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The answer is obvious: the businesspeople should learn to hack. My boss is a pure business guy. He didn't rise up from the ranks to become the boss; he's run

The answer is obvious: the businesspeople should learn to hack. My boss is a pure business guy. He didn't rise up from the ranks to become the boss; he's run multiple startups, and each time he's served as a "business guy," not a hacker. Yet despite this he knows enough about every facet of his business that you can explain to him a subtle bug in our software or an algorithm involving frequency transforms--and he'll understand you. The power of this is incredible; while it takes a good amount of effort to be familiar with the technical aspects of the business, it gives so many benefits--from the obvious (the hackers trust you more and are more likely to give you the accurate lowdown on any situation or proposal) to the less obvious (you can recognize good hackers better). Recently, he wrote a very complex threading patch that dealt with all sorts of race conditions for a program that, while part of our business, he had never touched before. Being a "business type" does not justify being clueless about the technical aspects of your business.

moe 18y ago
Recently, he wrote a very complex threading patch that dealt with all sorts of race conditions for a program that, while part of our business, he had never touched before. Sorry, but that kind of super-hero is a very, very rare breed. When did he learn about multithreaded programming? You don't just pick that up along the way anyhow. Honestly your story sounds more like a Hacker who turned business-guy a while ago than a business-guy who magically accumulated hacker skills.
- strlen 18y ago
  > Sorry, but that kind of super-hero is a very, very rare breed. First start-up success is very rare as well, so perhaps it should follow that it involves a rare breed of people. As for multi-threaded programming-- that is one skill that universities generally teach well as a part of undergraduate computer science programs (although I can only speak for mine). It's also generally about recognizing patterns (consumer/producer problem, dining philosopher problems) and being able to see them irrespective of the implementation (I first began playing with POSIX threads before college, learned the formal concepts in a class which used Solaris threads and am now working through Doug Lea's book about concurrency in Java: http://java.sun.com/docs/books/cp/ http://java.sun.com/docs/books/cp/). There are many people who go into MBA and JD programs with CS and EE undergraduate degrees (it's excellent preparation in the sense that it's a lot of brain gymnastic; statistics also show many undergraduate engineer majors also go on to medical school as well). So one may not necessarily be a hacker (they don't code for fun) but have a CS education -- or they may even be a hacker (they do code for fun) without being a professional developer (they've never worked in a software engineering organization). Incidentally, I can describe people that fit all of those molds (many CEOs of big companies generally fit the "has a technical undergraduate background, climbed the technical ladder at big-co, got an MBA and switched to management or sales" pattern; start-up founders frequently fit the "worked on Wall-Street by day, coded for fun by night" pattern).
  - DarkShikari 18y ago
    First start-up success is very rare as well, so perhaps it should follow that it involves a rare breed of people. I didn't say all his startups were successful ;) His third (I think) startup, the current one, is quite successful though, and he hopes to be able to sell it for at least a billion eventually. Current estimated valuation is a quarter of a billion with at least 50m in VC (don't know the exact numbers). About ~60 employees. On the topic of the GP post: you talk about a "businessperson who magically acquired hacker skills"--but is it somehow more likely to have a "hacker who magically acquires businessperson skills"?
    - donaq 18y ago
      Yes, I do think it is more likely, because "businessperson skills" are skills that an observant and intelligent person might pick up in the normal course of his life, for example, arithmetic. I think business is very simple. Profit. Loss. Take the sales, subtract the costs, you get this big positive number. The math is quite straightforward. - Bill Gates Then there's negotiation/persuasion/deal-making/people skills. Most people engage in activities involving variations of those everyday. You'd almost have to be a hermit to avoid picking up some people skills. While some hackers may halfway fit that description, I doubt that most do. Acquiring hacker skills, OTOH, involves rather more specialized effort.

moe 18y ago

Recently, he wrote a very complex threading patch that dealt with all sorts of race conditions for a program that, while part of our business, he had never touched before. Sorry, but that kind of super-hero is a very, very rare breed. When did he learn about multithreaded programming? You don't just pick that up along the way anyhow. Honestly your story sounds more like a Hacker who turned business-guy a while ago than a business-guy who magically accumulated hacker skills.

strlen 18y ago
> Sorry, but that kind of super-hero is a very, very rare breed. First start-up success is very rare as well, so perhaps it should follow that it involves a rare breed of people. As for multi-threaded programming-- that is one skill that universities generally teach well as a part of undergraduate computer science programs (although I can only speak for mine). It's also generally about recognizing patterns (consumer/producer problem, dining philosopher problems) and being able to see them irrespective of the implementation (I first began playing with POSIX threads before college, learned the formal concepts in a class which used Solaris threads and am now working through Doug Lea's book about concurrency in Java: http://java.sun.com/docs/books/cp/ http://java.sun.com/docs/books/cp/). There are many people who go into MBA and JD programs with CS and EE undergraduate degrees (it's excellent preparation in the sense that it's a lot of brain gymnastic; statistics also show many undergraduate engineer majors also go on to medical school as well). So one may not necessarily be a hacker (they don't code for fun) but have a CS education -- or they may even be a hacker (they do code for fun) without being a professional developer (they've never worked in a software engineering organization). Incidentally, I can describe people that fit all of those molds (many CEOs of big companies generally fit the "has a technical undergraduate background, climbed the technical ladder at big-co, got an MBA and switched to management or sales" pattern; start-up founders frequently fit the "worked on Wall-Street by day, coded for fun by night" pattern).
- DarkShikari 18y ago
  First start-up success is very rare as well, so perhaps it should follow that it involves a rare breed of people. I didn't say all his startups were successful ;) His third (I think) startup, the current one, is quite successful though, and he hopes to be able to sell it for at least a billion eventually. Current estimated valuation is a quarter of a billion with at least 50m in VC (don't know the exact numbers). About ~60 employees. On the topic of the GP post: you talk about a "businessperson who magically acquired hacker skills"--but is it somehow more likely to have a "hacker who magically acquires businessperson skills"?
  - donaq 18y ago
    Yes, I do think it is more likely, because "businessperson skills" are skills that an observant and intelligent person might pick up in the normal course of his life, for example, arithmetic. I think business is very simple. Profit. Loss. Take the sales, subtract the costs, you get this big positive number. The math is quite straightforward. - Bill Gates Then there's negotiation/persuasion/deal-making/people skills. Most people engage in activities involving variations of those everyday. You'd almost have to be a hermit to avoid picking up some people skills. While some hackers may halfway fit that description, I doubt that most do. Acquiring hacker skills, OTOH, involves rather more specialized effort.