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Total garbage move & good disclosure/warning of future work culture. Open source really has shown how you do not need so much cruft/guilt-tripping to build on

Total garbage move & good disclosure/warning of future work culture. Open source really has shown how you do not need so much cruft/guilt-tripping to build on top of good models. How sad is it to over work folks & be proud of it, sure if Cognition equity is going to the trash just as Windsurf's lol, the irony of all this grind. Is the logic that working with AI will need grind, waiting for the burnout blogs to show up here in some time.

bitwize 1y ago
The major thing that put John Carmack at the top of his field, even more than his extreme intelligence, was his unrelenting grindset. He would work days and nights, often taking a weekend and locking himself in a hotel room, to solve a problem. He has said in interviews that unless you work those 12+ hour days you just aren't going to write world-class software. If you really want to develop on the cutting edge, you need a lot more than smarts. You have to have that dog in you. That fire in your belly that makes you obsessed, consumed with your work and solving the problems you set out to solve. If you don't... you're gonna lose out to someone who does. Go sling Java for a bank or insurance company, then, if you want to punch out at 5. Scott Wu has that dog in him. It's reasonable for him to expect the same of his employees.
- charlie-83 1y ago
  I don't really understand this. Surely working 8 hour days just means that it takes you 50% longer to write the same software (in reality less than that since I don't imagine you will be working at peak efficiency in hour 12). Passion is a different thing and I agree you need passion you be the best. While there is clearly a correlation between people with passion and people willing to work more, it don't see why someone can't be passionate and also have other interests or responsibilities outside of work.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - bitwize 1y ago
    When it comes to loading pig iron, you're really just doing the same thing over and over, so the amount of pig iron you can load in a day scales roughly linearly with the number of hours a day you spend loading pig iron, all else being equal. We know that the design of software is fundamentally a different sort of task than loading pig iron. It requires management of complex amounts of state in working memory, which must be acquired before work begins, and much of which is lost after work ends (or is interrupted), requiring reacquisition when work is restarted. I believe that because of this, Carmack's observation is that more contiguous time spent on the task yields superlinear gains in output, because you're just spending that much more time with the system state in your head. And if you're a really smart guy working on cutting-edge stuff you want to take advantage of those superlinear gains because you are messing with much more deep and complex state, in terms of your own cognition, that would take more time to reacquire when lost.
- harmonic18374 1y ago
  Cognition pivoted from a crypto company. The only thing he's "consumed with" is getting rich. Get real.
- OfficeChad 1y ago
  [dead]
- toast0 1y ago
  John Carmack is highly successful in software and has a poor work-life balance. Doesn't mean there's causation between the two. If there's an emergency, sure, work 12 hour days until it's fixed. Maybe if you're really in the zone, go ahead and keep working for 12 hours once in a while. But, being behind schedule is not an emergency. And if the emergency continues for more than a couple days, it's a situation, not an emergency. 12 hours of focused work is hard to do. And if it's not focused, might as well punch out at 5, live your life outside of work, get some rest, maybe let problems marinate, and come back tomorrow.
  - kevinventullo 1y ago
    “In the zone” is I think the most analogous piece to the CEO/Founder mindset. When I was in grad school I worked 12 hour days because I wanted to. Not because of an advisor or out of fear or anything, I just thought the material was fascinating and I wanted to learn as much as I could. As a founder, I think there’s a similar incentive to work all day every day, not just because of the potential payoff, but also because you love it and it is your life. It is unrealistic to expect the same intrinsic passion from employee #30, much less employee #300. They don’t have the ownership, both financially and spiritually. It’s not their baby.
- arunabha 1y ago
  Relentless grinding and going well above and beyond make sense when you capture a significant portion of the upside (e.g co founder, or 'well known' tech guru like Carmack). Grinding and hustling _without_ participating proportionally in the upside is naivete at best and foolishness at worst.
- camgunz 1y ago
  So many counter examples. Who wrote the unreal engine, or unity, or khtml, or Vim. How many people worked a regular 40 hour week at id Software? This kind of thinking is a disease and a race to the bottom. I don't think we should stop people from doing it, but we certainly shouldn't reward them, in the market or otherwise.
- flohofwoe 1y ago
  Carmack owned the frigging company. Owners are free to put as many hours into their company as they want, just don't expect employees to do the same.
  - villgax 1y ago
    THIS!! If it was up to the owners then we would not have labour laws, weekends or decent work hours either. Owners should feel free to work to death alone & with money you can't take with you, just don't expect to get friends/employees to join in this.
- nunez 1y ago
  Yeah, he did that BECAUSE HE WANTED TO. Very different from a CEO setting that pace.
  - villgax 1y ago
    100%
- pm90 1y ago
  There is absolutely no reason to believe that this is the only way to write “world class” software. I have bo reason to doubt that this worked for Mr. Carmack. And sometimes when there are product deadlines or production issues, it absolutely makes sense to work round the clock to fix. Sometimes you might even be in the zone and can’t think of anything else. But claiming that this is the only way is 100% Grade A BullShit. Strive to have a balanced life and be extremely careful not to get burned out. Maintaining that joy for building things requires balance and perspective instead of slaving away your life.

bitwize 1y ago

The major thing that put John Carmack at the top of his field, even more than his extreme intelligence, was his unrelenting grindset. He would work days and nights, often taking a weekend and locking himself in a hotel room, to solve a problem. He has said in interviews that unless you work those 12+ hour days you just aren't going to write world-class software. If you really want to develop on the cutting edge, you need a lot more than smarts. You have to have that dog in you. That fire in your belly that makes you obsessed, consumed with your work and solving the problems you set out to solve. If you don't... you're gonna lose out to someone who does. Go sling Java for a bank or insurance company, then, if you want to punch out at 5. Scott Wu has that dog in him. It's reasonable for him to expect the same of his employees.

charlie-83 1y ago
I don't really understand this. Surely working 8 hour days just means that it takes you 50% longer to write the same software (in reality less than that since I don't imagine you will be working at peak efficiency in hour 12). Passion is a different thing and I agree you need passion you be the best. While there is clearly a correlation between people with passion and people willing to work more, it don't see why someone can't be passionate and also have other interests or responsibilities outside of work.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- bitwize 1y ago
  When it comes to loading pig iron, you're really just doing the same thing over and over, so the amount of pig iron you can load in a day scales roughly linearly with the number of hours a day you spend loading pig iron, all else being equal. We know that the design of software is fundamentally a different sort of task than loading pig iron. It requires management of complex amounts of state in working memory, which must be acquired before work begins, and much of which is lost after work ends (or is interrupted), requiring reacquisition when work is restarted. I believe that because of this, Carmack's observation is that more contiguous time spent on the task yields superlinear gains in output, because you're just spending that much more time with the system state in your head. And if you're a really smart guy working on cutting-edge stuff you want to take advantage of those superlinear gains because you are messing with much more deep and complex state, in terms of your own cognition, that would take more time to reacquire when lost.
harmonic18374 1y ago
Cognition pivoted from a crypto company. The only thing he's "consumed with" is getting rich. Get real.
OfficeChad 1y ago
[dead]
toast0 1y ago
John Carmack is highly successful in software and has a poor work-life balance. Doesn't mean there's causation between the two. If there's an emergency, sure, work 12 hour days until it's fixed. Maybe if you're really in the zone, go ahead and keep working for 12 hours once in a while. But, being behind schedule is not an emergency. And if the emergency continues for more than a couple days, it's a situation, not an emergency. 12 hours of focused work is hard to do. And if it's not focused, might as well punch out at 5, live your life outside of work, get some rest, maybe let problems marinate, and come back tomorrow.
- kevinventullo 1y ago
  “In the zone” is I think the most analogous piece to the CEO/Founder mindset. When I was in grad school I worked 12 hour days because I wanted to. Not because of an advisor or out of fear or anything, I just thought the material was fascinating and I wanted to learn as much as I could. As a founder, I think there’s a similar incentive to work all day every day, not just because of the potential payoff, but also because you love it and it is your life. It is unrealistic to expect the same intrinsic passion from employee #30, much less employee #300. They don’t have the ownership, both financially and spiritually. It’s not their baby.
arunabha 1y ago
Relentless grinding and going well above and beyond make sense when you capture a significant portion of the upside (e.g co founder, or 'well known' tech guru like Carmack). Grinding and hustling _without_ participating proportionally in the upside is naivete at best and foolishness at worst.
camgunz 1y ago
So many counter examples. Who wrote the unreal engine, or unity, or khtml, or Vim. How many people worked a regular 40 hour week at id Software? This kind of thinking is a disease and a race to the bottom. I don't think we should stop people from doing it, but we certainly shouldn't reward them, in the market or otherwise.
flohofwoe 1y ago
Carmack owned the frigging company. Owners are free to put as many hours into their company as they want, just don't expect employees to do the same.
- villgax 1y ago
  THIS!! If it was up to the owners then we would not have labour laws, weekends or decent work hours either. Owners should feel free to work to death alone & with money you can't take with you, just don't expect to get friends/employees to join in this.
nunez 1y ago
Yeah, he did that BECAUSE HE WANTED TO. Very different from a CEO setting that pace.
- villgax 1y ago
  100%
pm90 1y ago
There is absolutely no reason to believe that this is the only way to write “world class” software. I have bo reason to doubt that this worked for Mr. Carmack. And sometimes when there are product deadlines or production issues, it absolutely makes sense to work round the clock to fix. Sometimes you might even be in the zone and can’t think of anything else. But claiming that this is the only way is 100% Grade A BullShit. Strive to have a balanced life and be extremely careful not to get burned out. Maintaining that joy for building things requires balance and perspective instead of slaving away your life.