The Creator of 'Doom' Is Now A Facebook Employee | Hacker News Reader

The Creator of 'Doom' Is Now A Facebook Employee

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106 pointsantonius38 comments

There's been a flurry of threads, and I've not seen this discussed. As a huge fan of Carmack and a believer in VR, the acquisition is interesting, in that:

- John Carmack's OR work was not just on the mechanism of VR in terms of the screens, latency, but also on an embedded operating system to best drive the experience. The fact that Zuckerberg in the investment call mentioned this as a 'new device platform' (not desktop, not mobile) could be taken somewhat literally. This could be an interesting way for FB to become part of a new embedded platform, written to drive these displays. This Facebook Display OS could be next years press froth that was the Facebook Phone OS. While AR / Glass is not much like OR, the platform might be Mark's play here, just as much as a 'seems like a good long bet'.

- John fairly recently discussed how Armadillo was really not something he could put much more money in. Fairly quickly he has got into a situation that (post golden handcuffs) he could seriously restart this. While it's funny to imagine Zuckerberg/Carmack in code review meetings :) the reality if the situation might be that this OR adventure is big-picture just John's way back home to Armadillo in a few years. Needs must and all that.

I'm still internalizing the news (as a dev/purchaser of both DK1 and preorder DK2) but some things do seem apparent today:

- This is probably a good time for one of the VR also-rans to do a 'Oculus Rift kickerstarter V2' on this news. Rightly or wrongly there's now a huge need for a new white knight in VR that could be tapped.

- What JC does/says now is a barometer for a lot of people in the OR community.

- OR's biggest pitfall will now be loss of focus. There are now so many distractions, from metaverses to HR noise.

Personally I think FB will be hands-off, and this is not a disaster but then my main excitement is really just on getting to CV1 as soon as possible, regardless of who owns the most stock, and today's news helps that.

Another point - If a batch of developers really are abandoning Oculus (which remains to be seen), then it's also an opportunity for other developers to move in.

Carmack has started tweeting a bit about the deal, including:

"I have a deep respect for the technical scale that FB operates at. The cyberspace we want for VR will be at this scale."

"For the record, I am coding right now, just like I was last week.I expect the FB deal will avoid several embarrassing scaling crisis for VR."

Right, I see. Carmack sold out so he can fulfill his adolescent fantasies of being the programmer behind Snow Crash's metaverse.

Unfortunately, all it's going to be is a lame Facebook-branded knockoff of Second Life.

I wasn't aware working for a different company implies "selling out".

Get some perspective, please.

How's doing what he loves "selling out"?

This reminds me of when Jamie Zawinski (of Netscape fame) became an AOL employee: http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/aol.html

If Carmack obtained any sort of options or shares in Oculus stock prior to this deal, this is likely to be quite a hefty payday for him, no?

Just goes to show that his business sense was dead on, and he aligned his position with an organization he instinctively perceived as valuable before it's value exploded. It's probably safe to say, though, that his participation in the company also augmented the perception of its value, by his association acting as a defacto endorsement.

I'm hoping he made out handsomely and turns his attention (and money) to Armadillo Aerospace again.

Armadillo Aerospace was one of the few websites I visited regularly and was really dismayed when they went dark.

I really hope he returns to it and goes orbital, if Musk can do it JC can do it better IMO

Maybe he'll go work for SpaceX next.

He joined less than a year ago. Assuming he received a standard options package, I doubt his options vested.

It's pretty much inconceivable that he'd have a "standard options package"

He would have been courted, offered a substantial slice of equity, and his contribution and membership of the leadership team (he's the CTO!) would have significantly contributed to the valuation.

He'd have made out huge-time.

Liquidity event clause would be normal here and he'll be vested all in, especially as he's not a regular employee. As a C-level they'll be handcuffs on the FB stock part for sure as well.

He could have negotiated something better. But so would Oculus.

Wouldn't he just have to wait until they vest then? Or does the situation change post-acquisition?

If we see a virtual facebook before a virtual fps I'm going to pull my hair out.

There are already plenty of fps you can try on the Oculus SDK.

April 1st is still many days away... "Teh Carmack" is up there with the least likely people I'd imaging being employed by Facebook.

With the recent agism article, I get the impression that most of the Facebook employees would think Carmack is to old for their "culture".

43 isn't too old. Will you ever say Python creator Guido van Rossum (who is 58 right now) is too old? Figures like them never get old. But will the younger engineers feel pressure when they are talking to someone far more experience far more well known? Certainly.

Is there some sort of HN comment guideline that dissuades this sort of garbage?

Not enough of a brogrammer for their standards.

As an engineer at Facebook, I will say that couldn't be further from the truth. Every reaction I've seen has been overwhelmingly positive, full of amazement and excitement at the chance to meet or work with one of our greatest idols.

Come now, your facts clearly have no place in this discussion.

What a legend. Amazing that the previous company would not listen to him. I guess it's the old case of the tech lead not being compatible with the MBA playbook so he left. Maybe Harvard should update their list of 'When these people speak listen' as it's obviously way way out of date.

While a surprising turn to me that he ends up at Facebook... I think a lot of people forget that id Software sold to Bethesda in 2009. He's known as one of the most independent game developers, but he's been "an employee" for some time now.

I'm in awe of the clickbaity title here. I seriously doubt Carmack is going to start hacking in PHP or something.

Facebook doesn't just do web development and analytics.

Their datacenters alone are big enough to warrant hardware engineers for their custom servers and switches, facilities designers, ex-HVAC employees, et cetera. (http://www.opencompute.org/)

This is obviously a serious acquisition, and Carmack's talent no doubt played a small part in it.

Explain again why "employee" in the title makes this clickbait?

Because it makes it seem like he's just another peon, rather than the CTO of a subsidiary. I know that Facebook requires a very diverse set of skils/positions in order to run, it just seems kind of hilarious to say John Carmack is now a Facebook employee :)

I didn't think Bryan O'Sullivan would be Hack-ing PHP, either.

Never imagined I'd be writing the words "facebook" and "John Carmack" in the same sentence.

Assimilation is death, and another one of our legends has been taken.

Carmack, if there is still hope, please Do The Right Thing!

You reckon Facebook is like the Borg?

I was really interested in what Oculus does. I'm a little sad about this; I have to be honest. I worry Facebook will really cheapen what they are doing. We'll see.

The creator of Facemash is now a Facebook founder.

I am looking forward to Carmack writing php.

Oh wait, did I say php? I meant hack. On the hhvm.

CAN'T WAIT.

I wonder what happens when John Carmack hangs out with Mike Matas.

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