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Completely. You could have had an identical story without the drama, which seems to have been completely due to Jobs. Had you let Carmack talk to the lead engin

Completely. You could have had an identical story without the drama, which seems to have been completely due to Jobs. Had you let Carmack talk to the lead engineer for about fifteen minutes, I'm sure he would've come around entirely for objective reasons, rather than because the boss screamed at him.

wpietri 8y ago
And this story leaves unanswered the question of why they compromised on a suboptimal architecture in the first place. In my experience, 95% of the time it's due to some other constraint imposed by an executive. E.g., a made-up ship date. So it's perfectly possible that had the head of graphics gone for what he knew was the ideal solution in the first place, he would have been yelled at by Jobs for that. It wouldn't be the first time that a HiPPO caused a boss to do a 180 and implicitly blame the underlings rather than own up.
jschwartzi 8y ago
That's actually what happened according to the story. The lead admitted that Carmack was right, and then Jobs got angry at the lead for not making a good technical decision from the outset.
- geezerjay 8y ago
  Without knowing what were the requirements and why that decision was made, it isn't possible to infer whether the original design was even the ideal solution to the problem stated by the original requirements (see chesterton's fence). Managers such as steve jobs don't make technical decisions. They specify requirements which then need to be met by the tech guys. This anecdote sounds an awful lot like a manager changing his mind regarding a requirement after he was pointed out a technical consequence.
  - MBCook 8y ago
    We also know Jobs could turn on a dime. It’s entitely possible he previous shot down the correct way because it would take too long for too small a benefit.
    - geezerjay 8y ago
      That's what I believe as well. To me this whole episode shows an erratic manager being abusive to staff once he was faced with the technical consequences of having imposed a design requirement.
      - Nomentatus 8y ago
        This is certainly possible. But Jobs decision to impose a design requirement earlier (if that was so) might have been excellent given the data he had; when he got more data (or logic) from John, he made a better decision and knew that it would take a big shove to get everybody else to change direction on a dime. It generally does. The anger wasn't necessarily about the previous decision, all sorts of engineering decisions turn out to be "placeholders": it may have been about not being willing to alter course quickly enough, or just intended to ensure everyone knew the direction had changed.
khazhoux 8y ago
> Had you let Carmack talk to the lead engineer for about fifteen minutes, I'm sure he would've come around entirely for objective reasons I wish this were true. Yet I've been so many projects around me go months and even years down some very-clearly wrong direction, because the engineering lead refuses to course correct. Typical patterns are: - The system design attempts to address "future" issues, making it two orders of magnitude more complex than necessary. - The eng lead wants to "get it right from the beginning." So months later, you have a beautiful CI pipeline, coding standards, base classes, etc, and still no usable prototype. - Trying to solve all possible use cases, with one system. - The above, but then focusing on just one use case so narrowly, the rest have to be crammed in. I could keep going. These are cases when you need a decisive (and technically sharp) manager above to call bullshit and rip the bandaid if necessary.
- Nomentatus 8y ago
  tldr; People tunnel, and then need to be really jarred before they untunnel. (but that's not to criticize your details, I love those details.)

wpietri 8y ago

And this story leaves unanswered the question of why they compromised on a suboptimal architecture in the first place. In my experience, 95% of the time it's due to some other constraint imposed by an executive. E.g., a made-up ship date. So it's perfectly possible that had the head of graphics gone for what he knew was the ideal solution in the first place, he would have been yelled at by Jobs for that. It wouldn't be the first time that a HiPPO caused a boss to do a 180 and implicitly blame the underlings rather than own up.

jschwartzi 8y ago

That's actually what happened according to the story. The lead admitted that Carmack was right, and then Jobs got angry at the lead for not making a good technical decision from the outset.

geezerjay 8y ago
Without knowing what were the requirements and why that decision was made, it isn't possible to infer whether the original design was even the ideal solution to the problem stated by the original requirements (see chesterton's fence). Managers such as steve jobs don't make technical decisions. They specify requirements which then need to be met by the tech guys. This anecdote sounds an awful lot like a manager changing his mind regarding a requirement after he was pointed out a technical consequence.
- MBCook 8y ago
  We also know Jobs could turn on a dime. It’s entitely possible he previous shot down the correct way because it would take too long for too small a benefit.
  - geezerjay 8y ago
    That's what I believe as well. To me this whole episode shows an erratic manager being abusive to staff once he was faced with the technical consequences of having imposed a design requirement.
    - Nomentatus 8y ago
      This is certainly possible. But Jobs decision to impose a design requirement earlier (if that was so) might have been excellent given the data he had; when he got more data (or logic) from John, he made a better decision and knew that it would take a big shove to get everybody else to change direction on a dime. It generally does. The anger wasn't necessarily about the previous decision, all sorts of engineering decisions turn out to be "placeholders": it may have been about not being willing to alter course quickly enough, or just intended to ensure everyone knew the direction had changed.

khazhoux 8y ago

> Had you let Carmack talk to the lead engineer for about fifteen minutes, I'm sure he would've come around entirely for objective reasons I wish this were true. Yet I've been so many projects around me go months and even years down some very-clearly wrong direction, because the engineering lead refuses to course correct. Typical patterns are: - The system design attempts to address "future" issues, making it two orders of magnitude more complex than necessary. - The eng lead wants to "get it right from the beginning." So months later, you have a beautiful CI pipeline, coding standards, base classes, etc, and still no usable prototype. - Trying to solve all possible use cases, with one system. - The above, but then focusing on just one use case so narrowly, the rest have to be crammed in. I could keep going. These are cases when you need a decisive (and technically sharp) manager above to call bullshit and rip the bandaid if necessary.

Nomentatus 8y ago
tldr; People tunnel, and then need to be really jarred before they untunnel. (but that's not to criticize your details, I love those details.)