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To me, "business" in any generic sense just seems incredibly boring. It always has, it always will. I could care less about what the trends are or where I per

To me, "business" in any generic sense just seems incredibly boring. It always has, it always will. I could care less about what the trends are or where I perceive the money is. In contrast, "technical challenges", have and will always be of interest to me, even if they are pointless, like the Euler Project or going to ground on some obscure syntax question. It seems likely that sharp graduates coming into tech because they perceive they can make a lot of money there or because they perceive it is a good launching pad into an executive lifestyle is not going to be a net benefit to the technical community in the long run. This group of people, as a whole, will never share in the ESR-style hacker ethos.

gaius 12y ago
A meaningful system, one that gets stuff done in the real world, comprises people, processes and technology. All are hackable.
- sutterbomb 12y ago
  This is very true and too many people overlook it. Many "generic" challenges faced by "business" are similar in nature to technical challenges. For example, a common business challenge is organizational design. How do we create an organizational structure that serves the needs of the business and the people who work there? Well to start, what are the basic inputs and outputs of the business? What is needed to transform those inputs to the outputs in a manner that is efficient, adaptable, safe etc. Are there common groups of people that tend to work on common inputs and create common outputs ? Within those groups, are there specific people needed to do specific tasks? Imagine person A, in group A, needs an output from person B in group B. Does person A need to know exactly how the output was created? If you've got this far, hopefully you realize the parallels I'm drawing. Same types of thought experiments can be applied to all kinds of operational and financial aspects of running a business- most are clear optimization problems. It's unfortunate that too many "hackers" hear the word business and assume it's about boozy dinners with other business people, or boring powerpoints that tell us nothing. There's plenty of interesting challenges in business, and strong MBA-types are often better prepared to address them because they understand the various design patterns available to them.
  - jordanpg 12y ago
    I suppose this is true, but I'm talking about what these MBAs coming out of top-tier programs are all about. In my experience, they're not interested in technical challenges, they're interested in money and status. That is why the Economist can write headlines like this in the first place; in other words, why the "interests" of MBAs can shift at all. I don't think that legions of MBAs were going into investment banking because it was just so fascinating to them, and I don't think that's why they're gravitating to SV, either.

gaius 12y ago

A meaningful system, one that gets stuff done in the real world, comprises people, processes and technology. All are hackable.

sutterbomb 12y ago
This is very true and too many people overlook it. Many "generic" challenges faced by "business" are similar in nature to technical challenges. For example, a common business challenge is organizational design. How do we create an organizational structure that serves the needs of the business and the people who work there? Well to start, what are the basic inputs and outputs of the business? What is needed to transform those inputs to the outputs in a manner that is efficient, adaptable, safe etc. Are there common groups of people that tend to work on common inputs and create common outputs ? Within those groups, are there specific people needed to do specific tasks? Imagine person A, in group A, needs an output from person B in group B. Does person A need to know exactly how the output was created? If you've got this far, hopefully you realize the parallels I'm drawing. Same types of thought experiments can be applied to all kinds of operational and financial aspects of running a business- most are clear optimization problems. It's unfortunate that too many "hackers" hear the word business and assume it's about boozy dinners with other business people, or boring powerpoints that tell us nothing. There's plenty of interesting challenges in business, and strong MBA-types are often better prepared to address them because they understand the various design patterns available to them.
- jordanpg 12y ago
  I suppose this is true, but I'm talking about what these MBAs coming out of top-tier programs are all about. In my experience, they're not interested in technical challenges, they're interested in money and status. That is why the Economist can write headlines like this in the first place; in other words, why the "interests" of MBAs can shift at all. I don't think that legions of MBAs were going into investment banking because it was just so fascinating to them, and I don't think that's why they're gravitating to SV, either.