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Great Hacker != Great Hire (2004)
- bayareaguy 17y agoWhen I think about the great hackers I know, one thing they have in common is the extreme difficulty of making them work on anything they don't want to. Ay, there's the rub: keeping highly productive people's interests aligned with the goals of the organization can be hard, particularly for tasks that don't take advantage of whatever it is they like about what they do. Organizations need to realize that this is the same for all great individuals, hackers or otherwise. The type of people ISVs like SourceGear need for success is probably different from the type needed by YCombinator startups.
- arupchak 17y agoExactly, this is a problem in any profession. When you run into a situation where you need someone to come in and fix something or do, at first, seemingly mindless work, it is incredibly hard to the right person. I guess the solution is to try and make sure you never create these 'opputunities' for future hires.
- rjurney 17y agoHere here. Very insightful. I often wonder... I've made a pretty bad employee so far, which is one of the reason I'm a consultant for my cash monies and start companies whenever I can afford to. But... then again I've never had a really interesting job... ever. I wonder if I would make a great employee at some kick ass company doing interesting research, large or small?
- cdr 17y ago"Wednesday, August 04, 2004" Pretty positive it's been posted here before too.
- mattyb 17y agoYep: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=244621 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=244621 Edit: And the URLs are identical; does the dupe-blocker only apply to submissions less than a year old?
- wyday 17y agoSorry, I didn't catch it the first time. Thanks for the link to the original, it has quite a lively discussion.
- alanthonyc 17y agoI remember reading a discussion on a post that was a dupe of another that was over a year old. PG said it was cool and that a year was enough time.
- sho 17y agoThe expression in the title is incomplete. Let me fix it: Great Hacker != Great Hire unless (Good Company && Interesting Work) That's better, and now you don't have the read the article, which is just some whipped-sounding guy complaining that all the smart programmers don't want to waste their time doing telephone support for his Visual SourceSafe tool.
- wyday 17y agosome whipped-sounding guy He owns the company. Does he also hold the whip?
- gaius 17y agoI don't think he's actually read much of PG's writing. For example, he says "great hackers" aren't willing to do grunt work, but the way you get Robert Morris to do your Unix admin is to give him a big chunk of equity! Smart people are perfectly happy to do mundane or tedious tasks a) in support of a grand vision or b) for a big pile of money. That's why movie FX and games pays so badly, and SAP implementation pays so much. If you're in the middle somewhere, well, complaining about it won't make much difference.