
Sony offers hacker a job. Hacker turns them down because of geoHot - whenimgone
http://www.inquisitr.com/101239/sony-offers-hacker-a-job-hacker-turns-them-down-because-of-geohot/
======
koush
This is the @koush referenced in the article. To repost what I said on reddit
last week:

"To clear up any confusion, I was not offered a job, just an interview, which
I declined out of principle. For those saying "I'm going to regret being
principled", etc. Probably not. Android App sales have been more than good to
me. Good, enterprising, devs should never find themselves short of
opportunities."

I wasn't trying to "ride on the geohot wave to get 15 mins of fame". Without
beating my drum too much, I've already achieved a moderate degree of it within
the Android community. <http://twitter.com/#!/koush>

I had been tweeting about geohot's happenings for the past few months, and
then I got that recruiter email. So I responded, and took a screenshot because
the whole thing was a pretty ironic, and tweeted it. Then ~16000 followers
made it go viral: <http://twitter.com/#!/koush/status/46345951819993088>

~~~
kefs
Koush.. I just wanted to thank you. 1) for not taking SCEA up on their offer,
but more importantly, 2) for Clockwork Recovery. You are pretty much one of
the only reasons we all have these great rooted Android phones. Thank you.

------
georgecmu
_It’s not very often that when someone is offered a plum job with a company
like Sony that they turn it down_

Yeah, I get job offers like that a couple times a week. Guess what, I turn
them down too. And it's not hard at all, because they are not offers of a plum
job, they are an invitation to apply for a position.

~~~
random42
... and we usually do not take a screenshot of the email after replying
"Thanks, but no thanks" by email either.

It is just a cheap-shot to ride on the geoHot wave to get 15 mins of fame.

~~~
btipling
I laughed at the 0 minutes in the screenshot. He wrote the email and was
immediately so proud of his reply that he just _had_ to take a screen shot
right away and send it to some bloggers. Great, thanks for contributing.

------
maayank
It's not as if they offered him a concrete offer to create the next hot DRM
component, just a generic offer for a generic software engineer role. If he
would have gone down that path they would have had multiple interviews, mutual
checking for possible team fits, etc... This is as generic as it gets, maybe
one level above the generic LinkedIn message. Sure, it can result in a
concrete offer down the road, but it's not as if a head hunter tried to get
the hacker "by whatever fiscal means necessary".

This is like people "sticking it to the man" by yelling at the cable company
representative - helps no one.

~~~
dr_
It's still unusual for a company the size of Sony to reach out to someone like
that.

What's more is that it's now on Hacker News - so it's bigger news than Sony
probably ever intended it to be.

~~~
gaius
No, it's not unusual at all. They employ people full time to do it! And it's
not new either, before blogs recruiters contacted people who had a big
presence on Usenet or mailing lists.

It is only unusual for someone to confuse it for an actual "job offer".

~~~
maayank
maybe it's a location thing... I have _some_ online presence and as you say,
get tons of such offers here in Israel on LinkedIn/email.

------
daimyoyo
Good. After the geohot disaster, I sold my PS3 and all the games I had, my
vaio laptop, and my flatscreen TV. I refuse to patronize a company that abuses
it's customers like that. Apple may have a reputation for disliking people who
hack their products but they realized if they pursue legal action against
them, they'd alienate the core base of developers they rely on for the Apps
they make such a big deal about.

~~~
edge17
As someone that has been involved it in hacking apple products and making some
pocket change from it in a past life, I hardly think apple has a reputation
for disliking these people. If anything, apple looks at what people come up
with 'off the ranch' and pulls it into their own stuff if they like it. Apple
may have this 'reputation,' but it's purely because the press wants to have it
painted this way. I'm no fanboy or anything, I've had a business crushed at
their hands; as an engineer and a business guy, I find their decisions to be
relatively rational and I was well aware of what was coming well before it was
delivered.

People like to point to the guy on top as big and evil. Rightnow it's Apple,
12-15 years ago it was Microsoft. Tomorrow it could be Google.

~~~
skbohra123
But it certainly sounds like as if you are an Apple fanboy. Apple do hate
hacking on their products, restrictions of using itunes for anything Apple is
something I just can't bear with, along with restrictions like using OS/X for
developing iphone/ipod apps.

~~~
edge17
To add to bonzoesc, who _likes_ their product getting hacked? It's a
_business_ and they're trying to make money. The business plans on these high
profile products with years of dev time are made years in advance. In
technology, that's a lifetime, and in hardware doing pivots isn't trivial.

There's also very real concerns regarding hacking - i.e. you want to avoid
getting the rep for being that company responsible (think Sidekick) for the
Paris Hilton situation, where all of hollywood's A-list celebrities phone
numbers get leaked onto the internet. You're trying to build a secure device.

The business motivations are obvious. Apple builds a good closed system.
Google builds a janky open system. Both models work, neither is right or
wrong, and both companys go to the bank.

And just to put things into perspective, there was no App Store when Apple
launched the iphone. I'm pretty sure they never intended for there to be, but
once they saw what people were coming up with 'off the ranch' it became fairly
obvious to them to let developers develop on their platform. The reason I'm
fairly certain Apple had no initial plans for this is simply because, on the
version of the first public firmware (and _only_ the first one), everything
ran as root user... that's just idiotic.

------
jarin
That's not really a job offer, but props to Koushik for standing up for his
principles.

~~~
cmontgomeryb
Exactly, this is a mistake made by almost everyone who has reported it! Large
companies have their recruiters send emails like this out all the time.

~~~
michaelcampbell
I get emails like this occasionally. Not from Sony, but other large firms in
the industry that I've been in for many years. It's all quite routine.

------
rlpb
She probably read the email and thought: "Hacker? He's a hacker? We can't hire
hackers! Good thing he told me straight away, he just saved us all a lot of
time!"

 _We_ know what he means, but other people take the word hacker to mean
something else.

If Sony came to this site and saw this article, they'd probably think the same
thing too. If the email was sent to try and get them to change their ways, it
probably won't have worked at all, since they might not even understand the
meaning of the message.

~~~
chaosprophet
No, but it makes a pretty good story for the media, which will probably result
in lots of more negative PR for Sony, which in turn will be something that
Sony would worry about.

~~~
gphil
Unfortunately, the rest of the world has the same issues understanding the
term "hacker." I think this will just fall into obscurity.

------
mbrubeck
I worked with Koush last year at Kiha Software (an Android software startup in
Seattle). Currently, he is working on his own one-person startup
<http://www.deployfu.com/> which could be described as "Heroku for .NET (and
other platforms)."

------
huhtenberg
I had similar experience long long time ago -- told the recruiter that I would
not interview with Philip Morris and got back a blank stare. Nothing dramatic
really came out of it, but it sure made me feel good.

PS. Oh, and Sony was not offering this gent a job, it was a simple "feeler".
Google sends out these in droves, it does not mean they are sure job offers.

------
redthrowaway
Good on him, but surely there's a better source than this? Lack of any real
information aside, this article was painful to read. A twitter link to the
picture would have conveyed just as much information without the stumbling,
awkward prose.

------
thesystemis
This article "Sony's way on Hackers, Innovaters and Makers" from Make magazine
blog (which is down now, but I'll link to the cache) is a good run down of the
various ways, before and up to the geohot lawsuit, sony has been attacking
hackers and experimenters: <http://bit.ly/dVmhC8>

~~~
aw3c2
Actual link is [http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/02/sonys-war-on-
makers...](http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/02/sonys-war-on-makers-
hackers-and-innovators.html)

~~~
thesystemis
ah yeah -- it just was down this morning, so linked to the cache. thanks.

------
swaits
I work at SCEA, occasionally with Sarah on recruiting issues. Just want to put
it out there that she's a genuinely nice person, and an ethical recruiter. Our
internal recruiters reach out to folks like this every day. I guess she just
got a bit unlucky on this one by running into someone looking for his 15
minutes.

Also, "reaching out" is a far cry from a "job offer"! You still need to be
phone screened and extensively interviewed in-person before you have any sort
of shot at an offer. Gotta make sure the candidate actually knows his or her
stuff, and that they're not going to act like a complete asshole.

~~~
faragon
Well, how did Sony in your opinion acted when stopped me to play new games
while keeping the possibility of running Linux in _my_ property? I can not
find the word, but your "complete asshole" expression could work as an
approximation also for that case.

~~~
swaits
With some work, I think I figured out what you are trying to ask. I have no
comment on the OtherOS issue.

------
ctide
I don't understand how this gets 200+ points. Has a vast majority of people
not received these blanket recruiter emails before?

------
RobertKohr
For those who say that this will never reach the ears of anyone that matter in
Sony, it isn't their ears that matter. This has brought to light something
that provides negative publicity to sony in the hacker community, and will
make recruiting more difficult for them.

Basically, whether they know it or not, they are effectively being punished
for their actions. The failure to recruit a few talented candidates that will
read about this will harm their long term business success.

------
pdenya
Who does say there isn't solidarity among hackers? Is that a thing? I've
always thought of my fellow hackers as a supportive group.

------
etaty
Perhaps he should try to change the company from inside !

~~~
angus77
More likely the company would change _him_ from inside.

------
mkramlich
A job was not offered. Title and OA are incorrect. An opening dialogue attempt
was made by a recruiter.

georgecmu's comment is good too. Those sorts of emails from recruiters are
closer to the random snail mail you get from credit card companies saying
"Contratulations! You're pre-approved!" -- just fill out this form with all
your PII and we might really approve you. Maybe. It's a little better filtered
than that, but not too much.

