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I was left agasp by some of the language (some is NSFW) and techniques ised by the scammers, but you would be the grandmother with dementia (non-technical user) vs someone who will say/do anything for money.
I read Fire in the Valley when I was young and it impacted me, although there might be a better book that's similar. I might also recommend something by Jaron Lanier or Stallman if you don't might being a little political.
https://www.are.na/zach-rose/use-misuse-rugged-consumerism-e...
So being a hacker is a practice, and in some cases it's a lifestyle (when you orient your life around hacking). But it's not a mindset. Some folks are compulsive hackers, some are methodical, some are opportunistic, others are hackers out of necessity - but they're all united by what they do, not how they think.
Read books by hackers, watch conference talks. And ofc get to know hackers, go to hack spaces. Keep an open mind and be curious. That's a good starting point to see how hacker culture really is. It's mostly about unorthodox curiosity and having fun with machines and systems. Think of children playing with toys, who grew up and never stopped playing with toys.
Don't waste your time on pop culture presentations of hackers, like movies or reading articles about "great" hacks or hackers, it's misleading and not going to transform your mind to think like a hacker in any way.
I don't think there is a hacker mindset. We don't all have the same experiences or motivations for why we build, tinker, break, and fix. We just all happen to do that stuff. Some of the most impressive "hackers" I've ever met were old HAM radio enthusiasts with thick country accents who live in the middle of nowhere. Those folks have almost nothing in common with the extremely educated liberal developers in SF. But b…
so maybe use your hacker mindset to deduce this is the mindset then?
I strongly encourage you to make your non-technical folks aware of good engineering practices, instead of this "everyone needs to learn to code and have special snowflake hacker skills" mindset that has so permeated the industry.
Most technical people you work with, even in early startups, will not be "hackers" in any way, shape or form. Hacking doesn't usually equate to doing things that tend to make businesses lots of money. Sometimes it does, but not usually.
The only connection between Facebook and hacking I can think of is that their software may have relied on "dirty hacks" and crutches in the past to make it work.
Hacker culture by nature is very anti-corporate, anarchistic and against subordinating everything under the dictatorship of profit maximization.
If the OP thinks "hacker mindest" equals being on a path to create the next big app or service, you are being mislead big time.