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There is such a thing as a hacker ethic. To me the core is something like "Try to save the world through math, science, understanding, and making cool things."

There is such a thing as a hacker ethic. To me the core is something like "Try to save the world through math, science, understanding, and making cool things." The term has much more history than startup culture, although the goals of startups (many YC funded) can be in line with those ideals (if imperfectly).

kerkeslager 6y ago
This seems a bit off-topic, but is more interesting to me than the topic, so I'll roll with it. :) I don't think the hacker ethic is necessarily about saving the world, and I while I can hypothesize a startup that aligns with a hacker ethic, I have not in practice seen any examples. The hacker ethic is about gaining a deep functional understanding of a system, and then using that deep functional understanding to make that system do something unexpected or cool. As soon as you bring money into the equation, it causes people to do all sorts of predictable and boring things. There are certainly people with hacker cred who have gotten rich, but the money was incidental to the hacking. For example, Woz has it because he designed computers he wanted to use and that happened to turn out to be very profitable.
- gnramires 6y ago
  > I don't think the hacker ethic is necessarily about saving the world, and I while I can hypothesize a startup that aligns with a hacker ethic, I have not in practice seen any examples. I guess it's more of a particular interpretation, of me growing up with a 90s idealism of saving the world. It's a bit naive of course, but a naivety of the hopeful kind, not of ignorant kind. Orgs that come to mind are Wikipedia, Khan Academy, various Open Source projects and foundations, etc. I do think maintaining a good, coherent mission is still an open problem with successful companies, but many do help one way or another. For example, Dropbox was quite revolutionary in the way everyone uses and shares files I think. Reddit changed internet discourse (in some valuable, and in some complicated ways), though its trajectory is uncertain. Maybe there could be a stronger version of a Mission statement? Something like companies committing to a mission statement, and being liable somehow to acting inconsistency with it (who would monitor this though? should be some kind of external entity), and shareholders/board members should not be allowed to modify it in a manner gravely inconsistent with the original vision.
  - kerkeslager 6y ago
    > I guess it's more of a particular interpretation, of me growing up with a 90s idealism of saving the world. It's a bit naive of course, but a naivety of the hopeful kind, not of ignorant kind. I think you're missing the critical disconnect between startups and hacker ethic. There's no conflict between hacker ethic and saving the world. Wikipedia in the early days is a great example of that, but I'd really hesitate to call Wikipedia a "startup" at that time. Hacker ethic isn't about saving the world, it's about doing something cool. But saving the world can be cool. The conflict between hacker ethic and startups is money, and Wikipedia as it has grown is a great example of that too: as Wikipedia started taking on more projects, they started needing funding. In order to get that funding, they needed respectability, because donors wouldn't donate to some weird offbeat hacker project. This caused the rise of deletionism: a respectable encyclopedia doesn't have a separate article for every Pokémon. Wikipedia did originate with the hacker ethic, but that hacker ethic became irrelevant as soon as money became a motivating factor. And that's also the thing about open source: yeah, open source software (and moreso free software) are part of hacker culture. People who hand-wring about how open source isn't profitable don't get it: that's not why a lot of open source developers write open source software. If you want to make money off writing code, you don't create an open source project, you create a startup: create a platform, track your users, find the thing they value the most about the platform, and monetize that. Oh, and while you're doing that, you've made enough ethical compromises that you can't really be said to be saving the world any more, but that wasn't really ever the goal, now was it? The people in the world who need saving the most are the ones who can't pay to be saved--if they could pay to be saved they would have done it already. There isn't money in saving the world.

kerkeslager 6y ago

This seems a bit off-topic, but is more interesting to me than the topic, so I'll roll with it. :) I don't think the hacker ethic is necessarily about saving the world, and I while I can hypothesize a startup that aligns with a hacker ethic, I have not in practice seen any examples. The hacker ethic is about gaining a deep functional understanding of a system, and then using that deep functional understanding to make that system do something unexpected or cool. As soon as you bring money into the equation, it causes people to do all sorts of predictable and boring things. There are certainly people with hacker cred who have gotten rich, but the money was incidental to the hacking. For example, Woz has it because he designed computers he wanted to use and that happened to turn out to be very profitable.

gnramires 6y ago
> I don't think the hacker ethic is necessarily about saving the world, and I while I can hypothesize a startup that aligns with a hacker ethic, I have not in practice seen any examples. I guess it's more of a particular interpretation, of me growing up with a 90s idealism of saving the world. It's a bit naive of course, but a naivety of the hopeful kind, not of ignorant kind. Orgs that come to mind are Wikipedia, Khan Academy, various Open Source projects and foundations, etc. I do think maintaining a good, coherent mission is still an open problem with successful companies, but many do help one way or another. For example, Dropbox was quite revolutionary in the way everyone uses and shares files I think. Reddit changed internet discourse (in some valuable, and in some complicated ways), though its trajectory is uncertain. Maybe there could be a stronger version of a Mission statement? Something like companies committing to a mission statement, and being liable somehow to acting inconsistency with it (who would monitor this though? should be some kind of external entity), and shareholders/board members should not be allowed to modify it in a manner gravely inconsistent with the original vision.
- kerkeslager 6y ago
  > I guess it's more of a particular interpretation, of me growing up with a 90s idealism of saving the world. It's a bit naive of course, but a naivety of the hopeful kind, not of ignorant kind. I think you're missing the critical disconnect between startups and hacker ethic. There's no conflict between hacker ethic and saving the world. Wikipedia in the early days is a great example of that, but I'd really hesitate to call Wikipedia a "startup" at that time. Hacker ethic isn't about saving the world, it's about doing something cool. But saving the world can be cool. The conflict between hacker ethic and startups is money, and Wikipedia as it has grown is a great example of that too: as Wikipedia started taking on more projects, they started needing funding. In order to get that funding, they needed respectability, because donors wouldn't donate to some weird offbeat hacker project. This caused the rise of deletionism: a respectable encyclopedia doesn't have a separate article for every Pokémon. Wikipedia did originate with the hacker ethic, but that hacker ethic became irrelevant as soon as money became a motivating factor. And that's also the thing about open source: yeah, open source software (and moreso free software) are part of hacker culture. People who hand-wring about how open source isn't profitable don't get it: that's not why a lot of open source developers write open source software. If you want to make money off writing code, you don't create an open source project, you create a startup: create a platform, track your users, find the thing they value the most about the platform, and monetize that. Oh, and while you're doing that, you've made enough ethical compromises that you can't really be said to be saving the world any more, but that wasn't really ever the goal, now was it? The people in the world who need saving the most are the ones who can't pay to be saved--if they could pay to be saved they would have done it already. There isn't money in saving the world.