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ZenPayroll Is Not Hiring Hackers

zenpayroll.com

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Re: ZenPayroll Is Not Hiring Hackers

#31

Post by spitfire »

pg wrote: post #21

I'm embarrassed to see such nonsense coming from a company we funded. A hacker is not intrinsically someone who throws things together to see if they'll work. The phrase "kernel hacker," for example, doesn't mean someone who writes OSes in that way. It means someone who is deeply familiar with OS internals.

Unfortunately, the meanings of words change over time. "Hacker" in the general usage has come to mean throwing things together quickly to see if they'll work.

It is frustrating to see, but once a word comes into common use you lose control of it.

Re: ZenPayroll Is Not Hiring Hackers

#32

Post by Smudge »

pg wrote: post #21

I'm embarrassed to see such nonsense coming from a company we funded. A hacker is not intrinsically someone who throws things together to see if they'll work. The phrase "kernel hacker," for example, doesn't mean someone who writes OSes in that way. It means someone who is deeply familiar with OS internals.

I didn't read it as ZenPayroll trying to redefine what "hacker" means. Rather, they are simply stating what "hacker" typically describes in the context of a job board. In my experience, their described usage is pretty common, especially among hiring posts for startup jobs.

Re: ZenPayroll Is Not Hiring Hackers

#33

Post by 10098 »

bcbrown wrote: post #24
10098 wrote: post #17

I'm tired of the term "hacker" being thrown around this way. Authors just attach whatever meaning they want to it. http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#what_is

I also prefer the original definition, but I think you're fighting a losing battle. I think in common use, there's now three definitions: 1) The original definition. Someone with curiosity who digs into the internals of systems, more or less 2) Crackers who 'hack into' protected systems 3) Someone who works for a startup that's "going to change the world"

The third one is what annoys me the most.

Re: ZenPayroll Is Not Hiring Hackers

#34

Post by fleitz »

Good call, imagine you had a task like taking the input from the form for the employees wage.

A good developer with no knowledge of IEEE754 might do something like this:

  float hourlyWage = hourlyWageTextbox.text.floatValue();
While a hacker with intricate knowledge of IEEE754 might insist that everyone do the following:

  string hourlyWage[] = hourlyWageTextbox.text.split('.')
  int hourlyWage = hourlyWage[0].to_int * 100 + hourlyWage[1].to_int
It's essential to get rid of all these hackers who just slow down the dev process with extra unnecessary code. After all a quick unit test will show that there's no benefit from all the extra work of storing currency values as cents.

Re: ZenPayroll Is Not Hiring Hackers

#35

Post by selmnoo »

pg wrote: post #21

I'm embarrassed to see such nonsense coming from a company we funded. A hacker is not intrinsically someone who throws things together to see if they'll work. The phrase "kernel hacker," for example, doesn't mean someone who writes OSes in that way. It means someone who is deeply familiar with OS internals.

This is clearly a case of semantic disputes.

Hacker in the MIT definition of the word emphasizes cleverness and playfulness, and I think this is how most people (including the HN crowd here) usually mean to use the word. I should note that the term 'kernel hacker' has more or less developed on its own, separately, as a phrasal noun. One could very well argue that the definition of 'hacking' extends to sloppy implementation methods, so calling the logic in the submitted post 'nonsense' may be going a little overboard here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_(programmer_subculture)

Re: ZenPayroll Is Not Hiring Hackers

#36

Post by gailees »

pg wrote: post #21

I'm embarrassed to see such nonsense coming from a company we funded. A hacker is not intrinsically someone who throws things together to see if they'll work. The phrase "kernel hacker," for example, doesn't mean someone who writes OSes in that way. It means someone who is deeply familiar with OS internals.

opened the comments just to see if pg had chimed in on this. glad you came in to clarify. thank you.

this is somewhat offensive as a hacker -- moving fast allows me to iterate, and several iterations is wayyyy better at trying to build something perfectly the first time. even if you want things to be perfect, you should hire hackers. just have them iterate before you do new releases.

Re: ZenPayroll Is Not Hiring Hackers

#37

Post by purephase »

I understand both points of view on the usage of the term "hacker" but I think most people are missing the key point of the post.

Payroll is incredibly difficult to do. Even more so to do well. Having spent many, many years in the space I can honestly say that it is one of the most taxing systems I've ever been involved with.

A lot of startups and the folks that are interested in them are looking for cool, hip and fast moving projects to jump in and out of. For people of that mindset, payroll is one of those fields where you will be consistently frustrated.

It is filled with thousands/millions of a little one-off rules (per employee, per state/province, per country, per vertical/horizontal etc. etc.) that it can drive a type-A go-getter insane. I think it is better to get that out of the way first before possibly attracting the wrong type of talent.

Re: ZenPayroll Is Not Hiring Hackers

#38

Post by stevenwei »

10098 wrote: post #17

I'm tired of the term "hacker" being thrown around this way. Authors just attach whatever meaning they want to it. http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#what_is

Words tend to change meaning over time. Some words fade out of usage, and others get invented. Such is the nature of language, I'm not sure there's much point in getting upset about it.

Re: ZenPayroll Is Not Hiring Hackers

#39

Post by 10098 »

stevenwei wrote: post #38
10098 wrote: post #17

I'm tired of the term "hacker" being thrown around this way. Authors just attach whatever meaning they want to it. http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#what_is

Words tend to change meaning over time. Some words fade out of usage, and others get invented. Such is the nature of language, I'm not sure there's much point in getting upset about it.

Yes, and it starts with people using words without knowing what they're talking about, just to sound cool

Re: ZenPayroll Is Not Hiring Hackers

#40

Post by pg »

spitfire wrote: post #31
pg wrote: post #21

I'm embarrassed to see such nonsense coming from a company we funded. A hacker is not intrinsically someone who throws things together to see if they'll work. The phrase "kernel hacker," for example, doesn't mean someone who writes OSes in that way. It means someone who is deeply familiar with OS internals.

Unfortunately, the meanings of words change over time. "Hacker" in the general usage has come to mean throwing things together quickly to see if they'll work. It is frustrating to see, but once a word comes into common use you lose control of it.

If you take a look at the HN jobs page, you'll see that's not true. Of the companies looking for "hackers" one is doing document signing and the other is writing healthcare software.
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