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We're not really talking about hackers here though. To me a hacker is ripping through code getting it done. But that works better in the software world where it

We're not really talking about hackers here though. To me a hacker is ripping through code getting it done. But that works better in the software world where it is relatively easy to make a mistake. I don't work at Nvidia, but working in the hardware field things go a bit slower. You need people who pay attention to detail and follow the process to a T to avoid costly mistakes and rework. Thats why "people who could put up with the bullshit that it took to get into the top 15%" and "people who are intelligent enough to design chips at a high level and disciplined to follow the process to avoid blowing hundreds of thousands of a dollars per mistake" have more cross over than high GPA and good ruby on rails hacker. It is just a different mindset and a different set of economics to be building slow iterating hardware vs quick iterating software.

potatolicious 16y ago
It's a good point - FWIW, the jobs I was looking at were strictly software positions, but it stands to reason that the corporate hiring culture would be based on the needs of hardware people.
rikthevik 16y ago
Agree. Hardware design is a much slower and deliberate process. The EEs and CMEs I know who are the best at hardware really are completely different from the best software people I know. I don't think there's a great deal of overlap between the two groups.
alain94040 16y ago
I see hardware design as mostly the same as software. There really isn't much difference to it. You can have flashes of genius and figure out how to implement a solution in minutes, just like in software. And just like for production software, you have to test your code to death to make sure there isn't any bug. For instance, we usually booted Linux on CPUs to make sure nothing would go wrong (and things would usually go wrong around cycle 1,000,000,000! Debug that)
- krschultz 16y ago
  I imagine at a high level software that is well tested an goes through QA is a lot like hardware (or other engineering in general). But my experience in software was at a startup where if it compiled an built, we all shouted SHIP IT immediately (and were only half joking). We had great hackers doing tough things quickly, but there were definitely times we cut corners on testing knowing we could just patch it later if need be.

potatolicious 16y ago

It's a good point - FWIW, the jobs I was looking at were strictly software positions, but it stands to reason that the corporate hiring culture would be based on the needs of hardware people.

rikthevik 16y ago

Agree. Hardware design is a much slower and deliberate process. The EEs and CMEs I know who are the best at hardware really are completely different from the best software people I know. I don't think there's a great deal of overlap between the two groups.

alain94040 16y ago

I see hardware design as mostly the same as software. There really isn't much difference to it. You can have flashes of genius and figure out how to implement a solution in minutes, just like in software. And just like for production software, you have to test your code to death to make sure there isn't any bug. For instance, we usually booted Linux on CPUs to make sure nothing would go wrong (and things would usually go wrong around cycle 1,000,000,000! Debug that)

krschultz 16y ago
I imagine at a high level software that is well tested an goes through QA is a lot like hardware (or other engineering in general). But my experience in software was at a startup where if it compiled an built, we all shouted SHIP IT immediately (and were only half joking). We had great hackers doing tough things quickly, but there were definitely times we cut corners on testing knowing we could just patch it later if need be.