The Amp Hour #147 – Absorptive Augmented Actuality with Jeri Ellsworth | Hacker News Reader

The Amp Hour #147 – Absorptive Augmented Actuality with Jeri Ellsworth

theamphour.com

44 pointsChrisGammell12 comments

For me, it would have been a more helpful title to actually name the former employee (Jeri Ellsworth) since she happens to be quite a famous name at least in some circles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeri_Ellsworth).

I was not aware of technical illusions or the castAR, looks very interesting.

Direct link to the audio in case the page craps out: http://traffic.libsyn.com/theamphour/TheAmpHour-147-Absorpti...

I upped the server specs to try and handle more traffic now. Sorry, I make electronics, my web skills are way behind (especially for the regulars around here!)

I can't believe Gabe Newell let the fired employees use the AR technology they where working on at Valve.

Might be more of a spin-off than them having been fired entirely?

The reason they were fired is Valve decided to abandon their own AR developments and embrace VR. Seeing as Valve had no interest in developing the technology further they gave it to the fired AR employees because I guess they're just cool like that.

If Valve thought that the technology had a future, they would have kept it or spun it off.

What they did is much smarter. Either Ms. Ellsworth & co manage to make a marketable product with the technology, and Valve can either buy them out outright, or invest in them (because, hey, who is a better purchaser for your company than the organization that sparked its creation in the first place?). Or Ms. Ellsworth fails and Valve has no skin in the game. It is a much better and a lot less riskier idea than letting the technology stagnate within Vale, or throwing good money after bad.

Thank you for pointing that out. Also letting them go on a friendly note, will guarantee in the future that they will join Valve and not some other group.

Jeri says, in the recording, that Gabe personally released the technology to them.

They were hired to work on it and then Valve decided they had no interest in AR. Why not let them take it?

I actually didn't know that Valve "fired" people in the traditional sense. Everything I've read about the company indicates that everyone there is on equal footing in terms of rank. So who would do the firing? Gabe?

“The short answer of how we handle terminations, really, is the same as we approach all other decisions at the company. It is a peer-driven process. If it turns out that we made a bad hiring decision, or that somebody is just not working out, there’s a method we use to get the people who are involved in the same room and to walk through the decision about what should really happen as a result of this person not functioning very well.

“Some of the details are kind of boring, but the main answer is that it is peer-driven, just like we evaluate each other as peers.”

(Valve’s Greg Coomer - http://www.pcgamesn.com/tf2/not-valve-employee-handbook-firi...)

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