As someone who joined wanting to revolutionize rendering, and left wanting revenge (and I will have revenge at some point), I'm not sure this is the right pov.
Also "hiring grit instead of pedigree", NV was the only place that had any sort of issue with me being self taught. Hiring manager had a mild panic for a moment when he realized. so get out of here with that.
@demofox this is 100% exact opposite of my experience. At Google, Meta etc for Research, you don't get through a recruiter without PhD. At NVIDIA nobody asked me about my education at any point, and there are many Research Scientists without a PhD.
Don't project a single bad manager experience onto the whole company, it's just petty and disrespectful towards other people working there.
@demofox consider that you are shitting on the life work of 30000 people based on a few that you had a personal problem with (because you didn't do what you were told to and were pursuing your interests targeting your own blog instead) - isn't this petty?
I just gave you an example that 100% contradicts your experience regarding education and hiring. And? Just carry on writing stuff that is simply not true in general?
This is childish and disrespectful, including towards me and my teammates.
@lritter@demofox I'm not the one writing about having a revenge on a company (wtf?! Is this kindergarten?). Alan shares his perspective, but hides what was the problem his org had with him.
I had one terrible manager at Google - who knows, knows. And yet, I think it's a fantastic place full of amazing people whom I absolutely respect and I recommend it to everyone. One can be unlucky, but most will thrive.
Suggesting that everyone somewhere is a career/politics person offends me.
@BartWronski@lritter I'm not sure what the revenge will look like, but with luck, you'll get some enjoyment from it too :)
There's a real, systemic problem causing people harm, and that is not ok.
@lritter@demofox when I was deciding whether to join NVIDIA (full of people I know personally well and whose work I admire), I cross-checked the stories. And then I cross-checked them with some folks at Blizzard. They painted a different and consistent picture.
Pushback against generalized allegations against a company and its workers is part of the discourse. I expect an honest person to disclose and reveal the perspective of the other side.
And be specific, not generalize.
@BartWronski@lritter I feel like it'd be crossing a line to name individuals and what specifically happened, but uhh "north American dev tech management" is that close enough? Now you can go ask them their side and believe them eh? And HR who I asked for help, who absolutely did not, you can talk to them too i reckon.
@demofox@lritter I told you my story with my single manager at Google. I decided not to bring it public, as it won't change anything, paint me negatively and as a bitter person. And 99.99% percent going to Google will not interact with them.
It's up to you if you want to do it and how specific you are. But PLEASE, don't write it as NVIDIA, implying it's all people there and every team/org.
And if you want to follow "journalistic integrity", reveal the conflicts of interest and possible bias.
@demofox@lritter and as I said, I asked multiple people, at different teams, and even different companies. I don't 100% trust any single of those - just as single datapoints. We are all humans and have our biases. And we don't see everything that is going on.
As I said, my request is not crazy, just standard intellectual honesty practices.
You don't want to name names? Ok, this is fair! But specify that it was one team/director/VP, and reveal they also had long-term criticisms towards you.
@BartWronski@lritter@BartWronski@lritter that last part is a lie on their part if that's what they said.
I was there about a year, wrote the RTXGI plugin solo, created STBN and made siggraph submission, started an nv real time graphics community, helped folks like Peter Shirley and Pawel / CoD get better sampling / noise. Cant say all things (rip fulcrum)
My sin was the person I reported to wanted things that were not satisfyable, so I had to go around him, and his boss sided with me (sanity)
@BartWronski@lritter this person had never been in management before. This person had done graphics and software development but only internal to companies / in dev tech type roles.
Reviews came around, totally oral, no paperwork, he ripped into me for an hour about how bad a job I did and how everything I was telling their boss was wrong.
I told this person's boss, said it seemed like retaliation. They unified against me, with amnesia about them having to overrule this person+the good I did.
@BartWronski@lritter HR said I was the problem after faking an investigation where they didn't look at any of the evidence I offered to share. VP would not help rehome me either when I asked, said it's up to individuals to get themselves out of bad teams.
I had to stay for 3 months to get STBN out, cause they wouldn't let me take it with me.
I left destroyed from poor treatment, especially after that review.
I lost research they wouldn't let me take due to pettiness, they've done nothing with.
@BartWronski@lritter after I left, I had several people tell me they left similarly destroyed from poor treatment after good work. Also, that HR routinely pushes people to take unpaid time off to recover from this, but teach time they act surprised like it's never happened before.
It's a hellscape, man. It is not ok.
@BartWronski@lritter I've also heard there is a process that's supposed to kick in to hp resolve this kind of situation, that just didn't. Like, it's on the power to initiate the process, which helps the employee, so... any surprise the power didn't do that? Anyways, enough said for now.
@demofox@lritter my experience with HR at Google: they interviewed ~10 people about what I said, then said they all confirmed "the vibe" and general patterns of behavior, but without solid WRITTEN evidence, they can only reprimand someone, no other action can be done without "court/legal quality" proof. And they did reprimand that person, it helped me for a few months, then came back, so I decided to leave.
This is how it works everywhere. HR is an extension of legal...
@demofox@lritter the version I heard: you were asked to work only on the first thing you mention, you did well, but everything else was considered as your "hobby"/"passion" that you expected to get paid for and were upset others disagree.
So the real vs expected outcome for a year was too small. And they told you not to work on blue noise hobby stuff multiple times.
I mean, if you work for someone and get paid, you have to work on things the company expects you to do, not what you want.
@BartWronski@lritter to help cement that in, they were happy about stbn. It was a solution to an adaptive sampling problem Tomas and Ravi were working on. They felt it was so compelling it deserved to be it's own paper. It became a siggraph submission and is in use - hard to tell where it's used everywhere but it includes EA games, and UE's lumen. Also a patent (against my will).
Fiction. They were happy with my blue noise work, it was in line with their goals, never said to stop.
@BartWronski@demofox@lritter to be honest, I think Nvidia is big enough to take this hit. I don’t think it will affect your recruitment effort or anything really. Microsoft, Google, Meta, Apple all had these stories, it’s not like most people will put this story above others or somehow ignore the salaries being offered.
@BartWronski@demofox@lritter to put things in another way: even if you match multiple sources, there will still be fucked things revealing themselves only when you are on the job. (I know this a bit too well.)
@BartWronski@demofox
Corporations can be awesome at one place, and absolute hell-holes 10 meters away. Both of you can be right at the same time... and wrong at the same time too.
I've seen someone scream "Fuck Frostbite" into the void for half a decade after they had a terrible experience here. Meanwhile, other folks (including myself) were swearing this was the best company they had ever worked at. Both experiences can be true.
My takeaway: there's no single truth in a corporation
@jon_valdes@demofox yes, and this was my exact experience both at Ubisoft (one FANTASTIC team, the kindest and the best I was on, one an incompetent shit show).
Or at Google which has some of the most skilled and caring people in the tech world, I thrived on two teams/managers, but suffered from HR-reported harassment under one.
What does a mature person do? Offend everyone at that company?
@BartWronski@demofox
(Once again I'm getting myself into things I shouldn't, but "In for a penny, in for a pound", I guess!)
Burning bridges does carry consequences. Whether doing that is worth it is up to the person that feels hurt.
This goes both for Alan's relation with nVidia, and for your relation with Alan. Alan clearly feels hurt by nVidia, and feels the need to burn that bridge forever.
@BartWronski@demofox
After a similar public attack on my team from an ex-employee, I understand this can feel unfair, tainting the reputation of the team, etc. He's saying your team are bad people, and that hurts. But attacking him won't make him hurt less, or change his mind about the team.
Time will help, eventually. Perhaps patience and understanding would help too
@jon_valdes@demofox I agree. But I told Alan at multiple points to a) be specific b) don't suggest it's the whole NVIDIA. Extrapolating this to the whole company is unfair and intellectually dishonest.
I said it in more diplomatic and polite ways.
He does not give a shit about the feelings of 30k people despite being told that it hurts them, including me, so ¯_(ツ)_/¯
@BartWronski@jon_valdes if you or the rest of nv don't want to be associated with people giving you a bad reputation, you guys are free to get rid of those people.
Killing the messenger isn't the solution.
@demofox@jon_valdes let's say 5% of people are "bad". This will be consistent percentage everywhere, at every single company. At every company I worked at, they were there. You won't change it without written proofs, there are no processes to do it. Most of them will stay.
You can always change the team or the company.
What do you expect ME, a random individual researcher, to do about people at DevTech that I don't know?
I want to protect the reputation of my amazing coworkers (and mine).
@demofox@jon_valdes I am only asking you for nuance and specificity (not even naming names, just writing it was a bad team or manager), not grudge against NVIDIA and damaging tye reputation of it's employees. The part hurts me the most: you suggestion that only bullshit people or career climbers get promoted.
I did this many times.
@BartWronski@demofox@jon_valdes I've read this whole thread/tree, I don't see where Alen implies anything like "only bullshit people or career climbers get promoted" ?
@sprig@demofox@jon_valdes Alan is an honest, truth-seeking person, not afraid to speak out. I appreciate that, really.
So am I, if you follow me, and this is where the "conflict" comes from.
But truth-seeking requires nuance and uncertainty.
And a healthy discourse required empathy/kindness, thinking about whom might get hurt by oversimplifications, not just provocative soundbites.
@sprig@demofox@jon_valdes and btw this quote from Jensen seems provocative out of context, but if you listen to the whole 2min, I agree 1000%. People who faced and overcame difficulties are vastly more successful and great than "golden Stanford kids" who were always successful and had full support.
I don't buy into cult of Jensen (he seems great, but not a "god" like some NV people treat him), but after being 5y under lackluster corp talk Sundar at Google, he's really refreshing and honest.
@BartWronski@demofox@jon_valdes In the interest of truth-seeking and empathetic discourse, from my view saying "because you didn't do what you were told to and were pursuing your interests targeting your own blog instead" seems like a smear that is out of place with the values you listed. I think you're saying it's not even that he experienced the "bad 5%", but that you have enough information to judge that he is the one in the wrong and enough confidence in that to post it publicly.
@sprig@demofox@jon_valdes I'm saying there was an opposite single point of view (that I heard from a few people). One person says X, another says Y.
Disclosing that the other side had an opposite point of view (even if it's not true) and there was a disagreement/conflict about perception of facts and generally disclosures are part of "journalistic" integrity.
If a journalist didn't disclose a personal conflict regarding something they cover, it would invalidate their reporting to me.
@sprig@demofox@jon_valdes I was too rude or agressive, I apologize, genuinely. I respect Alan's work and contributions.
I should have expressed it differently. But as I said, this goes for a while, brought it up a few times, politely, it pains me personally.
I love my current work environment, have a huge respect for coworkers, and I don't want to see them smeared by association and publicily without a chance to defend themselves.
So I will repeat my request - not generalizing to NVIDIA.
@BartWronski@sprig@jon_valdes your request is reasonable and I respect you as well. I'll chew on that pov a bit more and think about the points you bring up. An eye for an eye and all.
@demofox without looking into it, this headline reads like he said a much edge-lordier version of what Ed Catmull said about Pixar's preference for people who had worked on failed projects
Difficult to sort that out from just straight-up malice though
Add comment