Does the 'hacker ethic' help or harm today's developers?

As a long-time (in other words 'old') programmer, I find it interesting that many of your points could be made about American management. It seems like the successful companies in the U.S. have imported managers from overseas. Why should Toyota and Honda be able to brag about their working environment - as GM and Chrysler sink under the ways? It's the constant focus on money that has corrupted and destroyed this country. Doing good work for its own sake has gone from passe to scorned. Only the crooks, liars, and low-lifes make it to the top - because of those same characteristics and then take their companies down with them. I am sure that there are a few good U.S. managers out there who are outraged. Don't be outraged too loud - you are an endangered species. You might end up on one of the above's wall.

Wow, where should I start... You got this all wrong. #1 You are not a hacker. You are an amateur programmer, there is a difference. #2 You gave the TV version of the "hacker ethic" not the real one. The hacker ethic is not about slinging code, its about openness, sharing, improvement, exploration. #3 Indian and American colleges in general are churning out "play book" professionals. If I was looking for someone who was "employable" aka "sweat shop developer with little ability to think outside the box" then sure these guys work out well. But this striving for mediocrity is not something I would promote. #4 Treated like rock stars? You have the programmers mixed up with the entrepreneurs. Programmers generally want to be left alone to create, the business nut cases using technology as a distraction tactic to gather funding and prop their egos I would say deserve your diva claim, but leave the programmers alone, you are not one of us. #5 Not team players? Heard of open source? probably not. Of course I could go on and on, but i am tired of sounding like a troll and you are obviously from the department of propaganda and dis information so i will stop wasting my time. get a job.

Thanks Randy, you summed it up perfectly. Neil McAllister is a hack and should be fired for writing this kind of crap.

Yes... This article is stupendously bad. One, it is assumed that the height of utility or goodness of said engineer is to be "employable", which is probably the opposite of the truth. I'd put forth that the optimal use of a hacker/programmer's time is to build useful things. This is often a far cry from being employed. Two, it is assumed that companies know what (or who) is good for them, which is patently false. Three, it is assumed that companies know what sort of thing would be useful to build (false), and the "best" way to build it. This latter point is most likely to be opined by a middle or departmental manager, who can optimize their career by employing lots of people for protacted, well-organized and outrageously documented periods of time. Thus Six Sigma et al. Somehow I don't believe I'm the only engineer who sees Six Sigma as an excuse for having someone around who actually Knows What's Going On? So much the better for a manager, however, to be able to fire off a hundred-page print job of graphs and gantt charts and such.

interesting article on the thoughts of an Indiana's mindset. but yes a bit bland. First of all the "hacker" type person has never been employable in the US. The only way this kind of person became employable was to break into some companies mainframe and do something cute, without damaging data. Course this all stopped in the late 70's early 80's when the whiz kid who was taught how to do basic programming when he was 4, let the worm loose at night and supposedly a classmate overheard him say "this will show them". Hacker's in the UK are employable but are not considered the same BAD apple as they are here in the US. The term Hacker in the UK is actually used as a form of flattery, high recognition towards a programmer or pretty much any type of technical person. What would be a "Whiz Kid" here in the US. maybe with the cultural ties that have long existed between the west indies and the UK maybe the west indies relates to hackers the same as UK. Here in the US the term hacker really is used as a negative explanation about what a person is up to (typically something out right bad or mischievous in nature) So this article in my opinion really is comparing apples to oranges, which I don't believe the west indie guy is even realizing he is doing, the author certainly doesn't.

actually I have to correct myself. The "whiz kid" here in the us is not really sought after by the masses, especially by the pretentious companies. They'll hire their kids to fill these fun positions or their neighbors kids (when that kid shows an aptitude for something that doesn't threaten their own job). Course most of the time when these kind of whiz kids are hired they usually do something stupid and unprofessional they wind up embarrassing themselves and the person who hires them. Randy I do agree and like your "Playbook" term. Cause in american businesses, again especially the pretentious ones, they do their hiring the same way sports teams do their hiring. They scout out the person who never lost a game, and as soon as that person does make a mistake within the company that person either finds or contrives a scapegoat. For which they continue to keep messing things up and the company continues to believe them cause they have so much riding on that person. I recently saw something on the history channel where J Edger Hoover kept his job for decades not because he knew what he was doing to stop crime, but for the info he blackmailed presidents with. FBI really didn't start making serious arrests on organized crime till JEH died (when he left office). I don't know how hiring works outside the US , but I do know here in the US, companies are not looking for the person who can walk into any giving problem and create and deliver a solution the customer is happy with (happy is such a unknown when it comes to providing a solution also). There's a whole another article there. What constitutes a happy customer. The one who got something canned and it works (by works I mean it does the job, not needs more debugging) 95% of the time and has a bunch of stuff that the customer never will use, or the customer who got a custom solution that works 95% and needs an occasional tweak now and then to their solution. Or the customer who has a developer who gets something that works 60% - 95% of the time before the due date, and has an understanding of the higher the complexity the longer it will take. really programmers/developers are just another tool in the companies resource box. Sad but true. I agree that the Rock Star mentality really is those who are trying to make a name for themselves but not as programmers. Intel's commercial where they show the guy who was part developer in the USB, where his fellow employee's are cheering like he is rock star is definitely giving people the wrong idea about how companies treat employees here in the US. I certainly don't believe in the "PROFESSIONALLY MINDED BUSINESS WORLD OF THE US" that goes on. Apple had some interesting ways of doing company parties, but that was in the 80's. Anybody from Apple care to share if those kind of parties still occur?

Well son, I wish you were a better hacker or a better word smith. The head line of this piece opens with gross obfuscation. The word hacker alone is burdened with 40 years of etymological history that insures misinterpretation because of the many of interpretations it will receive. And few other words have sparked more or more vigorous debate than ethics.

Used together, as though there were some common body of ethics, agreed upon by even a notable subset of hackers, is at best misleading, and always obfuscatory. Such use is indicative of confused thinking or a hidden agenda. There are ethical hackers and there are unethical hackers. Being a hacker in no way affects your ethical status, and similarly your ethical stature in no way impacts your abilities as a hacker.

America did not fall in love with hackers. America has always been in love with Horatio Alger stories. There is a difference. And the love of get rich quick stories is both timeless and borderless. America has, on the other hand, always been suspicious and somewhat afraid of hackers. The term was coined by hackers as a positive self description and almost immediately translated into something less positive by non-hackers uncomfortable with what ever power they perceived hacking to bestow. A common theme anytime someone feels they are on the outside looking in. This piece serves only to cement the distrust.

Mr. McAllister, you claim to be a hacker in the opening, but have the audacity to posit that "American-style hackers" would eschew testing, debugging, code reviews, and refactoring. That seems to me to be offensive or stupid or both. You decide what fits. Testing, debugging, code reviews, and refactoring ARE hacking.

In short, none of the ills you lay at the feet of hackers have their root cause in hack or hacker. They are societal ills. Where hackers go wrong most often is consenting to work for dysfunctional managers and companies. There are techniques for managing functions you could not perform yourself, but an unfortunately large fraction of managers are either too lazy or too stupid to avail themselves of what are actually simple concepts. The avarice you ascribe to hackers while evident in some is far more common among their managers. And please, we do not need remedy in the education of programmers to address the needs of the real world we need that for everyone!

You've written some stinkers Neil, but this one takes the cake.

The absurd premise and tagline of this article aside, has Neil considered the rather obvious subtext underlying Nayar's commentary.. "Still, I have to ask: Is that really a good thing? If every modern American schoolchild knows more about PCs and computing than their parents ever could, why does Vineet Nayar, CEO of the Indian IT outsourcing vendor HTC Technologies, claim that most U.S. college grads are "unemployable"?" Why would the CEO of an Indian offshoring vendor, say something like that? Hmmmm.... Could it be that, perhaps, he wants to promote his own wares and services? Just saying.