravy train, some were there for interesting OS work, some were there for bleeding-edge technology, but I'd say less than half would say "we're working on something that people will love and pay money for". To me it felt more like well-funded academia even and less like a startup (which it was supposed to be).

Hard to believe that, although maybe they considered their own resumes equally impressive.

There were many, many influential software projects done in the past that are not games. Some of the people responsible worked in AR/VR and drove its vision and technical roadmaps.

No matter how big or small one's "swim lane" is, an argument on technical merits without getting personal or discriminatory (assuming this was the case with J.C.) is never an HR issue. The whole "Weaponizing HR" thing is a nightmare and should not be acceptable.

Fully agree with this point we all know as engineers this shit is nails on the chalkboard.

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