
How yuppies hacked the hacker ethos - edward
http://aeon.co/magazine/technology/how-yuppies-hacked-the-original-hacker-ethos/
======
Animats
I suspect that the author has read Derrida. He's obsessing on the meaning of a
word and following semi-random threads trying to deconstruct it. That's
classic Derrida. That approach doesn't solve any problems, but it's a useful
way to generate papers. If you read some Derrida, you too can learn to
generate blithering of that type.

As for yuppies vs. hackers, it helps to go back further, to understand how
hippies morphed into yuppies. Hippies were mostly self-indulgent types who
spouted bogus philosophy to justify their existence. Yuppies are mostly self-
indulgent types who spout bogus philosophy to justify their existence. Stewart
Brand, of Whole Earth Catalog fame, led the transition from hippie to yuppie,
from the commune to the "lifestyle industry", from growing your own food to
Whole Foods.

What happened to the hacker ethos was the absorption of computing into the
advertising industry. The hacker ethos survived the Microsoft era, but not the
Google era. Microsoft was about tools, which was consistent with the hacker
ethos. Google is about ad clicks, and its success created a whole industry
focused on ads and user exploitation, not tools for user empowerment. That's
what destroyed hacker culture.

~~~
hyperpallium
Re: Ham radio. It goes back further than living memory, to telegraph
operators. They also used morse. And I have the impression that some aspects
of unix terminals derive from those days... Edison grew up in those times,
commercializing as much as he could. Yet hackers continued, as they do today.

Though perhaps we've reached the end of the road with communications - the
interconnected net of networks seems all encompassing, like globalization and
the end of history. Can there be any new, technically difficult means of
communication?

~~~
veddox
> Can there be any new, technically difficult means of communication?

I'm assuming you meant "technically _different_ "?

Either way: I can't think of any, but given the last few millenia of progress,
it seems unlikely that we've reached the peak.

~~~
hyperpallium
No, technically difficult. Otherwise, hackers are overrun by everyone else.
Telegraph, ham radio, early computers were all technically difficult. Although
new modes of communication are still coming - eg twitter, vine - they aren't
technically difficult to use.

~~~
eru
I guess there can be means of communication that are technically different at
any one point in time.

------
rm_-rf_slash
When I realized that the kids of the old money elite began to see Silicon
Valley, not Wall Street, as the means to big money, I decided I could never go
back.

The elitists came to Northern California - a vanguard of social liberalism,
student protest, and most importantly communitarianism - and brought their
elitism with them.

Northern California still exists in the nostalgic hippie image of the 60s, but
it's compartmentalised, like the Dropbox brogrammers elbowing out kids at a
playground. Public spaces increasingly become private in the name of profit.

Over time, the feel of free love will fade away entirely in the Bay Area.
Everyone interesting who isn't a millionaire will be pushed to the margins,
and eventually, more welcoming spaces, like Detroit. I implore the tech elite
of Silicon Valley to consider a future where an expensive tech-centered
monoculture makes the Bay Area an unattractive location for long-term
employees, and instead relying on mercenary college grads who put up with the
cost and the crazy for a few years before moving on to a more fulfilling job
and place to call home.

~~~
VonGuard
Completely agree. There's currently a Kickstarter to build a wall around SF to
keep the Burners from coming back after Burning Man. Frankly, though, my first
thought upon seeing it was "Geez, the Burners are the only people left in SF
who are really SF-ish and weird anymore.

SF has changed. It's becoming Manhattan West.

~~~
sbilstein
Honestly I see Burning Man as a sorta weird expression of the same elitism,
except in this norcal style. Rather then these
tech/artists/trustafarians/whatever investing their energy into arts and music
in public spaces in the Bay Area they work year round to build a completely
inaccessible community hundreds of miles away and light it on fire. Nothing
more indulgent than that in my opinion.

I have mixed feelings about it...my burner friends (most are techies) do some
incredibly weird and impressive things as part of Burning Man but why can't
some of that happen right here in the Bay for everyone.

~~~
pyre
> why can't some of that happen right here in the Bay for everyone.

Because then all of the people that protest things like high-rise apartments,
and Google shuttle buses will show up to protest that too.

~~~
sbilstein
I'm not advocating a protest...I'm advocating that us techies should focus our
extra energy for creative activities locally and share the, rather than keep
them exclusive with this desert party.

All these well known famous tech founders such as the FB guys or Larry and
Sergey are big burners and certainly participate in arts there but are nowhere
to be found right here in SF/Oakland. Same can be said about my peers sadly.

~~~
akiselev
The grandparent is saying that the _other_ residents of San Francisco who have
no interest in going to Burning Man and protest stuff like Google buses would
protest the art as well, whether it is in the form of an actual public protest
or by opposing permits/funding at the local politics level. Especially when it
comes to Burning Man art, one man's master piece is another's unnecessary
traffic jam.

Many, if not the majority of the most interesting, art pieces can't even be
safely installed or operated (yes, operated in the case of art cars) anywhere
near a suburban or urban environment. Where else can you build several
_climbable_ three to five story buildings with labels like "Bank of Unamerica"
and "Goldman Suchs" [1] just to destroy them in a blaze of glory more symbolic
than the art itself? Where else can you drive around a giant party boat [2],
explore a sunken pirate ship buried in the playa [3], or watch action movie
style explosions light a giant effigy on fire [3]?

If you've ever seen the LED lights lining the Bay Bridge a few years ago, that
was an art project costing in the same ballpark as some of the most impressive
Burning Man art (i.e., like the dancing lady now found on Treasure Island) and
took several years to get properly off the ground with all of the local
politics involved in installing something on a major landmark.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KPrLgWHMF0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KPrLgWHMF0)

[2]
[http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/08/21/fashion/21DISRUPT1...](http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/08/21/fashion/21DISRUPT1/21zDISRUPT-
master675.jpg)

[3] [http://blog.burningman.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/09/pier2_...](http://blog.burningman.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/09/pier2_shay.jpg)

[4]
[https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7414/10302625835_f9a0f51bef_b....](https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7414/10302625835_f9a0f51bef_b.jpg)

------
bcg1
This article is bound to ruffle some feathers around here.

The writing is spot on but will cause some cognitive dissonance for some as
the words ring true but conflict with the structures they have set up in their
minds and in their lives.

I think that the commercialization can be good though... the culture gets to
live on and propagate when there is a way for hackers to make money doing what
they love. Any successful counterculture is bound to be co-opted and
exploited, but that doesn't mean that true participants in that culture
shouldn't be able to subsist off of it.

Author makes the comparison to hip-hop culture which I think is a good one...
there is a highly commercialized side of that culture in rap music, but there
are still "underground" emcees not to mention deejays, beatboxers, graffiti
writers, and others who are able to build up their culture due in no small
part to the money coming in. Of course, to maintain a good balance, you need
keepers-of-the-faith like the author who are willing to smack down arrogant
upstarts who think they can piss all over and redefine the culture they claim
to hail from.

~~~
veddox
> you need keepers-of-the-faith like the author

Sorry, but this author is no "keeper of the faith". He's a finance journalist,
for goodness sake! See my comment above for more details.

~~~
bcg1
Based on the content of his article it seems to me like he has a good grasp on
the material IMHO. In any case, I generally don't equate the job title on
someone's resume to the definition of what they _are_.

------
adricnet
I scanned this before coffee this morning and in short I'm not sure anyone
else should read it in its present state.

Although the author poses some interesting ideas the piece feels long and
muddled and I'm not at all sure who the audience is or what the call to action
might be. Voice is unclear as some paragraphs are personal statements ("I")
and others are observations about culture and economics.

It might be more powerful if it was drastically shorter and simpler ... or
maybe if it was three times longer with more references and a stronger set of
recommendations. I really can't say.

~~~
baseballmerpeak
_Go home, yuppies._

The last few paragraphs bring it home: hacking is being subverted as a tool of
the establishment and no longer, in common use, means working against the
establishment.

~~~
zaphar
Here's the thing. Hacking in the sense of the word he wants it used didn't go
away or get subverted. It just lost a label.

Words in the english language change all the time. Hacking in the sense of
gaining a deep understanding of things by tinkering is alive and well and
isn't going anywhere. So some one co-opted our label. So What? We can get a
new label. It doesn't mean we somehow vanished or are dying out. We're still
here. We still buy kits to get screw drivers that let us open that box and
void the warranty. We still poke and prod at computer systems in ways they
weren't designed to be poked and prodded. We still create things with
materials no one else thought to create with. And in the sense of hacking he
is referring to we still do it whether it has a label or not.

He even talks about hacking being something as old as the human race. And then
he goes on to complain that this label got co-opted. Of course it did.
Everyone is a hacker. Everyone is looking to game the system. Hackers don't
have a monopoly on hacking. So the "yuppies" hacked our terminology. Good for
them. Now we get to go hack some other terminology. Hack used to refer to a
kludge. We co-opted the term to mean something else. Now it has been co-opted
again.

The author is in many ways complaining about something that isn't a real
problem. We were hacking before there was a label for it. We will still be
hacking after the label is gone. Nothing has been lost here.

~~~
detrino
This is an over-simplification of the article which talks about much more than
just labels. It talks about things like control of the internet, the
destruction of the culture of Silicon Valley, and the people that co-opt
hacker culture in an attempt to make money.

~~~
zaphar
Control of the internet does not mean the hacker ethos is somehow polluted. It
just means the hackers have a new target. Silicon Valley doesn't define hacker
culture. I didn't grow up or go to school in Silicon Valley and I don't live
there currently. Yet, I'm something of a hacker as the article defines it.

And how does one co-opt a culture? What does that even mean? I can see how one
might destroy a culture, force a culture into hiding maybe, but co-opt it?
That's a fancy way of saying they took our label. That's the thing about
label's though. They change meanings over time.

I think the real reason the author and many others are upset is because they
thought the "hacker ethos" was going to go mainstream. Then they looked around
and realized that what went mainstream wasn't hacking as they saw it, and got
upset.

Hackers have always been a minority. We were a minority during the internet
revolution. We are minority now. We'll be a minority in the future. Expecting
anything else will just result in dashed hopes.

------
jaegerpicker
This is such a poorly thought out article. The term hacker has also meant so
many different things to so many people. I grew up with the 90's hacker scene.
I was a teenager for almost all of the decade and I started programming and
reading about, interacting with, and being a part of the 90's hackers groups.
Those groups were called criminals, crackers, or cybergangs but a lot of the
old school MIT crowd of hackers. Then the mainstream media picked up the term
to mean criminals. Then my age group entered the workforce and redefined the
term to mean an excellent programmer, as in hacker news. It's been constantly
changing and meaning different things to different groups. How can you co-opt
something that fluid? This article smacks of someone complaining about a
culture they don't understand themselves.

~~~
yellowapple
> Then my age group entered the workforce and redefined the term to mean an
> excellent programmer, as in hacker news.

It's worth noting that "hacker news" was probably never meant in the sense of
"excellent programmer", but rather in the sense being criticized by the
article: one of venture-capitalist-backed businesses "disrupting" industries
to dominate said industries (bringing money to the venture capitalists in
turn). The implication that HN - which was created and is owned and maintained
by YCombinator, arguably among the more prominent of such VCs - was named in
reference to anything _but_ the very thing the article describes is
inaccurate.

~~~
jasode
_> It's worth noting that "hacker news" was probably never meant in the sense
of "excellent programmer", but rather in the sense being criticized by the
article:_

I think your notation is revisionist history.

Here's an example of a PG's use of " _hacker_ " from 2001. PG is very much
talking about " _hacker_ " as an above-average programmer not content with an
inferior "blub" language:

[http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html)

YCombinator was started in 2005. The "Hacker News" was started in 2007.[1] The
audience it intended to serve was the type of "hackers" mentioned in the 2001
essay.

PG also later uses "hacker" in the sense of a tech nerd who would rather focus
on a startup rather instead of being discontent working at a corporate job.
This definition of "life-hacker" is also not relevant to the article's
definition. The article is talking about programmers who serve VCs' agendas
instead of pursuing their true desires. PG has never advocated that. The essay
also complains about the VCs who are pseudo-hackers because of their monetary
influence. PG isn't talking about them either. Ergo, this website was not
trying to attract them as an audience. (The "demo days" does try to attract
VCs but that's an event separate from the website.)

One can look at Internet Archive Wayback Machine[2] and see that the front
page was dominated by topics unrelated to "chasing the money". Just a bunch of
tech geek topics. Programming languages, algorithms, etc. It was very much
"news" for "hackers" in the positive connotations of that term.

[1][http://www.paulgraham.com/hackernews.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/hackernews.html)

[2][https://web.archive.org/web/20071016064109/http://news.ycomb...](https://web.archive.org/web/20071016064109/http://news.ycombinator.com/news)

~~~
yellowapple
The matter of whose history is "revisionist" depends on perspective, and it's
really hard to say whether your or my perspective here is the right one. That
said, painting my notation as revisionist appears to be inaccurate.

> YCombinator was started in 2005. The "Hacker News" was started in 2007.[1]
> The audience it intended to serve was the type of "hackers" mentioned in the
> 2001 essay.

Are you sure about that? Plenty of large companies have worked to build
cultures around their products. Should we really trust YCombinator's motives
more than, say, Apple's when they build a product that claims to be geared
toward makers while gradually pulling said makers into a particular ecosystem?

In other words, just because YCombinator / Paul Graham claim Hacker News to be
geared toward technical-loving programmers and tinkerers v. VC-backed (or
prospective VC-backed) entrepreneurs doesn't mean that neither of them are
lying to us or themselves.

> PG also later uses "hacker" in the sense of a tech nerd who would rather
> focus on a startup rather instead of being discontent working at a corporate
> job.

That happens to describe a lot of people who wouldn't be classified as
"hackers", or even future ones in their larval stage. It also happens to
describe many (if not most) startup founders of the variety being criticized
in the article.

> One can look at Internet Archive Wayback Machine[2] and see that the front
> page was dominated by topics unrelated to "chasing the money".

There were a lot of technical topics, yes, but "dominated by topics unrelated
to 'chasing the money'" seems to be false, seeing that the top result has a
plug for a startup called "ThriveSmart" and is basically how why some startup
uses Rails, result #4 is Betteridge's-Law-invoking clickbait rhetorically
implying that VC-backed startups should for some reason be ashamed of
themselves for not towing to puritannical sensibilities regarding pornographic
content (though, to be fair, Paul Graham _did_ post in that article's comment
section calling it out on said puritannical and rather hypocritical bullshit),
result #7 is about having dinner with YC folks and being acquired by Conde
Nast, result #8 is about Caterpillar making money through "Web 2.0", result
#16 is a WSJ piece praising the open-office concept and disparaging cubicles
"because it's what Silicon Valley does, and therefore deserves attention for
some reason", result #29 is some blog post about entrepreneur burnout, and
result #30 is a rather-uncritical NYT piece on advertising strategies of large
businesses. I haven't even gotten to the second page yet.

And yet you cite this as proof that my viewpoint is revisionist somehow. Yeah,
there were quite a few awesome technical articles back then, but even back
then the Valleyesque distortion cuts through the purported hacker-centric
focus of HN.

This isn't to say that Paul Graham wasn't or isn't an excellent hacker, nor is
it to say that his own definition of hacker back in 2001 was somehow incorrect
or out-of-line with the proper (and admittedly nebulous/vague) definition, and
nor is it to say that he or YCombinator had motives out-of-alignment with the
purported target audience. Rather, it's to suggest that maybe - just maybe -
folks around here are taking the "hacker" part of "hacker news" too strongly
at face value when its YC heritage ought to be warranting at least a _small_
grain of salt, and that a lot may very well have changed in six years.

~~~
jasode
_> Are you sure about that? Plenty of large companies have worked to build
cultures around their products. Should we really trust YCombinator's motives
more than, say, _

It's fine to be vigilant about subliminal marketing or secret motives
(hailcorporate![1]) but I think in this case, HN is transparent in its goals.

If HN is brainwashing us to redefine "hacker" to suit their needs, what is
their end game? HN doesn't have ads. They don't have constant popups nagging
us to pay for a subscription. They do have periodic "YC Random Company is
hiring" posts (if you consider those "ads"). But they _also_ have the weekly
hiring posts from non-YC companies. There are the weekly posts about " _basic
income_ " and " _minimum wage should be $15_ " and " _programmers should form
a union_ " that routinely make the front page. Those are not topics the money
men like to push. Any time a "Uber taxi" thread is posted, the top comments
always complain about the "sharing-economy" being a VC-funded scam on society.
Lastly, the vast majority of readers will never submit an application to YC so
that link is also mostly irrelevant.

In other words, if HN is tricking us with a redefinition of "hacker" to suit
their nefarious agenda, what have they gained and what did readers lose?

 _> It also happens to describe many (if not most) startup founders of the
variety being criticized in the article._

Your interpretation of the article is incorrect. The article explains[2] how
some startup entrepreneurs with counter-culture tendencies, rebellious
attitudes, and subversive agendas can be neutered of their free spirit and be
put into the service of entities with money (VCs, Barclay's so-called
"hackathon", etc) -- the "yuppies".

The article is criticizing the "yuppies" and not the startup entrepreneurs
that might enjoy articles currently on HN front page such as _" Reversing
NvAPI to Programmatically Overclock Nvidia GPUs"_ and _" Go and Rust – objects
without class (2013)"_

 _> the top result has a plug for a startup called "ThriveSmart" and is
basically how why some startup uses Rails_

I guess one can see whatever they want to see. To me, that article is a Rails
article, and the secondary trivia is that the company happens to be
ThriveSmart. If that article was written anonymously with no company
mentioned, one of the HN commenters would inevitably ask, "where do you work?"
and the company name would be revealed in the comments. People try languages,
frameworks, databases, and they also tend to work at companies. The company is
part of the color of the presentation. If we got manipulated by ThriveSmart
exposure 8 years ago, I don't see evidence of it. The other articles on the
front page are topics hackers voted up. It doesn't mean _every_ article is a
programming article about Lisp or MongoDB.

 _> \- just maybe - folks around here are taking the "hacker" part of "hacker
news" too strongly at face value when its YC heritage ought to be warranting
at least a small grain of salt, and that a lot may very well have changed in
six years._

To proof to me is what types of articles show up on the front page. HN's
audience is not all uber-Lisp clones of PG but the intended audience is
definitely _not_ the "yuppies" that the article is criticizing. I can't see
how anyone can look at the HN front page as a whole and conclude it is
designed for "yuppies" instead of "hackers".

[1][https://www.reddit.com/r/hailcorporate](https://www.reddit.com/r/hailcorporate)

[2]I believe there are so many misinterpretations of his thesis because he
writes in a very convoluted style but here's an example excerpt of author's
criticism of yuppies: _" We are currently witnessing the gentrification of
hacker culture. The countercultural trickster has been pressed into the
service of the preppy tech entrepreneur class. It began innocently, no doubt.
The association of the hacker ethic with startups might have started with an
authentic counter-cultural impulse on the part of outsider nerds tinkering
away on websites. But, like all gentrification, the influx into the scene of
successive waves of ever less disaffected individuals results in a growing
emphasis on the unthreatening elements of hacking over the subversive ones."_

~~~
yellowapple
> If HN is brainwashing us to redefine "hacker" to suit their needs, what is
> their end game?

Promoting the startups YCombinator has funded over the years? Promoting
YCombinator itself for prospective entrepreneurs looking to get funding? Those
are the most obvious ones.

> Lastly, the vast majority of readers will never submit an application to YC
> so that link is also mostly irrelevant.

In a "vast" majority of even a thousand people, that's still up to a few dozen
or so in the minority. And YC would have plenty of motive to encourage that
minority to grow, and _especially_ for said growth to have YC in their list of
seed funders to apply to because "well they host Hacker News and I'm a Hacker
News regular".

Everyone has ulterior motives. Just because YCombinator doesn't explicitly
state "Welcome to Hacker News, where we basically cozy up to you in the hopes
that you'll apply for seed funding and consultation from us so we can make
money off the success of your business" doesn't mean that such an ulterior
motive doesn't exist.

I'm probably being excessively critical, of course, and maybe YCombinator
really is totally benevolent and running Hacker News out of the goodness of
its venture-capitalist heart. It's hard to really know, however, and for that
reason I tend to err on the side of caution.

> Your interpretation of the article is incorrect. [...]

How does any of that paragraph invalidate my remark? Just because someone has
"counter-culture tendencies, rebellious attitudes, and subversive agendas"
doesn't mean that they're suddenly "hackers". You need creative ingenuity and
a desire to understand how things work, and those traits don't come
automatically with the ones you mention.

> To me, that article is a Rails article, and the secondary trivia is that the
> company happens to be ThriveSmart.

You're probably right that I'm characterizing that one a bit harshly. To me,
though, it reeks a bit of the whole "look at us, we're hip and modern and use
Rails so you should totally buy our hip/modern/Railsy product". _Especially_
considering that the product in question happens to be a web development
product.

Not that there's something particularly wrong about this - as a buyer of
services, the technological implementations do often matter to me, since it
gives me a vague idea of whether or not the service I'm buying will be
sufficiently-reliable for my needs. It's just that, having been on the other
side of that (first-hand experience with companies that want to show off their
tech as an advertising tool for prospective customers, talent, etc.), it
strikes me as an advertising-first, tech-second article, and I tend to believe
it important to recognize such things. Being aware that you're being
advertised to is an important part of making wise market decisions; an
unawareness of the influence of some subtle bit of advertising can mean the
difference between a reasoned evaluation of a product and a gung-ho "this
product looks good" based on hard-to-self-identify confirmation biases.

> To proof to me is what types of articles show up on the front page.

As it is to me; on some days the technical outweighs the business, and on
other days the business outweighs the technical. As you said, though, one
tends to see whatever one wants to see. Perhaps you're looking at HN through
rose-colored glasses. Perhaps I'm looking at HN through dirt-colored glasses.
It's all a matter of perspective.

------
clavalle
You know what's cool? Ignoring what other people think is cool.

Who cares if 'yuppies' 'gentrify' hacking. You neither have to stop doing what
you like because groups you don't care for have noticed nor do you have to
waste energy and time and fight against them for doing so.

Do what you want to do regardless. That is the answer to the author's
questions.

If you are a hacker, or artist or music lover or anything else of a certain
type merely because someone else isn't of that type you are not really that
thing.

You are going to find posers as a sub-culture enters the general awareness but
you are also going to find trickster godlings in suits with boring titles on
their business cards if you don't let the trappings blind you.

~~~
gluelogic
> Ignoring what other people think is cool.

In the end, it really isn't though.

It is a bad thing when subcultures are overrun by people who did not come to
it organically. What I mean by that is at a certain point, members of a
subculture gain a perceived glamour, which incentivizes outsiders to come in
for superficial reasons. This dilutes the subculture's original ethos, and if
it continues long enough it totally replaces it.

A perfect example of this is the Indie rock of 15 years ago. That culture has
completely been obliterated and replaced by a microcosm of corporate pop
music. Almost anyone I speak to knows what Indie is now. One would struggle to
accurately refer to it as a subculture today. The problem is not a mere
increase in population, but a dilution of the core values that initially
caused people to gravitate to that scene.

~~~
gaius
_members of a subculture gain a perceived glamour, which incentivizes
outsiders to come in for superficial reasons_

It has a real cost to the original members, in terms of their loss of
immediate credibility. You see a guy with sailor tattoos. Did he serve in the
Fleet, does that speak to his work ethic and skill with a chart or a diesel
engine? Or does he work in advertising and drink soy lattes? You see a girl
with thick-rimmed glasses. Is she an old-skool assembly hacker, or did she
just think they would look cute with her "vintage" dress? It means the genuine
people, who have paid their dues, need to prove themselves over and over again
to everyone they meet. That is why everyone hates hipsters.

~~~
nostrademons
The genuine people don't care what other people think of them and don't feel a
need to "prove" anything. That's what makes them genuine.

~~~
gaius
I don't think that's actually true; otherwise how would they be a part of a
community with other like-minded people? How would they authenticate
themselves to one another? Hell's Angels are another good example.

~~~
nostrademons
"I like hanging out with you; if you don't like hanging out with me that's
fine, but you wanna get together and talk about X?"

~~~
gaius
Then why would any subculture have a distinctive style of dress?

------
Sir_Cmpwn
This hits home. I read hacker news and sites like it, but I know in my heart
that the people here are not, for the most part, hackers.

~~~
daveloyall
Yeah. When I first came here, I was shocked how often the comments about some
cool tech would be focused on how to monetize it, how to commoditize it.

After a while, I just accepted as fact the existence of a large contingent of
"hipster web 2.0 wanks" (well, that's the tag I use internally).

But today I'll start an experiment. I'll adjust the internal tag to recognize
them by their true name. An old name... Posers.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. :)

I hope this exercise in context will help me be a more discerning reader.

~~~
sanderjd
It would certainly be more charitable to think of "them" as what they really
are: people who, just like you, are doing their best to figure out a path for
themselves through a mystifying world. At least, I know that's what I am
doing, while also being quite sure you think I'm a hipster web 2.0 wank poser.

~~~
daveloyall
I appreciate this pushback against my use of "them". I appreciate your astute
description of what it is like to be a person.

...Forgive me, if you want, when I contradict myself!

I think there's some value in cliques. I was reminded of this recently when
some buddies and I started an every-other-Sunday RPG group. (Heroes Unlimited,
FWIW.)

The conversations that come up in that group are really great. The common
ground that we share[0] allows me to really get down to brass tacks with ease.
...More easily than I can do here!

Granted, wishing that my public-news-and-commentary-website would be more like
my-four-man-paper-and-dice-gaming-club is downright unreasonable. That being
said, the fact remains that there _are_ little corners of the web (net!) here
and there where discussion about changing the world via tech won't get
sidetracked by some perverse anti-SJW point-hunting BS. Wait, ARE THERE? :(

0: physics, respect for the rules (of the game/physics/conversation), puns,
beer.

~~~
sanderjd
I'm not surprised that your response is so charitable – I wouldn't have
bothered responding to you to start with if I thought you seemed like you're
just a jerk out to score points against "the other" – but thanks anyway.

What I dislike is not so much the existence of cliques, I agree with you that
they have an important place, and I certainly have, and in the past have
always had, various "circles" that I enjoy being with far more than other
people. What gets under my skin is the way in which cliques think and speak of
people on the outside. For instance (to keep picking on you), people who are
interested in web applications with lots of user-focused behavior more than
other, supposedly "more pure", kinds of applications, whether it's because
that's where the jobs are or because that's where the users are or just
because they think it's cool, become "hipsters", "wanks", and "posers". The
problem isn't with having specific interests and a preference to converse with
people who share them, the problem is with the _rampant_ implicit or explicit
judgment of people who don't. Maybe it's just an effort to categorize, in
order to have an easy shorthand for thinking about what kinds of people you
prefer to converse with, but why does this sort of categorization almost
always seem to rely on such pejorative language?

In any case, I agree with you that mefi is a great community, but I definitely
haven't found any place with as good a variety of technical submissions and
discussions as HN, even if it is overrun with bourgeois gentrifiers like
myself.

~~~
daveloyall
This is interesting because there's like, a role-reversal thing going on here.
I don't know if you're aware of it, but I tend to go to the mat for the
underdog, the abused (the pejored, if you will!).

But that's it. I'd oppose somebody if I observed them on the attack, but never
start anything. And that behavior was systematic. Frankly, it's exploitable.

So, I dunno. I'm in flux. Rethinking some things. Practicing allowing myself
to think, even SAY--"you know what? Some people suck, objectively".

I guess your comment _" doing their best to figure out a path for themselves
through a mystifying world"_ inspired me to mention that part.

I think the upshot of rejecting some people is that you can lower your
cognitive load in group situations. You mentioned it: categorization. For me,
it's a pretty fundamental shift (that I'm not sold on yet): actually adding a
new category: those that I'd leave behind first in some sort of lifeboat
situation. I know that's really harsh. Fortunately real-world lifeboat
situations are rare? Without such categorization, you can land in some REALLY
dumb situations...

~~~
sanderjd
Yeah, I can see the role-reversal you're talking about. I suppose my point is
that everyone deserves empathy, not just the underdogs.

You're probably right that "some people suck, objectively", but I don't think
I've ever met such a person, so I'm never going to assume that someone I meet
who seems to suck is actually an objectively sucky person, but rather just a
normal person who, like me, is trying to do the best they know how, and just
failing at it in that moment, for whatever reason.

~~~
daveloyall
Hey, keep it up! I just got tired, and scared, and really not confident that
_I 'd_ "make it", much less everybody. So I'm performing an experiment. That
_you_ are out there only encourages me.

Meanwhile:

 _A._ mosquitoes (or fleas, if you prefer) are in a category that is very
difficult to defend, right? I mean it takes an very broad definition of "we"
to include bloodsuckers.

 _B._ If the category described in _A._ exists, if "we" excludes some
creatures... then you have to ask yourself where to draw the line, and that's
crappy territory to traverse. _But what if it is necessary to traverse it?_

------
veddox
I get the distinct impression that the author of this article doesn't really
know what he is talking about. He doesn't bother mentioning (if he is even
aware of the fact) that "hacker" != "cracker", but kind of muddles both groups
into one. The very fact that he talks about "The construct of the ‘good
hacker’" tells me that he never did his homework properly.

Last time I checked my history books, hackers used to be "good" when they
started out. Yes, they were counter-cultural and yes, many had more or less
pronounced anarchists tendencies. But they were definitely not the rebellious
threat to public safety that the author portrays. In fact, the author gets it
back to front: the real corruption of the term "hacker" happened twenty-five
years ago, when the media started applying that label to cyber criminals. If
anything, Silicon Valley is actively countering that original corruption by
their current use of the term. (Though it is quite possible that they are
misusing/over-using it in smaller ways.)

In short, this is a prime example of an article about a subculture that is
untainted by any understanding of the same.

~~~
yellowapple
> He doesn't bother mentioning (if he is even aware of the fact) that "hacker"
> != "cracker", but kind of muddles both groups into one.

The two groups do often overlap; even the Jargon File (which is strictly
adamant in its distinction between the two subcultures) admits as much. The
difference is with intent; a hacker fixates upon the exploration and
understanding of a system, whereas a cracker fixates upon the breaking of a
system (or the prevention of future breaking, in the case of white-hat
crackers). In this sense, the article's actually one of the very few that gets
this distinction even partially correct, even if it does lean a bit heavily
toward the "cracker" side of said incredibly-fine line.

Even that particular fine line isn't well-defined, of course; there are plenty
of cases where a hacker feels the need to resort to cracker-like behavior in
order to get a point across (like "your software has this and that bug; here's
a program demonstrating them"), in which case the line between "hacker" and
"white/grey-hat cracker" is even further blurred.

> But they were definitely not the rebellious threat to public safety that the
> author portrays.

This isn't always true. See also: [http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/meaning-of-
hack.html](http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/meaning-of-hack.html) (particularly
the story about 'Robin Hood' and 'Friar Tuck').

> If anything, Silicon Valley is actively countering that original corruption
> by their current use of the term. (Though it is quite possible that they are
> misusing/over-using it in smaller ways.)

I'd argue that it's just as much a corruption, but in the opposite direction.
The hacker ethos really lies somewhere between crackeresque active rebellion
and Valleyesque conformity. The article happens to get this right, too, in its
remark that hackerdom works "obliquely" and outside the conventional realm of
borders and dichotomies. The hacker spirit is one with ambiguous and often
even inconsistent goals (at least to someone looking into it from the
outside), and this ambiguousness is in contract with both crackerdom (actively
rebelling against the concept of authority, to the point of meritocratic
anarchy) and Valleydom (actively striving to _become_ authority, to the point
of monopolistic totalitarianism).

Of course, the article's characterization of folks like Anonymous and
Wikileaks as the modern day "true" hackers isn't exactly accurate, either,
highlighting further the difficulty which exists in trying to clearly define
what it means to be a "hacker". In theory, such groups could very well express
the hacker ethos (namely, by doing what they do for the sake of doing what
they do), but I feel that both tend to have a specific bent or agenda to them
that subverts what would otherwise be much closer to a manifestation of the
hacker ethos.

------
jasode
This unremarkable essay is another one of hundreds repeating the theme about
"money destroying true hackers". One can rewrite the same article using other
synonyms such as "Silicon Valley Has Lost Its Way" or "How Greed Is Ruling
Silicon Valley."

This theme can be further generalized into "money is ruining
<insert_whatever>".

"Money is ruining music. Bing Crosby was a true artist; Today's performers
like Lady Gaga is a commercial pandering."

"Money is ruining movies. The 1970s had auteur directors but now all we get at
theaters is superheroes in spandex and Disney princesses because they need ROI
from international blockbusters."

Writers, thinking they have something new to say, like to write on those
themes. Readers, with a predisposition to seeing what's wrong with the world,
like to read them. I suppose it's some sort of 1st-World ritual of
commiseration. Personally, I find those essays devoid of any insight. I can
acknowledge that there are undeniable trends there but I try to avoid
categorizing them into value judgments of "good vs evil". I understand the
economics of why Disney's "Frozen" is the type of film that theaters prefer to
show rather than Michael Cimino's "Heaven's Gate".

An example of force-fitting his observations into categories of Hackers-vs-
Yuppies (aka good-vs-evil) is his claim:

 _" I’m going to stake a claim on the word though, and state that the true
hacker spirit does not reside at Google, guided by profit targets."_

That broad-stroked brush is amateur writing. Google is a big place with
~57,000 employees. Sure, there are probably engineers doing soul-crushing work
of parsing logs for server reliability or optimizing ad click conversions. But
I'm sure there are other pockets of engineering where "hackers" are innovating
and trying to change the world: driverless cars, balloon wifi, etc. It's the
same contradictory pockets of bored employees coexisting with passionate
hackers in different areas of large companies like Lockheed, AT&T Labs, Apple,
etc.

As far as "yuppies" ruining the hackers, I'm not sure who's supposed to be an
exemplar of the "hacker" that he wants to run SV. Steve Wozniak & Steve Jobs
both came from middle class families. They weren't hobos living out of their
cars and overturning the world with their hacker ethos. Apple took money from
VC investors within 1 year of its founding. Even Richard Stallman's family
background can also be considered "yuppie".

~~~
dmschulman
The core argument isn't "money ruining X", but that business flocking to
acquire the term hacker. The money entering the scene is just a consequential
outgrowth.

The author is making a stronger case than that, the article is an examination
of a culture being diluted by misappropriation of the term "hacker".

Hacking is subversive at its core, it's an exploration of technology, and in
many regards generally pointless, done for ones own curiosity or to change the
rules of a system to perturb the owners of that system.

One can't hold onto their own culture for long, thanks to the internet, but
the reimagining of hackers from basement dwelling socially awkward nerds to
sleek and mysterious agents who can bend the technologies, the world, even
their own bodies to their will, has influenced people's perceptions of the
culture. Now that it's cool everyone wants a piece, they want to associate
themselves with that term like they would a cool brand of clothing. If you
can't see that then you're not looking hard enough.

~~~
jasode
_> The author is making a stronger case than that, the article is an
examination of a culture being diluted by misappropriation of the term
"hacker"._

I disagree. Yes, his essay briefly talks about the hollowing out of the term
"hacker". But it's really the hackers' "ethos" and "culture" that's in danger
from "gentrification" rather the diluted meaning of a particular word.

He uses the word _" gentrified/gentrification"_ over 20 times. Those sentences
are more about about geeks & nerds being "pawns" of those with money. Those
with money have agendas that are more "mainstream" and "safe". It's not about
yuppies fooling the public with their new redefinition of "hacker".

------
return0
They could just stop calling it hacking. It's such a cliche term nowadays.
Look at me, i'm writing in an entrepreneurial forum, and even that is called
'hacker news'. Yesterday drchrono was looking for 'healthcare hackers' by
which they meant programmers. I giggled. Hacking is like the new indie. It
will come, and pass.

------
erikb
"Go home, yuppies!" \- Yes and no. Hacker spirit is flexible, so why are we
still sitting on that name? It's dead for that spirit since the 90s. In some
regard I think, that I even care might be a good proof that I don't really
belong. Wouldn't be strange to see the "real hackers" to just go hack
something else while we sit here discussing "community norms" and "special
terms".

------
radmuzom
One of the earliest articles on "hacking" which I read was by Richard Stallman
- On Hacking [1]. The article seems to agree in spirit with what RMS was
talking about.

[1] [https://stallman.org/articles/on-
hacking.html](https://stallman.org/articles/on-hacking.html)

------
m-i-l
_The countercultural trickster has been pressed into the service of the preppy
tech entrepreneur class_

Concern has been expressed that the new generation of artists (musicians,
actors etc.) in the UK seem to primarily come from upper middle class
backgrounds[0]. I have started to wonder if the same could be said of the tech
startup scene, e.g. in London. This could be due to the increasing
difficulties someone would have living on a period of effectively zero income,
unless they had the backing of rich parents.

[0] Could cite lots of articles, but
[http://www.standard.co.uk/business/markets/confessions-
from-...](http://www.standard.co.uk/business/markets/confessions-from-the-
city-the-music-executive-on-the-industry-chumocracy-10381366.html) is just one
recent one.

------
gambler
This reads like a typical cultural critique article. Long text, contrived
definitions, lack of overall insights into the subject. At least I didn't see
anything that would make go "ah, I never thought of that". It's mostly word
games.

Even though many people try to draw parallels between hackers who creatively
modify systems and hackers who break into systems, there is little overlap
these days, except, maybe some common roots in history and the fact that the
latter usually have ample skills to do "creative" hacks as well.

Hacker culture being subverted? With multitude of security conferences, daily
news about research into new vulnerabilities and increasingly frequent
criminal hacks, I think hacker culture is actually doing pretty well in many
of its diverse forms.

------
roneesh
Look, you can construct whatever narrative you want about power, people and
the ebb and flow of capital, but it's pointless.

People like nice things. There I said it. Most people like nice cedar lined
floors, expensive drinks and well cut clothes. And when you have those things,
it's marvelous how quickly your disdain for the 'institution' evaporates.

Most of us aren't really hackers in that nostalgic sense. We're normal people,
yuppies, kids, nerds, dorks, that one dude really into Aphex Twin in your
office (everyone has one). We just happen to be good with computers.

~~~
Mikushi
>People like nice things. There I said it. Most people like nice cedar lined
floors, expensive drinks and well cut clothes. And when you have those things,
it's marvelous how quickly your disdain for the 'institution' evaporates.

People are made to want nice thing, big difference. It's the result of the
exploitation of a natural need (fear) by corporations and the 'institution'
through modern advertising and propaganda.

The fact that the disdain reduces/disappears for some is not of any credit to
their acceptance of the 'institution', it just shows it works as intended
(generating individuals that will not question).

~~~
mwfunk
Or they have their own minds, which occasionally decide to do things you don't
approve of. You're just as much a product of the media you consume and the
ideals impressed upon you by friends and family as anyone else. It is much
more invigorating to feel like one knows the truth and everyone else is
brainwashed though.

~~~
Mikushi
You're putting words in my mouth, I'm very well aware of the fact that I'm the
product of my experience. Though what you can't, and haven't, refute is that
our consumerist society is based around advertising and manipulation
techniques. The crux of advertising is "How do we get the consumer to buy
product X?", and I don't think I need to tell you to what length companies go
to advertise their product, regardless of their real nature.

I do not pretend to hold the truth,but I do hold an opinion based on my own
experience (I work in advertising, ironic) and I stand by it as I've yet to be
convinced of the contrary (and trust me, I'm looking for every chance to be
proven wrong).

>Or they have their own minds

You are entirely too certain of this statement. Research/writings dating back
to the late 1800' dive into the subject (and we still are) of the human mind,
how it works, how and if it can be manipulated. Many of the advances of those
days in phychology and neuroscience have been used as foundations of the
advertising industry. See propaganda history as well since it's just another
-not very liked- name for advertisement.

------
steeples
Hacking for me was always about pushing the envelope, and if that meant
getting the right tools for the job, then that also meant working for old
industrial monopolists and building out my crystal palace in my own free time.
After work I would come home, switch on my Pandora's box, and use my paycheck
to have fun. The problem with doing this for extended periods of one's life is
that you see all your peers getting stinking rich, and you almost feel left
behind, like a lone wolf hacker who missed the proverbial boat of investor
money. On one hand this can feel miserable because Fear of Missing Out
(F.O.M.O) feels like a legitimate thing to be concerned about. On the other
hand, the hacking escapades are exhilarating and quickly drown out F.O.M.O
because those same people that are getting rich are missing out on the joys of
low level disk hacking, and twitter bots that can disrupt markets and sway the
stock market any way one wants. The F.O.M.O is quickly drenched by fun. Let
fun precede every other activity. This is the hacker way.

------
aluhut
Hug of death there.

Google cache:
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:5gBAj1...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:5gBAj17CXpUJ:aeon.co/magazine/technology/how-
yuppies-hacked-the-original-hacker-ethos/+&cd=1&hl=de&ct=clnk&gl=de)

------
clickok
The main objection against the ending refrain of "go home, yuppies" is that,
since hackers (however you define the term) have valuable skills, they should
be able to earn money using them. If the alternative is working in a menial
capacity for some large alienating infrastructure (see what I did there?) with
hacking as a hobby, then I'd rather be working on something interesting, even
if it makes me complicit in gentrification[0].

So, that's the whole issue right there-- being a hacker has become a career
path, and it's iteratively becoming more mainstream as the expected benefits
are formalized and the stigmas exorcized[1]. That doesn't really sound all
that bad, but the problem with gentrification is that it pushes the original
tenants out, which is kinda scary when we're talking about the gentrification
of an _idea_.

"Real" hackers become hard to identify among the masses who can sling a little
javascript, and so they end up on the fringes of their own movement.

Of course, I'm not really sure how much such real hackers _care_. It'll be
inconvenient when you can no longer identify a member of the tribe by a simple
shibboleth, but that is not an insurmountable obstacle.

In my opinion, l33t H4x0r status is something you earn[2]. A yuppie having
"hacker" on their business card is likely doing about as much damage to
hackerdom as the self-titled programming rock stars, ninjas, wizards, etc.
etc. did to those professional groups.

\----

0\. Incidentally, does anyone else get reminded of things like _The Rebel
Sell_ or _The Conquest of Cool_ by pieces like this? All of this handwringing
serves to subtly indicate that the author is the sort of person who happens on
these scenes before they were cool.

1\. Even if you can't get rid of the more Stallman-esque members of the tribe,
they get romanticized, deified, reduced to stories instead of people who could
be brilliant, visionary, and kind, but moments later gross or needlessly rude.

2\. Generally by spelling with your number keys.

~~~
yellowapple
My impression from the article wasn't an objection to hackers making money per
se (indeed, most of the original "hackers", back in the days of Lisp machines
and ITS and early Unix, were - if not academics - professional, paid
programmers), but rather an objection to the characterization of hackerdom as
a collective conformance to multi-million-dollar companies and investors in
Silicon Valley rather than its proper (to the author) characterization as
individual resistance to such collective conformance.

The article misses the mark here mostly because it swings a bit too hard
toward crackeresque antisocial anarchy in order to compensate for the
Valleyesque prosocial conformity being criticized. Really, the "hacker ethos"
leans closer to asocial ambivalence.

------
humbleMouse
Don't really like this article, the writing is embellished and the thesis
unclear.

~~~
emodendroket
The thesis is that, through a process similar to gentrification of ethnic
neighborhoods, the term "hacker" and the culture it represents has been
replaced with a shallow facsimile that's more palatable to moneyed interests.
Not sure how you missed it.

~~~
anthony_d
He probably missed it because it was long winded and poorly articulated.

------
irl_zebra
I have to say, I really enjoyed how they placed their newsletter signup. I
actively rebel (maybe that's the hacker ethos per this article, haha) against
the ones that have a giant popup and often put totally incorrect information
just because I'm so annoyed. This one has the signup unobtrusively in the
middle of the article a little ways down. Thus, if you found the article
interesting enough to keep reading, you came across the newsletter signup
embedded unobtrusively. I signed up for a newsletter from a website/blog for
the first time in a long time.

------
seiji
If you want to see how true "hacker ethos" existed as compared to today's "WE
HIRE HACKERS" brandvertising placed in IPO filings, check out early or pre-www
FAQs.

Here's a good one (a few MB of text) about hacker encryption:
[https://www.cypherpunks.to/faq/cyphernomicron/cyphernomicon....](https://www.cypherpunks.to/faq/cyphernomicron/cyphernomicon.txt)
— other traditional sources are the anarchist's cookbook and anything with
more of a "fight the man" sense from the 70s and less of a "give us billions
of dollars" sense from the post-popular-Internet era.

Hacking is about a nerd underclass fighting an oblivious overclass. Up until
the late 90s, hackers had never "won." But with Internet mania sweeping the
world, the nerds started to win. They became "the new man." Now the new
overclass needs to be brought down themselves. You don't win hacking, you just
become a more prominent target.

Hacking is also about exactly not that.

Hacking is just ignoring everybody else and doing good work you can be proud
of. It's the only reason Apple exists. Hacking is about not trying to win,
it's just about being clever.

Companies promote hiring the second kind of hacker because those people pay no
attention to the value they create as long as they're having fun. So, you get
someone puzzle-obsessed, give them a $50 million problem to solve, they solve
it, and you keep paying them their $125k/year. Everybody's happy and the CEO
gets to join the three comma club even sooner thanks to the selfless hackers
who enjoy subsidizing billionaires while living at the bottom of the org
chart.

------
peterwwillis
The author is confused because they think a 'hacker' is a tangible thing. It
isn't. It's an idea without shape, a calling without purpose.

The prototypical self-described hacker is an insecure person who attaches
themselves to a romantic, powerful identity in order that they might attain
these qualities themselves. But the power of the hacker is that of a magician:
conjuring tricks in order to amaze the public and seem mysterious, powerful,
skilled.

Here you see a normal web server with a firewall. It's totally secure. Nothing
up my sleeve, as you can see. But wait... Alacazam! Now I have a remote shell!

If the author wanted to 'resist' traditional economic institutions they could
become a circus performer. But then they couldn't fulfill the true 'fetish',
which is that anti-authoritarian action through intellectual skill and
craftiness is a pursuit to be proud of; one that the audience should revere.

The fact that this author's lofty rejection of traditional economic forces
packaged in a sexy identity also has the ability to provide them a _very_
comfortable living is, it would seem, totally accidental.

~~~
qu4z-2
You missed the author's definition of hacker, I think. "amaze the public"
indeed, harrumph. (although yes, there are absolutely people that come onto
IRC looking for "How to become a cracker in 24 hours" guides. "Yeah, I looked
at the book you recommended for C, but is there a way to learn it without
reading a _whole book_?!", etc)

------
busterarm
I'm working too hard and too sleep deprived to read the full article, but am I
the only person noticing that every single lawyer and MBA under 35, almost
without exception, is attending or trying to attend a code school to change
careers? Many of the ones I meet talking about it have very limited tech
experience.

That's very much how it seems in NY right now.

~~~
woah
Good to see them trying to gain some technical literacy.

~~~
roneesh
Yeah, most won't really become devs, but they'll gain some newfound technical
literacy and some respect for what devs do full-time.

It's important in these situations to look outside of the context and just see
what's actually happening: people are learning. And that has more positives
than negatives I'm sure.

~~~
busterarm
While I see some positives there, I think that's a really expensive way to
learn. I see a lot that just don't make it.

$10-18k+ that you can't write off on your taxes.

Full disclosure: I attended such a place myself as I saw it as the best way to
shift my career quickly (support/ops). I've been writing code since I was 6
years old.

~~~
roneesh
I'll be honest, I disagree here. I know on the onset 10-18K is a lot. In fact
I warn people before they do a bootcamp: "Do you want to spend what would fund
a trip around the world?"

But over a life time, if they work hard after and keep coding after, they can
10 fold reap what they sow. If they get a tech job, it might be a 10-20k a
year increase from whatever other field they're in, more if they were a
barista or something. Even if it doesn't lead to coding, but other jobs at a
startup like tech support, the income boost might be substantial. Also the
time is so condensed, they get a lot of learning out of those 11-15 weeks.
Also, unlike grad school, there's no loss of income for 2 years. Worst comes
to worst, I'd imagine in many cases their old employers are likely to bring
them back.

~~~
busterarm
18K + loss of income while in class and job searching + inability to write off
the expense as job search/education costs. Even now making twice my previous
salary, come tax time I will have taken home half of my income from the
previous year. I'm not knocking my school for a second; it was great...

But for someone with a decade of work experience in tech before switching and
no degree, I found the opportunities available -- especially fulfilling ones
that provide the mentorship to give foundation to a long career -- few and far
between post-graduation. The opportunity that I did take will lead to another
year of just scraping by and a lot of uncertainty while I continue to "prove
myself" worthy of a decent fulltime offer.

And I'm on the better end of the scale technically and "work-culturally"
compared to my peers. There is a huge glut of devs around this experience
level out there.

I learned too late that there are better options available. I wish that I had
taken them, because now I'm faced with poor options ahead: a) great
opportunity but stay poor a while more, b) financial security but no
mentorship, c) great opportunity with company with incredibly uncertain
future.

Because of my background, most of the places that interviewed me wanted to
stick me in a 100% DevOps role, regardless of the position applied for.
Frankly I am not interested in that at the moment.

I know it sounds like I'm complaining - honestly I have great options
available in front of me and some of that credit surely goes to my school, but
the best option and the one that I am taking would have been much more
financially acceptable had I not done the school in the first place.

~~~
roneesh
> I found the opportunities available -- especially fulfilling ones that
> provide the mentorship to give foundation to a long career -- few and far
> between post-graduation. The opportunity that I did take will lead to
> another year of just scraping by and a lot of uncertainty while I continue
> to "prove myself" worthy of a decent fulltime offer.

I appreciate the honesty. I think you hit upon a common problem. There's
really not a great job track for people coming out of bootcamps. Also, you're
right, it deserves mentioning that those months afterward while you hunt for a
job are lean months indeed.

I think a company that goes all in on bootcamp grads and makes what is
essentially a second program for them might really find themselves with a lot
of talent on their hands. But sadly most jobs you'll get afterward lack
mentorship.

Which, not to beat a dead horse, but this industry needs to get a better grasp
on tech mentorship.

I'm curious to know what better options you're talking about?

~~~
busterarm
Email me and I'll tell you :)

------
stillsut
Here's the key point where the author and me diverge:

> In this context, the hacker ethic is hollowed out and subsumed into the
> ideology of solutionism, to use a term coined by the Belarusian-born tech
> critic Evgeny Morozov. It describes the tech-industry vision of the world as
> a series of problems waiting for (profitable) solutions.

 _Trade_ is the ultimate form of autonomy because when someone willingly buys
what you're selling you can be self-sufficient (as opposed to dependent on a
beneficent family/non-profit organization/gov't). Obviously tech startups have
deviated from the hobbyist "I'm getting my kicks" ethos because they're trying
to hack the softer domain that is customer behavior. Solutions to real
problems are always win-win, and to believe otherwise is pretty weird.

~~~
ethbro
Trade is an interesting term, because in our experience (for those of you in
developed economies) it is circumscribed by a legal framework. So to partipate
in legal trade is to implicitly accept the boundaries of law.

I think the article does rightly note that hackers in a historical sense
haven't had that same fundamental limit.

Who win-wins if Uber satisfies a need by flouting established taxi law and
asking forgiveness instead of permission?

~~~
stillsut
Sure, uber's _competition_ loses...but that's like saying Google Search sucks
because what bad things happend to Alta Vista and all their employees and
investors.

The ones who win: rider and driver.

------
jkot
Lets be grateful for yuppies and their money. Computers and gadgets are today
cheap and widely available. And there is finally no social stigma related to
nerds. 'Real hacker' who works on AI, security etc.. has now life easier.

~~~
justizin
> And there is finally no social stigma related to nerds.

People are just not telling you to your face anymore, because they want your
money. :/

------
danjc
It's pieces like this that keep me coming back to HN. They also make me wish I
could write as well!

It always irks me when I hear people refer to themselves as hackers
(Zuckerberg for one) and this article articulates why far better than I could.

------
kazinator
Summary:

1\. Define what hacker means (prior to the yuppie gentrification), for
numerous paragraphs. Bulk of article.

2\. Big drop G paragraph: point actually starts here. (Just scroll down until
you see a big G).

3\. Fizzle on about gentrification of hacking, sort of making a point.

4\. Send yuppies home.

------
Bohahahaha
I'd rather say, 80s hackers are todays yuppies. So it might be the same
people.

------
api
Fight the man hard enough and you win. Now you're the man.

It wasn't colonization that yuppified hackerdom. It was evolution. Most of the
old school hackers _became_ yuppies when they found out they could make lots
of money off this stuff. New school hackers are entering the scene now and
this is all they know.

The same thing happened to old school counterculture hippies who found out
their ideas and their styles sell. Hippies founded loads of clothing brands,
trendy shops, 'new urbanism', and the whole organic food movement, all of
which are now massively profitable. Whole Foods Market (Nasdaq: WFM, an S&P500
component) is a direct evolutionary descendant of the dirt-worshipping weirdos
that spurned 1950s white bread culture and danced in the streets on acid.

Nothing really goes extinct. The dinosaurs are still here. In America we have
a custom of roasting one on Thanksgiving.

I grew up with the old school 90s cyberculture, and I miss it dearly. I
remember downloading text files on phone phreaking from H/P/V/A BBSes, hacking
PBXes to dial demo scene boards in Europe, and watching Second Reality
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFv7mHTf0nA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFv7mHTf0nA))
for the first time on my 80386 with 4mb RAM.

I keep a few museum pieces of stuff I made back then here:
[http://adam.ierymenko.name/ye_olde_source_code.html](http://adam.ierymenko.name/ye_olde_source_code.html)

Today I am doing this: [https://www.zerotier.com/](https://www.zerotier.com/)

In its original form this old hacker culture is mostly dead. Its successor in
an evolutionary sense is the startup scene.

If you doubt this thesis consider that you're hanging out at _Hacker News_ ,
which is run by a billion dollar VC firm. I rest my case.

Yesterday we had Future Crew and L0PHT Heavy Industries. Today we have
Y-Combinator and Andressen Horowitz. Today's hacker groups have cap tables.

By saying this I am not claiming that this was an entirely positive change.
Evolution is not a progressive march 'upward'. The word evolution just means
'change over time.' Some features are gained, others are lost.

In evolving along these lines the hacker scene gained a lot but it also lost a
lot. It lost the creative ethos of play and experimentation, replacing it with
an engineering culture ruled by the hidebound plodding competence exported by
top-ten universities and their engineering programs -- excellence at doing
things we already know how to do. It also lost its countercultural and social
ethos, replacing it with a yuppie get-rich mentality. But it gained the
ability to act on the world stage. I would argue that hackerdom evolved into a
global economic superpower with the capacity to influence not only global
geopolitics but the future of human evolution.

You'll say it lost its soul and I won't argue with you. It certainly lost the
things that made it great in its time and its place.

But that's the thing. Dinosaurs became birds because the dinosaur thing was
played out. 90s hacker culture was great _in its time and place_. I wonder how
relevant it would be today. This is not the 1980s or the 1990s. Everything has
changed.

I think the question we need to be asking is _what now?_ Where can we go from
here? What might we evolve into that is perhaps more interesting than what we
are today and how do we get there? The answer (IMHO) is _never_ going back to
the way things were. It's always the forward escape.

Edit: another useful question to ask is: what was it about old school hacker
culture that predisposed it to evolve into this? It's particularly interesting
to ask this about aspects of today's startup scene and Silicon Valley culture
that you don't like. For example: I find the fratty 'brogrammer' thing
irritating, but I can see its ancestry in the overwhelmingly male and somewhat
sexist hacker culture of yore. It's just that minus the counterculture
trappings.

~~~
rndmind
I don't agree that the counter-culture of the 1950's led to whole-foods or any
other multinational corporation. Multinational corporations stand in clear
contrast to the beatniks and the free-thinking, free-love, unifying movement
of the 60's.

I think the hacker ethic is needed now more than ever. Some old schoolers are
still around, and thanks to free software and open source movement it has
spread to other parts of the world and is growing.

Indeed change is constant and evolution is always occurring.

I think the world-wide-web has been compromised by avarice and monopolistic
corporations. But that doesn't mean the internet as a medium of transferring
bytes, or that the ethics of being a hacker have changed.

------
traverseda
>We are currently witnessing the gentrification of hacker culture. The
countercultural trickster has been pressed into the service of the preppy tech
entrepreneur class.

Ouch. That hits hard.

------
pietaalpha
The best way of eliminating the hacker ethos is to create economic forces,
starving programmers and Ph.D people, low wages so that the search for money
is key. Is HN about hacker ethos or about making money?

------
omouse
The only thing I took away from this is that more hackers who are hacking on
hackathon projects and for-profit code bases should be hacking on free/open
source to maintain the spirit of the hacker ethos.

------
rumcajz
Dunno about America but why not take part in CCC? That still has the old-
school hacker feeling about it.

------
cafard
I thought that yuppies had disappeared along with hippies, beatniks, Teddies,
etc. etc.

~~~
emodendroket
Maybe they don't call them "yuppies" much anymore but, no, I don't think so.

------
77f89faf
Hint: the phrase 'to suffer fools gladly' comes to mind.

------
smadge
A bunch of yuppies get mad about being called yuppies.

------
Gigamouse
For those who think this article is too long, here is summary:

This gist of the article is that the hacker impulse or ‘hacker ethic’ is a
natural human response to large alienating infrastructures that allow little
agency on the part of individuals. Hackers take different forms, but are
identified by 1) a tendency towards creative rebellion that seeks to increase
the agency of underdogs in the face of systems that are otherwise complex or
oppressive or that limit access to experts 2) a tendency to acting out that
rebellion by bending the rules of those who currently dominate such
infrastructures (this is in contrast to the open rebellion of liberation
leaders who stand in direct defiance of such rules). They thus are figures of
deviance, seeking to ‘queer’ boundaries that are otherwise viewed as concrete
and static.

Having set up a definition of what the hacker ethic is, the article goes on to
argue that the ethic has been corrupted due to its association with computer
culture in the public eye.

On the one hand, in a world where people increasingly rely on computers for
subsistence, the bogeyman figure of the criminal computer ‘hacker’ has
emerged, a figure of media sensationalism and moral panic.

On the other hand, the increasingly powerful technology industry has honed in
on the desirable, unthreatening elements of the hacker ethic to present a
friendly form of hacking as ‘on-the-fly problem-solving for profit’. This is
described a process of ‘gentrification’: In most gentrification you have twin
processes: On the one hand, a source culture is demonised as something scary
to be avoided. On the other hand, it is simultaneously pacified, scrubbed of
subversive content, and made to fit mainstream tastes. This has happened to
rap culture, street culture, and even pagan rituals. And the article argues,
it is now happening to hacker culture: “The countercultural trickster has been
pressed into the service of the preppy tech entrepreneur class.”

The article concludes with a reflection on whether you abandon the gentrified
form, or whether you fight for it. There is reflection on whether the hacker
impulse perhaps has always been an element of capitalist commodification
processes, but argues that it is an ethos that needs to be protected: “In a
world with increasingly large and unaccountable economic institutions, we need
these everyday forms of resistance. Hacking, in my world, is a route to
escaping the shackles of the profit-fetish, not a route to profit.”

~~~
andyl
That's a summary? tldr

My summary: the article is a cultural-marxist parable. The victim is the
hacker. The oppressor is the yuppie. In olden days the hacker lived in a sort
of eden, but now the oppressor has trapped the hacker in webs of capitalist
bondage.

~~~
danielweber
I really worry about these people trying to free me from a high income career
and telling me it's for my own good.

~~~
pharrington
What I want is for a common person to _not need to pursue a high income
career_ in order to support themselves and their loved ones, persue their
hobbies/education/passions, and stay culturally engaged. The _cultural
necessity_ of careerism limits the general options available and accelerates
the course of the dominant culture, which as we know, primarily consolidates
wealth and attacks sub-scale forms of ownership. We need pervasive ownership.

You may not need freeing, but I certainly do.

~~~
zo1
That's not "freedom" you're describing.

You're wanting "freedom to pursue "hobbies" and free "perks" without having to
work for it" for yourself, at the expense of the general society. And by
expense of general society, what that really means is that _someone_ with the
means to production/capital/etc has to part ways with some of his (labor, gasp
he's no longer free), in order to fund your "free" lifestyle.

~~~
pharrington
Beyond my belief that apriori human happiness should be the highest priority
for society, youre misunderstanding me. Yes, it is obvious that we rely on
society to sustain modern life. I'm pretty sure that in 2015 America the main
economic problems to be solved are about efficient distribution of the fruits
of capital. Maybe I'm wrong, and food, housing, transportation and
communication really are primarily supply constrained where I live. Maybe I'm
wrong and people who have the means to live satisfying lives, in general,
really do suddenly withdraw from society and stop doing and making things.

Regardless, we'll agree to say fuck basic income. I like this even more
radical idea: There must be <= 10x total income spread within any company. (I
have no idea how to handle the obvious loopholes)

~~~
zo1
> " _Maybe I 'm wrong, and food, housing, transportation and communication
> really are primarily supply constrained where I live._"

No, it's purely a governmental accountability problem. The money, the will and
the goods are all there. The only problem is we're all dilly-dallying when it
comes to holding the government accountable to provide basic life necessities
to the needy. We all talk noble, but don't throw eggs at politicians for lying
to us, or stick them in jail for causing (or allowing) the homeless die of
starvation on their watch. I exaggerate a little, but really, as you say it's
2015. These should be solved problems using existing structures in place,
without even discussing such things as universal basic income, or anything
remotely that radical.

>" _Regardless, we 'll agree to say fuck basic income. I like this even more
radical idea: There must be <= 10x total income spread within any company. (I
have no idea how to handle the obvious loopholes)_"

I understand that you mean this in a noble and well-meaning way. As a
libertarian I don't deny that government programs, and the societal-backing
behind them are not motivated by noble intentions. But you also have to
understand that implementing such a suggestion fundamentally means that you
don't believe an individual deserves (or is allowed to keep) all the products
of his/her own labor and knowledge. Do you not see anything at fault with
that?

Perhaps, rather address the existing issues that plague our society (if you
agree that it's a problem). Almost all government regulatory laws have the
unintended consequence of promoting larger institutions in the market,
rewarding individuals with large accumulated pots of capital, and increase the
barrier to entry for small-competitors.

~~~
pharrington
I think my main issue is that with automation and labor beyond a certain
scale, there is no sensible tracing of individual labor to that which is
produced. We're on Hacker News; its trivial to demonstrate that an individual
or group's knowledge is often directly responsible for products and services
the original party doesn't even know exists. Production and capital are no
longer primarily guided by human will.

------
paulhauggis
"Gentrification is the process by which nebulous threats are pacified and
alchemised into money"

I never understood why the citizens of a city are against Genetrification. It
improves not only the quality of an area, but can make you money if you own
property there. Creating laws against it essentially keeps the poor, poor. On
top of this, anyone with a little bit of succes and/or money leave.

It's just another example of politicians decreasing social mobility under the
guise of helping the poor.

~~~
smadge
> Gentrification ... can make you money if you own property

You are incorrect to assume that poor people own property in gentrifying
neighborhoods. The dynamic is usually that low income renters get priced out
of a neighborhood by high income renters.

------
astroteller
Garbage article.

