Someone just needs to look at how Google handled their tablet and watch strategy to know Google is not a trustworthy partner. Android tablets and Wear OS had so much potential, but Google squandered their opportunities. Very sad to see Fossil exiting the watch devices. And perhaps Samsung is the only big company out there that invests so much in Android for non smartphone/smart TV devices.
(And let's acknowledge that DeX is completely Samsung's work, and they really put a lot of work to make Android tablets usable.)
I would love the idea that if AR/VR really takes off (which is a big if) that we don't have a bunch of silo'd versions of this tech that have major fundamental differences (far more than just Android vs iOS) due to the nature of the tech.
No one in their right mind should bet on building on a new tech like this from Google. What would Meta's options be if Google abandons it?
The data that comes off of AR devices is just way too important and FB and Apple started investing early.
When google hedged after they failed with glass, by investing in ML and then putting half ass effort into Tango they gave the market to Apple with the Metaio etc… purchases.
I can’t stress how badly Magic Leap fucked the AR startup ecosystem up.
Meanwhile Zuck was smart enough to realize AR was early and built the VR market via Oculus knowing Oculus was just V0 for AR.
Meta and Apple won and there’s no way for a startup or even Google to compete in AR and thus the most important future data market
Incredibly bold assertion that a Meta-backed VR headset won't be just as silo'd off as a Google-backed one. Google is 100% distrustworthy for sure, but is Meta really any better at all?
Funny thing is that the other company was a serious contributor to the android ecosystem was Huawei.
I can even dare say that they were even more serious than Samsung.
Google's lack of support for non smartphone OS will give Huawei an opening.
Whatever Meta is. I like Zuckerberg as an Entrepreneur; he makes bold gutsy moves and most of them have been right till now. Also, his position on culture, dev salaries, contracts etc. seem more reasonable than others.
Meta has been known for years to only negotiate if you have competing offers. I guess being the only place with high TC hiring right now complicates things but this negotiation strategy is not new.
I mean, lots of companies do the same thing, and it's just part of the job hunting process. If you can't stand it, you don't have to join that company, just find another one. I don't like all that stuff but there is nothing worthy of picking out Meta.
This article seems both inaccurate and unfair. In my job hunt over the last 5 months I have been unable to get offers above 150k. Meta offered me 270k. Yeah that's below what levels.fyi says. So what?
I asked about various amendments to the offer, like a starting bonus or compensation for missing January's RSU pricing, and my recruiter gave me zero BS, she just said they couldn't do it without a competing offer. (And all of my competing offers were roughly half of Meta's, so they would only undermine my effort)
I spent 1 week in team matching before being given an hiring manager interview. He passed on me, and then about 4 days later my recruiter said they were now doing hiring "war rooms" and another manager had approved to hire me without a matching interview. Yes there was a 5 business day ultimatum, but again, this is a job offering nearly double the current market rate.
I had a great experience with Meta and I would recommend it to anyone (just based on the interviewing/recruiting/comp aspects, naturally I haven't started working there yet)
This is the nonsense you get for inexperienced and jr devs.
Let's take a look at the pandemic. The government was handing out free money. People were stuck at home. Why did big tech hire every bit of talent that applied and let them do nothing for two years?
The same reason that they over hire now, and have dumb roles like "button engineers". The same reason why experienced FAANG engineers leave and build bloated systems with more servers (and problems) than users.
The strategy is one to abort competition. To soften potential competitors with cushy jobs and stupid pay days. TO indoctrinate them into a way of building and thinking that isnt wholly compatible with startups.
What happens when these processes misfire. You get what's app. 30 engineers and 30 servers at the time FB bought them (or some stupidly low number, I'm close). Your average post FAANG engineer would have 2 dozen people running kafka and kuberneties with a multi million dollar cloud spend and have given most of the company away to VC's.
Am I suggesting there is a cabal? No, this is the 'natural order' and has been going on since Edison. The distinction is one of nuance. If you have the stomach for risk it is even easier to succeed now than it was in Edisons time (software isnt physical goods and hardware, its application not creation).
Edit: peter thiel 100k dropout offer is likely an overt example of this idea put into action.
> But such a partnership could thwart Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's plan to "own the next computational platform for AR, VR and mixed reality," according to the report.
Obviously, this is important to them/him. And it certainly makes sense.
But didn't Zuck's review of the Apple Vision Pro compare it's "closed platform" and Meta's is an "open platform"? I never understood how that aligned with their needs or their actions.
Quest is open because you can sideload. Apple is not.
See the recent article where Apple says they'll block porn apps however they can on vision pro. Not cool, it's a really great tech for people with an open mind. SexTech is a fast growing market and imposing morals on your users isn't a nice thing to do.
On quest you can just sideload such apps (though unfortunately sidequest no longer allows them in their store either after they started working with meta). Nevertheless you can still just sideload the APK directly even through sidequest. Which works fine.
It's unfortunate, a partnership with Google that got Play Store into Quest headsets would fill in a Huge gap that Quest has right now vs the Vision Pro, the 2D app ecosystem. Despite it not being the Headline use-case for a XR headset, it's still clearly a use-case that people find super useful
I think Google denied putting the play store on the quest (Boz from Meta has said this). Thats probably a reason this potential partnership was unlikely
I don’t see how this appeals to Meta. It’s not like Meta is primarily a hardware company that doesn’t have expertise in software. They are primarily a software company. In addition, they have a lot of engineers who are familiar with low-level programming, so that is not an issue.
In addition as IBM and Samsung have learned, the OS vendor, not the hardware manufacturer, is the one who controls the platform.
Readit News
(And let's acknowledge that DeX is completely Samsung's work, and they really put a lot of work to make Android tablets usable.)
No one in their right mind should bet on building on a new tech like this from Google. What would Meta's options be if Google abandons it?
Just not worth the risk.
The data that comes off of AR devices is just way too important and FB and Apple started investing early.
When google hedged after they failed with glass, by investing in ML and then putting half ass effort into Tango they gave the market to Apple with the Metaio etc… purchases.
I can’t stress how badly Magic Leap fucked the AR startup ecosystem up.
Meanwhile Zuck was smart enough to realize AR was early and built the VR market via Oculus knowing Oculus was just V0 for AR.
Meta and Apple won and there’s no way for a startup or even Google to compete in AR and thus the most important future data market
On their watches yeah they've been pretty bad. Still not great now even with the Samsung collaboration.
If this manipulation is true, would you still say he's right?
https://interviewing.io/blog/how-to-negotiate-with-meta
I asked about various amendments to the offer, like a starting bonus or compensation for missing January's RSU pricing, and my recruiter gave me zero BS, she just said they couldn't do it without a competing offer. (And all of my competing offers were roughly half of Meta's, so they would only undermine my effort)
I spent 1 week in team matching before being given an hiring manager interview. He passed on me, and then about 4 days later my recruiter said they were now doing hiring "war rooms" and another manager had approved to hire me without a matching interview. Yes there was a 5 business day ultimatum, but again, this is a job offering nearly double the current market rate.
I had a great experience with Meta and I would recommend it to anyone (just based on the interviewing/recruiting/comp aspects, naturally I haven't started working there yet)
Let's take a look at the pandemic. The government was handing out free money. People were stuck at home. Why did big tech hire every bit of talent that applied and let them do nothing for two years?
The same reason that they over hire now, and have dumb roles like "button engineers". The same reason why experienced FAANG engineers leave and build bloated systems with more servers (and problems) than users.
The strategy is one to abort competition. To soften potential competitors with cushy jobs and stupid pay days. TO indoctrinate them into a way of building and thinking that isnt wholly compatible with startups.
What happens when these processes misfire. You get what's app. 30 engineers and 30 servers at the time FB bought them (or some stupidly low number, I'm close). Your average post FAANG engineer would have 2 dozen people running kafka and kuberneties with a multi million dollar cloud spend and have given most of the company away to VC's.
Am I suggesting there is a cabal? No, this is the 'natural order' and has been going on since Edison. The distinction is one of nuance. If you have the stomach for risk it is even easier to succeed now than it was in Edisons time (software isnt physical goods and hardware, its application not creation).
Edit: peter thiel 100k dropout offer is likely an overt example of this idea put into action.
Dead Comment
First google has been asleep and not contributing much to XR for several very important years.
Second meta's version of android (the vr shell is my focus) is an awkward pile of jank and fail. It doesn't feel well done in practical terms.
I like android and what facebook has done is just... bad android.
That said they've been helping moving forward in positive ways with openxr/webxr standards implementations work.
I look forward to a large pile of opensource being contributed to the larger XR community by things getting mainlined into android.
We'll see what google can manage these days with their samsung headset incoming.
Obviously, this is important to them/him. And it certainly makes sense.
But didn't Zuck's review of the Apple Vision Pro compare it's "closed platform" and Meta's is an "open platform"? I never understood how that aligned with their needs or their actions.
And yeah, Meta's Quest platform is relatively open, at least compared to Apple. Probably wouldn't say it's fully open though.
See the recent article where Apple says they'll block porn apps however they can on vision pro. Not cool, it's a really great tech for people with an open mind. SexTech is a fast growing market and imposing morals on your users isn't a nice thing to do.
On quest you can just sideload such apps (though unfortunately sidequest no longer allows them in their store either after they started working with meta). Nevertheless you can still just sideload the APK directly even through sidequest. Which works fine.
The result of dominance games is stagnation. Innovation happens only as a side effect during regime change.
In addition as IBM and Samsung have learned, the OS vendor, not the hardware manufacturer, is the one who controls the platform.