
The Hacker Way - sinzone
http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2012/02/hacker-way.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+startup%2Flessons%2Flearned+%28Lessons+Learned%29
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gavanwoolery
For a big company, I like the way Facebook is run...but, the word "hacker" is
officially no longer cool.

I used to associate the word "hacker" with "badass." It was not a title to be
tossed around like the village whore, it was only given to people who had
proved themselves with years of hard work, and ingenious or innovative hacks.
Becoming a hacker was the equivalent of finding Enlightenment. Any hacker can
collaborate, but hackers also stuck me as renegades - people who would build
something great with their own two hands.

Hacker culture is probably not something you will find in a company that has
just gone public. A public company with as much money invested as Facebook has
too much to lose to embrace real hacker culture - which cares nothing for
deadlines, rules, managers, filling out wireframes, etc.

I am sure there are plenty of smart people at Facebook, but it all feels a
little too rah-rah school spirit, ping pong tables in the break room, silicon
valley kool aid, etc etc. Not the seedy basement you expect hackers to infest.
:)

~~~
ColdAsIce
Everything looses its meaning when the mainstream decides its cool.

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kerryfalk
_Simply put: we don’t build services to make money; we make money to build
better services._

This reminds me of a company I respect for their history and ability to do
great things (relative to their field). Things may have changed in more recent
years but I recall a statement similar to this one made by Ferrari years ago.
It went something like this:

 _We don't race so we can sell street cars, we sell street cars so we can
race._

~~~
mpakes
I believe the genesis of this line of quotes is Walt Disney.

<http://startupquote.com/post/859040744>

~~~
asher
Interesting, because I was also thinking of Disney. They had enormous
conflicts in Florida with the experienced hotel executives they brought in to
run the new hotels.

Ultimately those hotel men were pushed out by the Disney managers, who all
shared the same corporate DNA: fanatical attention to guest experience
combined with unawareness of money.

One store generated $100k/year in revenue, and cost $1M/year to run. That was
perfect from Disney's viewpoint.

Eisner put an end to this, of course.

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WadeF
"Hackers believe that the best idea and implementation should always win — not
the person who is best at lobbying for an idea or the person who manages the
most people."

Hopefully Facebook's success will see more and more companies moving to this
sort of management style.

~~~
rmason
The more a company's decisions are data driven the less influence company
politics can have on the outcome.

I don't think the practice started at Facebook but they may be the largest
example of it.

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pdenya
"“Move fast and break things.” The idea is that if you never break anything,
you’re probably not moving fast enough."

This explains the API timeline.

~~~
InclinedPlane
I think the API timeline fiasco has other roots, probably mostly related to
weak leadership in guiding the overall user experience.

This is a worthwhile nugget of wisdom though, I've found it also applies to
delegation. If nothing ever goes wrong you probably aren't delegating hard
enough, which means you are wasting a lot of time doing things that should be
done by others (and also holding other people back by preventing them from
taking on new responsibilities). The trick is finding the boundary.

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mvzink
This is cool.

> _The examples above all relate to engineering, but we have distilled these
> principles into five core values for how we run Facebook..._

They are reconciling the business/management style well known in the hacker
community with the traditional need for big businesses to have vision
statements, guiding principles, etc. etc.

As Ries says,

> _It is a 21st-century manifesto for a new way of doing business._

Cool.

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kurtvarner
This is absolutely the most refreshing outlook there has ever been from a
public company. It truly is amazing that Facebook still has the hacker
mentally. I'm confident their stock will do extremely well in there years to
come.

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flexterra
Best quotes: "Done is better than perfect" and "Code wins arguments"

~~~
flexterra
We made posters <http://hacker-gallery.goodsie.com/>

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phaedrix
The definition of 'hacking' by hackers: <http://catb.org/jargon/html/me..>.

"In fact, hack has only one meaning, an extremely subtle and profound one
which defies articulation."

so regardless, defining the 'hacker way', especially in the context of a
massive corporation, is a bit ridiculous.

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thar2012
The most funniest part is :)

"While Zuckerberg promised that thefacebook.com would boast new features by
the end of the week, he said that he did not create the website with the
intention of generating revenue."

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scottilee
Something else that stands out to me about this post is the comparison to Mark
Zuckerburg's very first press interview.

I wonder how other startup founders have seen change in themselves over time?

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miles_matthias
I don't disagree that they have a good culture there, but I don't think
they've reached a good balance between done and perfect yet. Loads of Facebook
is riddled with bugs and at times, rendered totally unusable. The only reason
they're able to get away with such an imbalance is that their product taps
into the primal urge to be connected with other people, so much so that their
users will overcome all odds to get on Facebook and connect with their
friends. And for that, I don't much care for Facebook. Make a great service,
not crap built to take advantage of a human instinct.

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gggrgraham
The Hacker Way has taken Wall St. by force. Love it. The Letter from Mark is
the Best Part. <http://theairspace.net/commentary/letter-mark/>

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cr4zy
I wish Facebook would "Be Open". Facebook is a walled garden and holds a ton
of valuable information within its walls. Hence G+.

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kenrik
I agree with the moving fast part, sometimes you need to just get something
"working" to be able to work on another piece.

You need to watch out for Technical Debt though, It will catch up to you
eventually.

