Big corps usually prohibit their employees from expressing their personal opinions. It’s sometimes tolerated but always against the employment contract. So whenever you’re saying something, bigcorp could decide that “this one’s too far”. On a topic with as much PR as this one, it’s rather dangerous to comment on if you gave a medium-to-high level position.
The reason big corps do it is so that their PR department has ANY chance of sending a coherent message. So it’s not even evil behaviour IMHO.
All that to say, I understand why they used an anonymous account. Of course, that doesn’t mean one has to believe them, it’s their word against Carmack’s. But it’s good to hear that perspective IMO.
> Big corps usually prohibit their employees from expressing their personal opinions.
Yes, but does that make it any better though? We understand why they have to do it anonymously, but it's still someone with nothing at stake, who we can't evaluate the claims of.
I'm not sure there is much of substance to evaluate. If we fired every technical lead who sometimes "waded into areas with no experience," issued orders, followed a conviction or two and occasionally provided disparaging feedback, there would be no good engineers left. The bullying and devaluing claims are worth investigation, but that's always very subjective and range from "my boss disagrees with me" to horrific abuse.
I don't disagree, and I was in a similar position not too long ago.
But it also doesn't change the fact that this is ultimately hearsay. Maybe this was someone who butted heads and ultimately had the better idea go by the wayside because they lacked clout. Maybe they are a gilted employee whose full story would make them feel like how they described Carmack. We don't know and on the internet it's way too easy to pretend to that sabetour who never even worked at Meta but is very angry about some design decision in Quake 3.
There's ultimately no good way to do PR as a non-PR employee for that reason, even if the big corp allowed it. You either put your name on the line or you just say nothing. Most employees choose the latter. Your best bet if you have any real evidence and want impact is to seek a journalist for coverage and anonymity.
Anything else is simply a footnote to keep in mind until (if ever) some big bust happened.
You can, but I'm not that anonymous (one can easily find my name by searching for my username, not that there's much interesting to find anyway). More importantly, I wouldn't try to damage a person's reputation if I wasn't ready to stand behind what I said and, if proven wrong myself, take some responsibility. I think a few negative things were said about his personality, which can be damaging. An anonymous internet comment is not the most credible source though.
Disclaimer: I don't work for Meta, don't know Carmack, etc.
