Ask HN: How can a brilliant hacker make the greatest impact on the world? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How can a brilliant hacker make the greatest impact on the world?

7 pointsapu11 comments

Let's assume the hacker is really fucking good at hacking, and reasonably intelligent/capable at other stuff.

Here are the options I see:

1. Start a Startup - Everything I've read suggests that the founders (and first ~5 employees) of a startup will be spending a lot of their time on non-hacking stuff.

2. Join a big company like Google - How much impact can a single employee have at a big company? Particularly a junior one who just joins (regardless of hacking ability).

3. Industrial research lab like Microsoft Research - Hacking ability is usually a distant second compared to research ability as a requirement for these type of jobs.

4. Academia - Even more so than (3).

5. "Side-projects" - This seems like the most effective way to me, but it requires another source of funding to sustain yourself.

What am I missing? Where am I wrong?

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You make it seem as though those are all choices that you get to make yourself. The assumption 'really fucking good at hacking' rarely holds true though.

Once you've proven yourself then those doors will open.

For someone that's simply convinced they are that good but without a track-record the only options are (1) and (5), all the rest will require some form of proof beyond 'your saying so'.

Let's assume those are all available options. Which one should he pick?

If 'he' were that good 'he' would know.

But assuming he is that good and through some freak of history perceives (1) through (5) as being exactly equally applicable I'd take (2).

Because that's the best place to learn that you're really not that hot after all. Some humility goes a long way towards becoming better, it will help you find teachers instead of thinking you know it all already.

Just speaking from personal experience here, when I got started in this field in the land of the blind in my backwater the guy with one eye was king. I had two eyes, and was considered a pretty hot coder by those in my environment and I started to believe it.

Then, after another decade or so I met a couple of guys that really could program and in a year I learned more than in the 18 years or so preceding that.

Now, with access to the vast repository of source code available on the internet you'd have to be either out of your mind or an undiscovered genius of very rare quality to describe yourself as such.

Most 'fucking good coders' aren't. They just haven't been out much yet, or they've just been writing and have not been reading.

The one that pays the most money. Donate most of it.

Edit: added second sentence.

If "the hacker" is truly brilliant, at hacking, then he likely will be brilliant or smart at other things too.

Besides your options 1-5, think about things that are wrong or lacking in the world, and work on fixing some of them. That might require code, but most problems don't. Even problems that do require code are not saved by the code, they're saved by recognizing the problem and doing anything at all that's effective. Coders don't save the world; deployers of code and other resources save the world.

Your 1, 2 and 5 will build your chops, whether the first focus of those efforts are world changing or not. You also might benefit by working with someone who has a vision and has figured out how to execute on it.

If you take away the implied requirement that 1, 2 and 5 need to be code-focused, your first efforts might build chops and allow you to focus on problems rather than solutions in search of problems.

I'm not saying you shouldn't code, just open your mind.

A hacker who is "really fucking good at hacking" wouldn't wait for an answer to "what is the best way to make an impact".

He would have done significant things in one or more of (1) thru (5)(or even more options he thought of himself) and the doing will teach him more about the "best way" than any amount of abstract theorizing about an essentially unanswerable question.

Kiva's doing a good job of it. "Kiva's mission is to connect people, through lending, for the sake of alleviating poverty."

So try and think of ways to save lives systematically.

I'm interested in "leverage" in the sense of powerful tools, methods, etc., e.g. look at http://www.vpri.org/html/work/ifnct.htm

If you can help to significantly improve the general purpose technologies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_purpose_technology) that are available (i.e. better than 10x, not little stuff) you'll potentially make a great impact.

By doing what he does best, hacking on what he loves. The rest will fall into place.

Can you fix cut and paste?

1. Start a Startup - Everything I've read suggests that the founders (and first ~5 employees) of a startup will be spending a lot of their time on non-hacking stuff.

I would like a comment on this. Is hacking all and only about code? Isn't doing business another type of hacking? Hacking is all about doing something cool and different, right? Why can't a company hack business models? Like google for example.

I know after a certain size is attained by a company, business is just business. But why can't we have companies which hack business models in the time of there inception.

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