

Great Hacker != Great Hire (2004) - wyday
http://www.ericsink.com/entries/No_Great_Hackers.html

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bayareaguy
_When I think about the great hackers I know, one thing they have in common is
the extreme difficulty of making them work on anything they don't want to._

Ay, there's the rub: keeping highly productive people's interests aligned with
the goals of the organization can be hard, particularly for tasks that don't
take advantage of whatever it is they like about what they do. Organizations
need to realize that this is the same for all great individuals, hackers or
otherwise. The type of people ISVs like SourceGear need for success is
probably different from the type needed by YCombinator startups.

~~~
rjurney
Here here. Very insightful. I often wonder... I've made a pretty bad employee
so far, which is one of the reason I'm a consultant for my cash monies and
start companies whenever I can afford to. But... then again I've never had a
really interesting job... ever.

I wonder if I would make a great employee at some kick ass company doing
interesting research, large or small?

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gaius
I don't think he's actually read much of PG's writing. For example, he says
"great hackers" aren't willing to do grunt work, but the way you get Robert
Morris to do your Unix admin is to give him a big chunk of equity!

Smart people are perfectly happy to do mundane or tedious tasks a) in support
of a grand vision or b) for a big pile of money. That's why movie FX and games
pays so badly, and SAP implementation pays so much. If you're in the middle
somewhere, well, complaining about it won't make much difference.

------
cdr
"Wednesday, August 04, 2004"

Pretty positive it's been posted here before too.

~~~
mattyb
Yep: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=244621>

Edit: And the URLs are identical; does the dupe-blocker only apply to
submissions less than a year old?

~~~
wyday
Sorry, I didn't catch it the first time. Thanks for the link to the original,
it has quite a lively discussion.

------
sho
The expression in the title is incomplete. Let me fix it:

    
    
      Great Hacker != Great Hire unless (Good Company && Interesting Work)
    

That's better, and now you don't have the read the article, which is just some
whipped-sounding guy complaining that all the smart programmers don't want to
waste their time doing telephone support for his Visual SourceSafe tool.

~~~
wyday
_some whipped-sounding guy_

He owns the company. Does he also hold the whip?

~~~
sho
Why not. He chooses to work with VSS, so we know he enjoys self-flagellation
..

~~~
neilk
I can't believe this is getting upvoted. He chooses a market where lots of
desperate people got locked into the wrong choice and he makes it halfway
bearable for them. This is called winning.

