Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hackers vs. suits: Why nerds become leakers

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 163 posts

Re: Hackers vs. suits: Why nerds become leakers

#31

Post by toyg »

dalke wrote: post #11
ChikkaChiChi wrote: post #7

The article misses a rather large point: We (meaning the tech elite) are the first army in human history to be less concerned with the acquisition of power and control and more about giving that empowerment to the individuals we fight for. Hear me out. Those of us over the age of 30 are mostly digital immigrants. We remember a world without CallerID, a PC in every office, and a global network interconnecting all the…

"first army in human history to be less concerned with the acquisition of power and control and more about giving that empowerment to the individuals we fight for" That sounds incredible egocentric. Under what standard do you exclude all suffragettes and all abolitionists from this category?

In fact, the opposite is true: most revolutionary movements spurred from philosophical elaborations of wealthy and well-educated members of the ruling classes, which then allowed "inferiors" to claim their newly-defined 'natural rights'. People like Locke or Voltaire had little or nothing to gain from saying what they said, but were conscious that others would have been empowered by their words.

Re: Hackers vs. suits: Why nerds become leakers

#32

Post by mogrim »

w_t_payne wrote: post #15
ChikkaChiChi wrote: post #7

The article misses a rather large point: We (meaning the tech elite) are the first army in human history to be less concerned with the acquisition of power and control and more about giving that empowerment to the individuals we fight for. Hear me out. Those of us over the age of 30 are mostly digital immigrants. We remember a world without CallerID, a PC in every office, and a global network interconnecting all the…

Well, the term "army" implies a great deal more control and coordination than I currently see in place. Mind you, if we did organize, it would scare the bejezus out of the authorities.

Unlikely: a standing army is a lot easier to squash than a load of unrelated, unconnected individuals.

Re: Hackers vs. suits: Why nerds become leakers

#33

Post by rayiner »

lmm wrote: post #30
rayiner wrote: post #27

Hackers tend to be passive, arm-chair, activists. Twittering on the internet and feeding outrage to each other, but never actually getting engaged to solve real issues. How many hackers do you know that have dedicated their entire careers to causes in the public service? In comparison, I look around at my friends who majored in liberal arts. I know a double-digit number of people who turned down six figure jobs to go…

>In comparison, I look around at my friends who majored in liberal arts. I know a double-digit number of people who turned down six figure jobs to go into public service for a fraction of the money. One of my best friends wants to save the environment. The summer after our second year of school, I went to go intern at a firm, which gave me a $1k/month lunch budget and a guaranteed job after graduation, while she went…

The article isn't about whether hackers are more or less effective, as a group, at causes in the public service. It's about aggrandizing their moral character. Who has a greater moral character? Someone who puts all their effort into the public service with the skills they have, or someone who has some positive benefit on the public merely incident to his lucrative job? Inextricable from this evaluation is the fact that the guy who saved 1% of the electricity used at Facebook could probably have a tremendously larger impact on the environment if he dedicated his skills entirely to the public service.

Also, by your reasoning, Goldman Sachs (which donates like $250 million a year to public service causes) is a far greater force for good than the EFF (which has a budget of $3.5 million). Now, the EFF might be more efficient at doing good than Goldman's charities, but is it 70x more efficient?

Re: Hackers vs. suits: Why nerds become leakers

#34

Post by ChikkaChiChi »

ChikkaChiChi wrote: post #7

The article misses a rather large point: We (meaning the tech elite) are the first army in human history to be less concerned with the acquisition of power and control and more about giving that empowerment to the individuals we fight for. Hear me out. Those of us over the age of 30 are mostly digital immigrants. We remember a world without CallerID, a PC in every office, and a global network interconnecting all the…

I appreciate the feedback. Some of the criticism is the price you pay for an off-the-cuff for draft. :)

If I rewrote this, I would definitely tone down the egocentrism by a few factors. I didn't realize it came off as such.

I'm not going to say that there aren't the Terry Childs types out there that give all of the tech community a bad name but its anecdotal at best. My comment was based on my own personal opinion and observations.

I did not say that my use of the term 'army' in any way precludes other collectives of individuals fighting for the just and that somehow that the tech community is exclusive in this fact. What I was pointing out was that never before has the power to abuse been in the hands of so many and yet (for the most part) that power has been handled responsibly.

The 'walled garden' jiggy2011 mentions is my biggest fear as well. Without a continued commitment to open systems we place the control mechanisms in the hands of fewer individuals where morality plays a far less part in the concept of self-governance.

As for selling information to the highest bidder, I cannot speak to that as I do not have a strong background of experiences to develop an opinion. Personally, I exchange certain aspects of my contact information and habits to companies in exchange for certain services (Facebook, Google, HN, etc.)

Re: Hackers vs. suits: Why nerds become leakers

#35

Post by Jd »

rayiner wrote: post #27

Hackers tend to be passive, arm-chair, activists. Twittering on the internet and feeding outrage to each other, but never actually getting engaged to solve real issues. How many hackers do you know that have dedicated their entire careers to causes in the public service? In comparison, I look around at my friends who majored in liberal arts. I know a double-digit number of people who turned down six figure jobs to go…

Generally agree.

I've actually been quite surprised by myself the more I make inroads into "hacker" culture. Many software engineers I know seem far more concerned about the precise incoming dollar volume than very many people I know from my ostensibly "elite" background, Many old friends went wandering around the world attempting to start microfinancing initiatives, work for the Peace Corp, or who dedicated themselves to teaching children in the inner cities for little or no pay.

Within the hacker world it often seems like a need for self-validation vis-a-vis jocks (a major theme in pg's own Hackers and Painters), of which the entire game is playing "catching up" by accumulating enough "fuck you" money.

That sort of anti-social and anti-societal aspect has actually become more and more mainstream, as we see the success of YCombinator and the greater popularity of reddit, etc. but there definitely is a dark side to it, which goes beyond passive or active promotion of "jailbait" and to the core of our own identities as human beings.

I think that people who have to teach things to other people, or engage in some way with broader society, learn necessarily the value of community and should be honored for their contributions to such. The hacker mentality, sadly, often values only linear metrics like lines of code or benjamins in the bank.

Very sad. Silicon Valley is not what it used to be (a major reason why I left).

Re: Hackers vs. suits: Why nerds become leakers

#36

Post by mseebach »

rayiner wrote: post #33
lmm wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In comparison, I look around at my friends who majored in liberal arts. I know a double-digit number of people who turned down six figure jobs to go into public service for a fraction of the money. One of my best friends wants to save the environment. The summer after our second year of school, I went to go intern at a firm, which gave me a $1k/month lunch budget and a guaranteed job after graduation, while she went…

The article isn't about whether hackers are more or less effective, as a group, at causes in the public service. It's about aggrandizing their moral character. Who has a greater moral character? Someone who puts all their effort into the public service with the skills they have, or someone who has some positive benefit on the public merely incident to his lucrative job? Inextricable from this evaluation is the fact t…

> Inextricable from this evaluation is the fact that the guy who saved 1% of the electricity used at Facebook could probably have a tremendously larger impact on the environment if he dedicated his skills entirely to the public service.

That's not "fact". At all. Some people certainly have great impact in public service, but most are pushing paper around and navigating bureaucracy and a brand of office politics unheard of in all but the worst private corporations. Years are wasted being an intern to the guy who gets coffee for the guy who gets coffee for the guy who answers the phone for the guy who sometimes has a meeting in the same building as the guy who makes an important decision every once in a while. Some build PRISM (obviously a public service project, undoubtedly build by people who are certain their project ultimately advances the human condition), other engage in countless other less nefarious but ultimately still worthless or even damaging projects.

Re: Hackers vs. suits: Why nerds become leakers

#37

Post by sharkweek »

rayiner wrote: post #27

Hackers tend to be passive, arm-chair, activists. Twittering on the internet and feeding outrage to each other, but never actually getting engaged to solve real issues. How many hackers do you know that have dedicated their entire careers to causes in the public service? In comparison, I look around at my friends who majored in liberal arts. I know a double-digit number of people who turned down six figure jobs to go…

It is amazing how competitive it is to get a job in the public sector. I tried for over a year to get a job at the GAO, only to find their hiring process almost impossible to breach.

One of my friends, a recent law school graduate, wants nothing more than to work in the public sector. He has been out of school for the past nine months applying for various jobs with the local counties, only to realize that there is MASSIVE competition for these jobs -- he just lost out on one position to a person that had 10+ years experience in a lateral county; there were also over 50 applicants.

He's a very bright guy, but I can see the life sort of draining from his eyes with each rejection. He doesn't go a week without one of his friends from law school calling him seeing if he'd be interested in private sector work, and sooner than later I think he's going to have to take something like that just to get a job.

Re: Hackers vs. suits: Why nerds become leakers

#38

Post by rayiner »

toyg wrote: post #28
rayiner wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a bunch of egocentric, self-aggrandizing tripe. > are the first army in human history to be less concerned with the acquisition of power and control and more about giving that empowerment to the individuals we fight for. Everyone who calls to arms thinks that. Most radicals end up being more oppressive than the regimes they replaced. Forward progress has, much more often, come incrementally, from the U.S.'s very…

"Conservative revolutionary ideals"? "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" -- this was political and philosophical dynamite in the XVIII century, when kings and gods still reigned supreme over the whole world (in fact, it still is quite an incendi…

The founding fathers were no radicals. Whereas the leaders of the French revolution changed everything dramatically, the founders left the basic structure of American society more or less intact. "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" was not an incendiary statement in late 1700's England. The 1688 Glorious Revolution had made Parliament ascendent in England, and the phrase "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" is a turn of Locke's phrase "life, liberty, and estate" which he published in the 1689 "Two Treatises of Government" in the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution.

17th century England was a fairly different place than is commonly taught in school. E.g (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Bonham%27s_Case). Consequently, the level of continuity that existed between English rule and independence is usually vastly understated. The Constitution is best understood as a formalization of various strands of thought and practice that was already well-established in England by that time.

And when I say "bloodless" I mean as far as revolutions go--compared to say the French revolution or the Chinese revolution.

Re: Hackers vs. suits: Why nerds become leakers

#39

Post by jmduke »

sharkweek wrote: post #37
rayiner wrote: post #27

Hackers tend to be passive, arm-chair, activists. Twittering on the internet and feeding outrage to each other, but never actually getting engaged to solve real issues. How many hackers do you know that have dedicated their entire careers to causes in the public service? In comparison, I look around at my friends who majored in liberal arts. I know a double-digit number of people who turned down six figure jobs to go…

It is amazing how competitive it is to get a job in the public sector. I tried for over a year to get a job at the GAO, only to find their hiring process almost impossible to breach. One of my friends, a recent law school graduate, wants nothing more than to work in the public sector. He has been out of school for the past nine months applying for various jobs with the local counties, only to realize that there is MA…

Separate from the morality/public service bit (which I agree with rayiner about), I think it's interesting that public sector work is often the most demanding and rewarding (not in a feel-good sense) work out there. Usually this is equated with law/diplomatic positions, but I think there's something about the low-budget quick-turnaround nature and general sense of gravitas that brings out the best work of people. I hope Code for America (http://codeforamerica.org/about/) expands and starts to fill the same role that Teach for America does -- sacrifice two years of your life that you'd otherwise spend working for BigCo, get a great credential and pick up a tremendous amount of skills along the way.

I'm reminded of a really interesting post by Kyle Rush about the challenges he faced developing Obama's 2012 fundraising platform: http://kylerush.net/blog/meet-the-obama-campaigns-250-millio...

Re: Hackers vs. suits: Why nerds become leakers

#40

Post by GFischer »

lettergram wrote: post #20

I don't exactly agree with the author, but I will say that he might have something. Having the ability and constantly programming I have noticed that I have trouble understanding why people do the things that they do. I LOVE the feeling of making a dot move across the screen, or changing the font, or really anything that manipulates something on the screen. I love the feeling of achievement the ability to construct s…

Something of the sort is expressed on many Ayn Rand books - yes, her books are full of cartoonish cliches, one-dimensional characters and straw man attacks, but I get the same spirit from this comment than from the descriptions in The Fountainhead.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fountainhead

Post reply on HN