How To Hire a Hacker 370
itwbennett writes "If you want to hire a hacker, you need to take a more psychology-based approach to the entire interview process to determine whether he or she has changed their ways enough to be a trustworthy employee, says Mich Kabay in a recent Network World blog post. But this approach is also 'germane for highly skilled staffers, even those that don't come with arrest records or who have done something questionable in their pasts,' says David Strom. For example, in your next interview, ask a question that will suss out how much of a sense of entitlement a candidate has — or how much you or your company has. 'One time when I interviewed with Microsoft in Redmond I couldn't get over this sense of corporate entitlement — it was one of the biggest turn-offs that I had during my interviewing day there,' says Strom. 'I got the feeling that I wasn't going to fit in, no matter how smart I thought (or they thought) I was.'"
Sounds more like (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds more like "how to hire a self important misanthrope" to me.
Re:Had any scary interviews? (Score:1, Insightful)
You failed to get the offer because you don't know how to use "accept" and "except"
In fairness (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This article seems to be anti-hacker (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps you mean cracker
"If I was a real cracker, I'd want to be topped with a real cheese, maybe a strong stilton."
And I thought "hacker" actually meant someone who (literally) hacked on things. With a hatchet or similar. Or maybe language just changes, and we need to all get over it.
The joke was too easy (Score:5, Insightful)
The interviewee must answer: "Yes, but to fully understand it, you must first understand recursion"
Re:Had any scary interviews? (Score:5, Insightful)
In many (most?) business structures, expertise only gets us so far - after that, it's all about how we deal with people.
If you want to have a part in the problem-solving drama called "Your Employing Company," you have to get along well enough to be allowed at the table.
There's not much justice or fairness in this - just some hard reality along with enough exceptions to make the rule fuzzy.
Re:Sounds more like (Score:5, Insightful)
Calling such people "misanthrope" is a bit harsh, I think.
Someone who is intelligent, competent, and has a difficult time finding acceptance (or even a modicum of comfort-with-others) in new environments could very easily get falsely labeled a misanthrope. If they're capable and know up from down, calling them self-important is a wee bit counter-productive - and I dare say, quite possibly why they'd be viewed as misanthropic.
A better characteristic descriptor would probably be "socially clueless". I know a lot of guys who come across harsh - myself included. They are usually some of the most open people I've known; they're also very amiable - but havent' a clue how to relate to others unlike themselves.
Re:How to... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a hard way to make a decent product. If Billy's app doesn't talk to Sue's service because the two never speak to one another or sit down to do a review, it doesn't matter how brilliant either of them is. Their shit still doesn't work.
Re:In fairness (Score:2, Insightful)
Indeed it is, but the thread is filling up with people I wouldn't want to work with. I award myself half credit.
Re:How to... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't agree. If this were true, then the foosball table in our kitchen wouldn't be busy all the time.
I think it's a subtler truth here. Many technical folks are more comfortable on working technical problems than people problems. Tech problems have at least one right answer that is unambiguous. People problems may not.
I think the way to keep tech people happy is to give them good problems to work on, serve as a diplomatic layer to insulate them from the annoying people surrounding them in the world, and facilitate making the rules clear on the floor to minimize conflict among the team. And provide free pop.
Re:5 min (Score:3, Insightful)
and nobody here yet?
You kidding? We've all gone off to update our resumes.
Re:Sounds more like (Score:5, Insightful)
He's also often distressed by the stupidity of the people he works with. "Mate" I said, "Everybody you work with will be stupider than you. Get used to it."
I don't know if it helped much, but it's indicative. In a world of so-so thinkers, any bright sparks will have trouble fitting in. And it takes a fairly bright spark to be even a mediocre sysadmin, to be honest.
Re:Surely Slashdot can get cracker vs hacker right (Score:3, Insightful)
Words mean things. Everyone has to agree what those things are. If your definition of a word doesn't match the rest of the world's definition, you have a problem, not the rest of the world.
How to Hire a Hacker (Score:4, Insightful)
When it is safe to have a hacker on your IT staff
It is always safe to hire and employ a hacker. If they don't follow the hacker ethic [he.fi] they aren't a hacker. Maybe a cracker, hackivist, or script kiddie but not a hacker.
Falcon
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sounds more like (Score:5, Insightful)
About 90% of people in the world *are* stupid.
It's not their fault. They have been mis-educated,
and are easily distracted. They really are clueless
more than stupid. And they don't care that they
don't know what is really going on.
Re:What if you are hiring to be a hacker? (Score:4, Insightful)
And i wouldn't put it on my resume either : it's like a written statement of you admitting a crime.
Re:Sounds more like (Score:5, Insightful)
About 90% of people in the world *are* stupid
You are under arrest for egregious misuse of statistics.
Re:Sounds more like (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually that's because most 'team building exercises' suck.
You want to build the most amazing team that ever graced your workplace? Send the three or four of them to Vegas or Miami or someplace that has TROUBLE for them to get into under the pretenses of a training class or a seminar, and only get them one car. That will insure they get in a ton of trouble together. When they get back, they will be tighter than any team you've ever seen, and they will get serious amounts of amazing work done. And the three or four of them will work so well together for the rest of their tenure - they will kick the snot out of any teams built over an afternoon playing blindfolded Monopoly and drinking non-alcoholic beverages or whatever the current fad in weak ass team building exercises is this season.
Disclaimer - trouble in moderation. I'm talking going to strip clubs and drifting the rental car around corners, not burying a dead hooker in the desert.
That said - a team that does the latter will be a LOT tighter than the team that does the former. Or so I've heard.
Re:Think this one needs a Part 2 (Score:4, Insightful)
The folks in the first category could hurt you too. They're white/gray hat because they want to be, not because they have to be.
Re:Surely Slashdot can get cracker vs hacker right (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, please. Like many words in the English language, the word "hacker" has distinct meanings in distinct contexts, and you and everyone else here knew perfectly well which was intended in this case. The guy who looks around for an aquatic bird when someone says "duck!" might have a valid semantic point, but he still looks like an elitist fool when something smacks him upside the head.
3 paragraphs, I've read enough. (Score:1, Insightful)
Being a 'hacker' who can find solutions to problems most mortals deem impossible, I can tell you that the approach taken by the article is just plain and simply *WRONG*.
If you seriously want someone who thinks out of the box and can figure out complex problems, there really are just a few simple steps to take into consideration:
1) Realize you WILL be hiring someone smarter than you
2) Be okay with it since it will make you look smarter!
3) Allow them to do their job! Don't impose on them stupid ass schedules that require them to attend stupid ass meetings all the freaking time! Light bulb moments don't come on schedules, they come when you allow them to spend their own good time figuring out YOUR problem.
4) DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE TRY TO MICROMANAGE!!!!!!
5) Understand they are not after your job.. they just want to do THE job you hired them to do.. so chill out, give them raises and plain and simple, keep them happy!
Step #6 is of course "PROFIT!!!"
--thrill
Re:Sounds more like (Score:1, Insightful)
Bright people never had it easy. In early times, they could at least go to some king and be hired as his private inventor or artists. Since kings went out of fashion, art is basically being able to poop in a corner and make the shit look like Jesus in the process and inventing became a 9-5 job, things became problematic for people with an IQ above room temperature.
Re:5 min (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wish I had mod points (Score:2, Insightful)
I wonder what had happened if terry gave the passwords away earlier. Management probably would have crashed the whole sf infrastructure, hospitals and others.
Re:Sounds more like (Score:5, Insightful)
Except for a few biologically retarded individuals, I've found that most people aren't stupid at all. Instead they're narrowly focussed in their intelligence.
So Jim Bob may not know Sartre from Sasquatch, but he intimately knows a Chevy big-block engine. Or how to skin and clean a deer with a broken Coke bottle. Or some damn thing. He's intelligent and capable within some narrow parameters, and he's happy when he stays within them.
It's the pervasive and rigid modern school system that divides people into "smart" and "stupid".
Re:What if you are hiring to be a hacker? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's more like you admitting you're a furry on the Something Awful site.
The proper definition of a hacker, a person who does interesting things with computers, is completely harmless.
Yet it too has been poisoned by negative connotations by propaganda to the point that only a fool makes it public knowledge.
Re:Sounds more like (Score:5, Insightful)
There's also the difference between "intelligent" and "informed." There are plenty of otherwise intelligent people that ignorant on topics that they're asked to weigh in on. Ignorance is a bigger problem than lack of intelligence, I'd say. This dovetails nicely into your observation.
To see the effects of institutionalized ignorance, look at all the wasted intellectual effort of the Dark Ages. You have bright minds of the day debating over how many angels could dance on the head of a pin, as opposed to advancing science and engineering. Imagine if all that effort had gone into developing the steam engine a few hundred years before James Watt got to it.
Re:What if you are hiring to be a hacker? (Score:1, Insightful)
It's more like you admitting you're a furry on the Something Awful site.
The proper definition of a hacker, a person who does interesting things with computers, is completely harmless.
Yet it too has been poisoned by negative connotations by propaganda to the point that only a fool makes it public knowledge.
Don't be bitter about the meaning of a word evolving over time. You wouldn't put that you are generally fun-loving and gay on your resume these days either.