Hackers vs. suits: Why nerds become leakers | Hacker News Reader

Hackers vs. suits: Why nerds become leakers

washingtonpost.com

200 pointsLibertatea153 comments

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 into public service for a fraction of the money, doing often thankless work. 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 to intern for the EPA which doesn't have much of a budget for anything, and rarely hires anyone after graduation. Now, I've got an office with views of Manhattan, and she's waitressing on the side to make ends meet while looking for that rare opportunity to get a job at an environmental non-profit.

How many hackers do you know that would turn down a job at Google or Facebook and instead try to break into the (often insanely competitive) job market of public service? I'm not judging the people who wouldn't go down that road. I think they're like me and most people: personally moral, but not willing to put a larger moral cause ahead of their own self-interest. That's fine, and the way it should be. But it's ridiculous to be that way then get self-congratulatory just because you write some scathing internet screeds complaining about the man.

I'd estimate that about 10-12% of Stanford Law's graduating class each year goes into public interest work or government work. Can you imagine what the political landscape would look like if 10-12% of Stanford UG's engineering graduates each year went into public interest jobs or into government (to change policy from the inside?)

>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 to intern for the EPA which rarely hires anyone after graduation. Now, I've got an office with views of Manhattan, and she's waitressing on the side to make ends meet while looking for that rare opportunity to get a job at an environmental non-profit.

Inputs are much less important than outputs. Sure, a greater proportion non-hackers make conspicuous lifestyle changes in the name of their chosen cause. But how much real difference has your friend made except to her waitressing patrons? By contrast someone who figured out how to save 1% of the electricity used at facebook has made a huge contribution to the environment, which is in no way diminished by the fact that they were well paid for doing so.

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?

> 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.

I know this is great mythology, but if those people ever existed in the first place, they've been pushed out over the last 15 years of effective budget cuts (compared to costs of employment like healthcare) in most domestic public service roles.

It kills me to see people who get free sodas and 150k while commenting on Hacker News presume that a workplace they've never been is some wasteful USSR-esque bureaucracy. Yes, inefficiency scales with organization size but most local depts are pretty small, and local, state and domestic federal depts have been under budget pressure and salary freezes for years while still having the same job to do.

If you're looking for a corporate mess with no cost accountability, look at the big government contractors.

So obviously hyperbole for colour. Thought that was clear from including a coffee-fetcher for the coffee-fetcher. But it's fact that that getting to any real responsibility involves playing a long game of politics that inherently doesn't value merit very highly - and that the guy who saves 1% at Facebook did not have to jump through those hoops to get to there. Which loops back to my assertion that it's not a sound conclusion that the Facebook guy could have done more in public service.

> It kills me to see people who get free sodas and 150k while commenting on Hacker News presume that a workplace they've never been is some wasteful USSR-esque bureaucracy.

Interestingly, that does not seem to extend to the same demographic presuming that government magically became efficient throughout because they were pushed a little on budgets?

> If you're looking for a corporate mess with no cost accountability, look at the big government contractors.

If there were all straight lines and accountability in the government, then their contractors wouldn't be getting away with it.

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/not-intended-to-be-a-fa...

I don't think the various departments that have been getting killed on budgets for the last 15 years "magically" became more efficient -- I think they did, objectively, do almost the same job with less resources in terms of headcount and pay freezes. No magic about it, that's based on actual numbers.

You're alleging that something being private or public is a bigger deal than the normal organizational dynamics of bureaucracies. This is the attitude that leads to us writing blank checks for the F-35 no matter how many times they double the cost, while furloughing civil servants across all layers of government because there's not enough money to go around.

That's not at all clear. I would expect that work in public service is far more likely to go off the rails due to perverse incentives, so that such a worker would find themselves working very hard at something that doesn't create much value. One major benefit to working in a lucrative job is that you have a direct measurement of how much good you're doing, since someone is willing to voluntarily part with your high salary to have you do it. Maybe geeks are just better at personal cost-benefit analysis than liberal arts folk. ;)

>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?

Surely it's whoever achieved the best outcome, irrespective of how they achieved it.

>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.

Citation needed. There was an economist article here a few months ago on how the UN's world development goals have been achieved ahead of schedule, not because of well-meaning NGOs but simply because of cheap manufacturing in China. The great thing about working in for-profit industry is that the invisible hand eliminates inefficiencies. In the public and charitable sector the incentives are entirely backwards - good, efficient charities that solve the problems they were created in response to put themselves out of business, while inefficient, ineffective charities just grow bigger and bigger.

>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?

That's true as far as it goes, but we'd expect a bigger organization to have more impact. It's probably fairer to consider some kind of "goodness factor" - amount of good done as a proportion of market cap or some such measure. But yes, Goldman does do a lot of good that largely goes unrecognized.

> Surely it's whoever achieved the best outcome, irrespective of how they achieved it.

Isn't that an ends justify the means sort of argument?

There are few, even in radical communities like slashdot, that think we as a global community would be better off if Bill Gates never existed. Sure, that is an extreme case, but it serves as an example that the ends certainly can justify the means in this situation.

>Isn't that an ends justify the means sort of argument?

Yes?

> Isn't that an ends justify the means sort of argument?

Well, no, its an outcomes justify the means arguments. Ends are the goals worked toward, and aren't the sum total of the outcomes of an action; "ends justify the means" is a frequently problematic approach to evaluating the a proposed course of action because it ignores the potential outcomes of the action aside from the intended goal.

Maybe you are prone to valueing the quantifiable and direct impact a hacker can make higher than the indirect and non-quantifiable impact of someone else. Just imagine the influence someone could have through a conversation with an influential politician at a dinner party. The aforementioned hacker might not have the rethorical abilities, broad academic background and social network to do this. Still, it could have finally had a much bigger impact on the environment. Of course such a conversation does not occur frequently, but I guess reducing Facebook's electricity usage by 1% doesn't either.

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).

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

FWIW, "Silicon Valley" is only a subset of "hacker culture".

I think you're over-generalizing. There are plenty of hackers who are total hippies (see: rms), and plenty who like to make money but also like finding other ways to make the world a better place (see: most Open Source hackers).

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

"software engineer" and "hacker" are not synonymous, FWIW.

My impression is that "hacker" is a word that used to have a fairly specific meaning that has become more general over time, to the point that the differentiation between "software engineer" and "hacker" is more a question of how you self-designate rather than what you do. That said, "Hacker" is a bit counter-cultural. "Engineer" implies that you think of what you do as an extension of engineering. "Developer" is not particularly specific.

Re: over-generalizing, I described what I think is a trend. You might argue that it is less pronounced than I seemed to indicate, but you can't legitimately say I'm over-generalizing (i.e. all trends are ipso facto "generalizations" of some sort)

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.

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...

I think this may be the story you intended to include with your second link:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4842510

http://kylerush.net/blog/meet-the-obama-campaigns-250-millio...

My ability to copy and paste is embarrassing.

Thanks for the catch -- edited the original post :)

So, being moral and having self-interest isn't mutually exclusive.

There's a false dichotomy between seeking to enrich yourself and doing good for others (one that typically tacitly presumes the fixed pie fallacy). Division of labour still applies: If you're a good software engineer, but suck at politics and want to influence policy, go work on some ads, make a ton of money and give (some of) it to a think tank or activism group that is good at politics. They'll probably achieve more than you'd ever do, waitressing on the side, looking for a rare opportunity to get a non-profit job. And you get to have a lunch budget and an office with a view at the same time.

It sounds totally believable that your friends are having trouble finding work. It doesn't sound very believable that they are turning down six figure jobs left and right, though. Unless you just meant that they chose a career path where there are no six figure jobs?

Marry her.

I'm only slightly joking. A couple of a hacker and a liberal-arts major seems like a good way to transfer ideas and understanding between the two communities.

Oh indeed </Omar>!

I've always straddled the line between both worlds. Obsessively programming as a kid/teenager, then studying communications and psychology, and now a web developer. And there is so much space, generally speaking, between the two worlds that any connection is a Very Good Thing.

I can't agree more. My family has one of each: I write code and am the technical weenie where my wife is a do-gooder trying to change laws to treat kids differently than adults.

I'm absolutely in awe of what her tiny four person organization is able to accomplish: they do research, talk to legislators, write reports, testify in the state senate, organize with other groups. They do all this while watching and analyzing local news to calculate its impact on the voting probabilities in the state congress. All of this while making 20-25% of what they'd be paid in private practice.

That's all fine and dandy, but the real kicker is how successful they are: their last effort passed 154-0 in the house: unanimous.

So you can sit around and turn your Facebook avatar any color you want and pretend it matters. I take great solace in the fact that there are people out there actually changing the world.

A lot of 'nerds' are actually politically active with the Pirate movement. The difference is that it's 100x more difficult to pass a single law when you're trying to change stuff like copyright laws. And over 99.9% of people active in the movement are getting paid 0$/h.

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

"I take great solace in the fact that there are people out there actually changing the world."

As if the only way to change the world is through legislation.

Hey sanj, can you email champsweeps@gmail.com? I want to discuss something with you.

A good hacker is wasted in public service.

Why bother working for an environmental non-profit when you can make many orders of magnitude more difference by founding Tesla Motors or Nanosolar? Who has more impact on education, a good elementary teacher or Sal Khan? Why campaign for privacy when you can write PGP or Tor, why work as a fundraiser when you could build Kiva or Watsi?

The hacker skillset is a lever big enough to move the world. Working for a nonprofit is no better than working for a bank, you're still frittering away your greatest opportunity to improve the world.

Just don't go out and build some bullshit Zygna for pets app and call it "changing the world"...

Your definition of "good hacker" must narrow down who is a real hacker to a few thousand people in the whole world. Many of the best computer hackers I've known could barely organize a picnic if they had to, let alone run an industry-changing company.

I find this strange and short-sighted (and also a little naive). Does the "hacker skillset" now suddenly include the ability to navigate complex regulatory environments, deal with sales, irate customers and the myriad other things that come from running a business (since that's what most of your examples are about)? I've no doubt that people can learn those skills but to presume that they're the default skill set of "hackers" is unreasonable.

Also, if no-one with technical skills ever goes into public service, how can anyone expect the technical competence of those services to get any better?

This is a great example of why a good hacker should work in public service.

Why bother working for an environmental non-profit when you can make many orders of magnitude more difference by founding Tesla Motors or Nanosolar

Because an environmental non-profit might make immediate changes that save people's lives. A non-profit might put enough pressure on a company to stop polluting groundwater or destroying fragile ecosystems. With Tesla you'll help rich people use less gas.

Why campaign for privacy when you can write PGP or Tor

Because PGP and Tor are used by computer nerds and edge cases, but privacy legislation is used by everyone.

Why work as a fundraiser when you could build Kiva or Watsi

Either way you're fundraising. You could work as a fundraiser for a political appointee, and they could get elected to office and change how the entire country works. Or you could fund a lot of tiny things.

None of these things are a waste. There's no reason to do one over another other than personal preference. And nobody said a 'good hacker' was obliged to save the world (and oh, the hubris of thinking they could!).

Sometimes being the one guy who does want to do public service makes the difference, because all the other 'good hackers' are more concerned with one solution that will solve all the world's problems (which never happens) and making a quick buck.

> A non-profit might put enough pressure on a company to stop polluting groundwater or destroying fragile ecosystems.

The most fulfilling thing I've done in my life so far (other than starting a family) was helping to represent an Illinois village devastated by water pollution from a former industrial site. It would be amazing if some hacker would come along and figure out a cheap way to keep heavy metals from leaching out of industrial sites into water supplies. But in the meantime, maybe we could use some hackers that used their skills to help raise public awareness of the issue, put pressure on governments to stop cutting their environmental disaster cleanup budgets, etc?

I agree with jdietrich on this point: hacker skills are an incredibly big lever. The skills that programmers have: being able to decompose problems into constituent parts, apply reasoning to solve those sub-problems, and combine the solutions into a working whole, are skills that can be leveraged in any facet of life. Combine that with the ability to pitch (a skill which hackers turned entrepreneurs must develop), and you have someone that can contribute meaningfully in lots of different domains, even if they don't end up making a world-changing invention.

While I can appreciate what you are saying, it's unfortunate that by saying so you're also contributing to the noise that hackers aren't already doing these things, which they are.

I'm not saying that hackers aren't doing those things. But the article tries to paint them out to be morally superior, and in my experience, my hacker buddies are the least likely out of all of my friends to be involved in that sort of thing.

With Tesla you'll help rich people use less gas.

With Tesla, you slowly eliminate gas and help the environment. Imagine in 20 years a world where Tesla cars are the norm, all electric, travelling forever, no payment for gas, free charging. That is an incredible world change and shift.

It is so much more than helping people use less gas.

Exactly this. It may start with "rich" people, but eventually can become the norm. There are so many examples to support this, I think it should be enough to just mention the personal computer.

Yes, i'm sorry for being dismissive. The industry push toward hybrid and electric cars will definitely be benefited by Tesla's sole engineering prowess, and we will all benefit in at least 20 years. But you bring up another great example! The personal computer.

From more efficient personal entertainment to not having to retain information, the personal computer has enriched our lives in countless ways. We would all be much worse off without the novel inventions that made it such a success. (Please excuse my snark, I know the PC has had positive impacts, though I believe many are overblown)

Unfortunately, the pollution caused by the production and disposal of personal computers has not only become an ecological disaster, it's destroying the health and habitat of human beings around the globe. The biggest challenge today is not in creating a new gadget, it is how to clean up the damage done by the industry and prevent it from continuing.

I'm not saying you should stop focusing on your start-up and flipping it for cash in the Silicon Valley Gold Rush. I'm saying, if no good hackers focus on solving the problems that affect the general public, the cash you make will be invested in purchasing a habitable plastic bubble to live in.

All too true. Hopefully these tools we've been able to build and refine over the years will help lead to further advancements in 'green' computing.

> Unfortunately, the pollution caused by the production and disposal of personal computers has not only become an ecological disaster, it's destroying the health and habitat of human beings around the globe. The biggest challenge today is not in creating a new gadget, it is how to clean up the damage done by the industry and prevent it from continuing.

I am not a fan of the guy, and they don't focus on ecological damage, but I would assert that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation alone has more than offset that. You don't even need to get into how computers themselves have improved the world.

I agree the BMGF has done wonderful things. But what specifically are you saying they have offset, and how? I am not very aware of anything they do other than working on malaria and perhaps food/aid assistance. The PC industry has kids living in toxic waste dumps and farms are growing crops and animals with high levels of toxic substances, to say nothing of cancer killing off families in droves.

If I were given the option: "1) Have the BMGF and an extensive e-waste problem, or 2) Have neither", I would choose 1) without any hesitation. Wouldn't you?

(Of course Bill Gates cannot possibly be held responsible for all e-waste, but suppose that we do for the purposes of this discussion.)

Malaria killed 660,000 people last year alone, with 219,000,000 cases. From the WHO 2012 Malaria Report:

> Between 2000 and 2010, malaria mortality rates fell by 26% around the world. In the WHO African Region the decrease was 33%. During this period, an estimated 1.1 million malaria deaths were averted globally, primarily as a result of a scale-up of interventions. [1]

Malaria is a far bigger problem than e-waste. I'd suggest that you are the one with the backwards priorities, not the BMGF (though I disagree with some of their methodology, their goal makes a lot more sense than "eliminating e-waste" would).

[1]: http://www.who.int/malaria/publications/world_malaria_report...

Clearly, then, malaria is a much bigger problem than e-waste. Kudos to BMGF for tackling this deadly issue.

So there are many issues, such as malaria, that would benefit greatly from good hackers working on them for the public good instead of for private wealth. BMGF is unfortunately a very rare case of a technologist doing good for humanity's sake instead of his own.

Yeah - I do agree with your main point, it was just the malaria thing that bugged me. Saying that hackers can't be effective in the public sector, whether as hackers or jut as people, seems myopic to me, which we appear to agree on.

The computer begat large scale information systems. Eventually, it brought open large scale information systems. What's more important, having people volunteer to go to a village in Africa and build some wind turbines in a poor energy deficient village, or providing free plans for villagers to do it themselves using local or very low cost materials?

That's a complex question in its abstract form, and I don't believe it always yields the same answer when applied specifically.

Tesla exists because environmental groups managed to get subsidies, tax credits, green-grants and (as terrible a feather in cap as they are) trade-able carbon credits.

Also in 20 years electric cars might be the norm for new cars, but people are still driving >50 year old cars today, unless some one manages to pass a bill where the government buys everybody's ICE cars for some ludicrous multiple of their value most cars on the road will still be running on petrochemicals.

Most? I agree with you there will always be some but it definitely won't be the majority. I doubt the average lifetime of use for a car would be more than 10/15 years?

no payment for gas, free charging

Wait, what? When did Tesla's vision become "free electricity for everyone"?

I know we're discussing the company, not the man. But I got a good chuckle out of this comment.

Elon Musk wants to cover the country with charging stations that are free to use so that you can travel forever, for free. No more gas refills. Nine stations now provide free electricity for Model S owners, and the company has said it wants 100 along U.S. and Canadian highways by 2015.

I thought the free electricity was only for people who bought the most expensive model of the Model S?

All existing Tesla vehicles that can use the superchargers can use them for free. Unfortunately that means no Roadsters, for reasons involving AC-vs-DC charging (c.f. Q&A at the 2013 shareholder's meeting). You also only get the supercharger gear for free with your car if you buy one 85kWh models (which does necessarily not mean the most-expensive... 85kWh models start at $72.4k but go up from there, into six-figure territory). If you buy the cheapest Model S, at $63k, you can pay an additional $2k to buy the equipment necessary to use the superchargers.

Model Xs will have a similar situation, I think.

I haven't yet seen a commitment that the "third-gen" cars (currently touted as aiming for a $30k price-point, though we shall see in a few years), but it's certainly how Elon talks about it. He's also said that OpEx on the supercharger stations is very very low: little or no rent, little or no power costs. And it's obvious that a major goal for him is moving personal transport off of fossil-fuel; charging at home off the grid doesn't _actually_ achieve that, but giving away solar-powered juice at stations does. So we'll see.

<snark> If only there were a way, on the internet, to spend half a minute researching one's uncertain theories, before posting comments on HN. Yes, half a minute is all it would have taken to learn that your claim was mistaken. </snark>

If only there were a way to contain one's snark.

This is what comments are for! Now I know.

There is one big difference:

In Government / from within, hackers generally don´t have the skills to be able to change the system - Government is run by politicians - the effect of a good hacker is about as small as in your typical old-world corporate run by finance guys…

Compare that to companies where hackers are the CEOs…

We're not talking about being filing clerk #4325 in the bowels of the Veterans Affairs administration. There are many parts of the government where a good hacker could have a major impact.

>Sometimes being the one guy who does want to do public service makes the difference, because all the other 'good hackers' are more concerned with one solution that will solve all the world's problems (which never happens) and making a quick buck.

Speaking of things that never happen.

How many engineering graduates end up being Sal Khan? Or writing something like PGP or Tor? He didn't say all engineering graduates should go into public service, he said that more of them should. It takes working from both sides to create a better world. Without reasonable people in government, Tesla would have been crushed before it ever got off the ground (without even talking about the subsidy buyers of its products can get).

One good teacher is, perhaps, less valuable than Sal Khan. But we only need a handful of Sal Khans, at most. So one good teacher is more valuable than one more person trying to be another Sal Khan with basically zero chance of success. Am I saying that no one should try to be another Sal Khan? Nope. I'm just saying that most people won't, even if they try, so they should have a good backup plan, like becoming an awesome teacher. Really, it's the same type of advice people give to promising young athletes, shoot for the top, but have a plan to land on your feet if you miss.

The hacker skillset is a big lever, but it isn't magical, and most people will never change the world in a big way. So if a few more engineering grads decided to go into public service instead of writing database apps or starting another mobile social network, I think the world would benefit.

Most 'good hackers' are wasted in Silicon Valley. You're right in that you can accomplish a lot more good in the world by focusing on solving problems at a higher level of abstraction than ground-level work, but at the same time most people working in tech aren't focusing on problems that are anywhere near as important as those that public service tackles.

most people working in tech aren't focusing on problems that are anywhere near as important as those that public service tackles

FUCK. YES. This is exactly the point that should be made more. Can you imagine how much we could improve the quality of life of everyday people if everyone in Silicon Valley focused on economic, environmental and social issues for a couple months? There are so many problems whose solutions are dead simple for hackers, but hackers aren't working on them! Quick, someone go make an Uber+Match.com for volunteerism.

> There are so many problems whose solutions are dead simple for hackers, but hackers aren't working on them!

Do you have any specific examples?

Perhaps the issue is that hackers are not good at perceiving social issues that their skill sets make them particularly well-suited to tackle.

Perhaps hackers tend to be a little more structured and in-crowd, or downright strangers to most of the world. I'm not sure. Or perhaps hackers can easily be distracted by any type of problem, no matter how trivial, no how much it benefits others over them, or no matter how insignificant it is. I think the latter is true very often.

The hackers I do know tend to be, generally speaking, wonderfully excited by problems presented to them, and have a childlike exuberance solving them. They are 'moral' individuals, but often seem to be unburdened by 'grander scheme' questions.

My uncle, for example, had a really important job but got paid relatively little. He was just... happy and never bothered to ask for a raise.

I've been trying to think of ways to 'prod' hackers to solve these problems that are 'bigger' in a way, but often still relatively trivial to solve.

I think my problem is that compared to many hackers, I think that technical solutions that hackers might be able to provide are rarely the proper solutions.

What are the major problems today? Hunger? Overpopulation and access to family planning? Sanitation? Malaria, and other diseases? LGBT rights?

Are any of these things really suffering for lack of hackers proposing technical solutions?

Lots of these things are amenable, at least partially, to technical solutions.

Example: A major problem poor countries have is that donors donate medical equipment, but the healthcare systems have no ability to maintain or sometimes even not the knowledge to use that equipment. There is a ton of equipment that could be easily fixed, or even just unpacked and used, that instead sits gathering dust.

Don't you think something like that is amenable to a technical solution?

It sounds like they need training and skilled labor, not hackers.

Could a bunch of hackers get together and say "I know, lets roll Yet Another(tm) online training service to teach these doctors how to use and maintain complex medical equipment that we know nothing about!"? Sure, a bunch of hackers could say such a thing. But is the real problem here really a lack of technology for online training?

If you really want to attack this problem, you would talk with the donors that donated the equipment in the first place and work on allocating the donations in a more sensible manner. That could be as simple as prioritizing donations to teaching hospitals and using some of the donation money to attract and retain skilled teachers instead of just using it all on equipment.

> Yet Another(tm) online training service to teach these doctors how to use and maintain complex medical equipment that we know nothing about!

That example could actually work, you know. There's nothing stopping you from automating some intelligent scraping for each item that gets registered into the db, and presenting the users with tid-bits of what that item can be used for and how to use it, with a couple of links to places. It may not seem like a lot because it's so simple, but just trying to gather that tiny bit of preliminary information is probably a huge bottleneck in places that aren't used to automating everything and have better things to worry about. At least with this service they'd be able to quickly dive-in, get an idea of what something does, and if they need to, click on a few links for more information and have their questions answered within a few minutes.

The problem here is just assuming that this is a 'hard' problem that we lack the skill sets for. If we start looking at it that way, we prevent ourselves from even really trying to find any solution because our minds have already hinted at us that it's useless. "Nothing is impossible", and a community of entrepreneurs like HN should know that by now; but for some reason that curiosity, ambition, and cleverness just shuts down when looking at bigger problems that we might be a bit detached from. That doesn't make sense.

I think perhaps this generation has lost sight of what it means to be a hacker. It isn't about creating a new website. It's about taking a problem, and figuring out a solution, using any and every means.

Need to genetically engineer some grain to work better in drier climates? Learn just enough molecular biology to make it work. Economically-depressed nations don't distribute contraception effectively? Develop a cheaper alternative or find a way to incentivize its use. LGBTQ community being told they're sick, or they can't raise an effective family? Spearhead studies to show the actual effects of LGBTQ people's lives in society.

Hackers are not limited in the scope of the issues they tackle or the methods they use to solve them. That's why it's crazy that more hackers aren't hired to do public service or work in NGOs... they're the ultimate problem-solvers.

> Need to genetically engineer some grain to work better in drier climates? Learn just enough molecular biology to make it work. Economically-depressed nations don't distribute contraception effectively? Develop a cheaper alternative or find a way to incentive its use. LGBTQ community being told they're sick, or they can't raise an effective family? Spearhead studies to show the actual effects of LGBTQ people's lives in society.

I'm not talking about "building websites". I'm wondering about problems that have technical solutions, not policy solutions, that require the skills that "hackers" have, but established people in the area do not. If you want to make new grains, invent new contraceptives and fund studies, then there are better people for the job in every case.

It is hubris to think that established genetic engineers are lacking some sort of "hacker spark" that renders them unable to find a solution to that problem. The materials and medical science needed for cheaper contraceptives is not something that needs consult from an external hacker. Sociology doesn't need hackers barging in and demanding more studies about LGBTQ communities, they've got the importance of that one pretty much figured out themselves.

The extent that "hackers" can work on any problem is the extent to which they already are. You are basically just saying "these things need clever people to work on them." Well they already have clever people working on them. Clever people with degrees and/or experience in the subject matter. I consider myself a clever person, and my experience is in software development. Other clever people have experience in medicine, or materials sciences, or just about anything else you can think of. What makes my brand of clever something that they need?

Software development is not filled with some sort of "unique" sort of clever person that the rest of the world is somehow lacking. That sort of thinking is just developer exceptionalism. If the theory is that software development is creating some sort of "brain drain", then perhaps we could talk about policy solutions to drive more clever people into other fields. But I really don't think that there are not enough clever doctors because software development is gobbling up more than its fair share of clever people.

These things do need clever people to work on them. And yes, there are better people out there. But those better people are not working in droves to solve public issues. If you think there's an army of genetic engineers working on food shortage in an effort just to feed more people, you're crazy. The ones working in the field are working for private companies for profit so they can make a buck, not to help less fortunate people.

At not-for-profits there's usually a person who has the drive to help people, and has studied some particular way of solving a problem and will use the same hammer for every single nail they face. They are not applying creativity, they are applying the one rigorous discipline they learned.

My brother works on social issues for latin americans, for example. He is not a genius, he does not have a PhD. But he is trying to solve real, multifaceted problems that people have with the only skills he has available - communications skills. He is only interested in attacking problems from one angle. But that may not be the best way to approach it.

This isn't an isolated example. I lived in DC and worked with volunteers who would all study essentially one thing ad-nauseum. The idea of going outside their field was preposterous because they had no idea how to go about it.

You should also consider that my definition of hacker has nothing to do with software development. Most software developers I know have got jack shit in the way of a hacker mentality.

I get that you don't think "hacker" implies developer. But you said: "Can you imagine how much we could improve the quality of life of everyday people if everyone in Silicon Valley focused on economic, environmental and social issues for a couple months?"

Those "Silicon Valley people"... what are they going to do? Do you really think "Silicon Valley people" are going with a crash course in genetic engineering are going to make a difference? What are these people going to bring to the table, besides being clever (like people in every other field) and being inexperienced?

If you think there are not enough biomed people volunteering to work with non-profits to find super-crops, then fine, that is a legitimate complaint. Don't focus on importing Silicon Valley people to fill that gap though, focus on telling the biomed people to get their act together and start volunteering.

There is nothing unique about the Silicon Valley brand of clever. Really what you are complaining about is that a bunch of clever people have acquired skill sets that are not particularly useful for solving most remaining social problems. Go convince students to switch majors if you really want to correct that.

I would... but it's much easier to just complain on HN.

Picking the right problem is really, really hard.

The problem is that we have a tension between what provides value to people vs. what makes money to investors. Our economy has no concept of "social capital".

Government doesn't have a pressure on profit since it can print money and can back projects whose objective is not measurable in dollars.

Not to mention that ten of us (at mid-level) could basically fund an activist if we really believed in it enough. A hundred of us, together, could fund lobbyist. (I'm talking including expenses, of course.)

And frankly, if ten thousand of us were willing to pledge 25 dollars a month, we'd have enough money to have a place at the table.

Note that it's also hacker mentality to always seek for greater leverage and spend some extra time so that you can squash a million flies at once. It's not a bad mentality but it's not the only one.

To change the world it's necessary to do small work, too. It's like where one brick layer sees himself building a brick wall and his working pal sees himself building a cathedral.

The thing is that we only need so many people to build Nanosolar or Tesla Motors. But there are a lot more people than that and everything is interdependent in the most unforeseen ways, so you can't rule out anyone. That great elementary school teacher might be needed to connect with and set the right course for a hacker kid today who goes build the proverbial cold fusion in 2050.

"A good hacker is wasted in public service."

Absolutely wrong. I take issue with this statement. A few points to the contrary:

1. Is it that you consider any non-profit pursuit beneath a competent hacker? What about open source projects and all the work that has been released under various public licences, literally as a "public service"?

2. Is it that you think for profit organizations are more influential and beneficial than non-profits? Tesla Motors and Nanosolar are still businesses at their heart; their markets happen to be environmental. A non-profit is literally devoted to public service first. As such, they have different priorities.

3. Is it that you think every competent hacker has every skill necessary to start Tesla or Nanosolar? Does every hacker that founds a startup succeed? Or is it still the case that most startups fail miserably? Do you think every hacker has this utopian skillset and can do whatever they want to impact the world?

Some hackers are incredibly efficient and merely competent. Some hackers are not so efficient but are incredibly skilled. Some are both. Not everyone can be Elon Musk, and Elon Musk wouldn't be well suited to working in a non-profit. But it's not fair to say that every hacker is above public service. That's elitist.

That strikes me as a false dichotomy. There's a spectrum of ground between "passive, arm-chair activist" and someone who "dedicates their entire career to causes in the public service".

How many hackers do you know that would turn down a job at Google or Facebook and instead try to break into the (often insanely competitive) job market of public service?

Is that even relevant? A job in "public service" isn't the only way one can strive to make the world a better place to live. Creating innovative new technologies in the context of a private, for-profit company is still contributing to the overall public good. Likewise, creating a technology startup that creates jobs and provides employment for people, is doing good. Hacking on open source code and democratizing access to powerful computing technology is still serving the public interest.

I may be mis-reading you, but I feel like you are suggesting that if someone doesn't choose to go to work for a charity / non-profit / govt. agency, that they aren't concerned with real issues. If that is your position, let me say that I disagree wholeheartedly. I've I've misread you, then feel free to ignore this.

I'm not talking about "doing good" in the abstract sense of making a net positive contribution to the world. Lots of traders on Wall Street can sleep at night because they believe that creating liquidity is a net benefit to society.[1] I'm talking about "doing good" in the narrow sense--tackling specific issues that hackers as a group care about, but issues that won't be solved through the market.

Creating a technology startup might provide employment for people, and might be a net positive good, but it's not going to expand privacy protections, reform plea bargaining, end the drug war, end de-facto segregation, save the environment, etc. Think of the issues that have raised HN's ire over the last year. These are social justice issues that aren't going to be fixed simply by founding a startup to create some cool website.

[1] I think it's true, but at the same time the (small) subset of those people who go from there to claiming that working on Wall Street == saving the world are (rightly) criticized for being arrogantly delusional.

Perhaps the real difference is that good hackers that aren't "libertarian" (in the way the article intends the word) are more difficult to find than, say, administrative assistants with the same characteristics, and so even NSA contractors end up hiring them?

It's obvious you've been little involved in "activism", and thus know little about it. Many things bely this, including usage of the word activism - most serious "activists" I know call themselves organizers, not activists. Activist is a word used by detractors and the media - it gives an image of a solitary person, maybe on some ego trip, while organizer implies a group effort. An example being Obama who, rightly or wrongly, caleld himself a community organizer, not a community activist.

The most common view I come across in people working in organizing is that abandoning your job and going to work in organizing full time is almost always a bad idea. It's considered a bad idea on so many different levels, I wouldn't know where to start.

It's not egalitarian - you create a division between "activists" and regular working people who are not, in the OP's opinion, the real deal since they don't work on activism 100% of the time.

It's more constricted - when your paycheck depends on some government agency, or some NGO, or some union or the like, you're more constrained. You have to obey the hierarchy and your behavior affects your paycheck. This changes your behavior to where you're thinking less of the work and more on your paycheck and the desires of the hierarchy giving you your paycheck. If the EPA gets massive budget cuts someone working there is out of luck - but not someone with a solid job who does environmental work in their spare time.

It's more sustainable - during upsurges of social change, positions open up to work for causes. As the zeitgeist changes, most of these positions dry up. Someone with a decent job can be in things for the long haul.

It's a way of turning off activism - it's the armchair people who aren't even armchair activists who say you have to be 100% devoted 24/7 or it doesn't count. It's a way to discourage organizing efforts, and a way to allay the fact that they themselves are part of the problem. It's the oldest circular reasoning of the lazy person - they want to do absolutely nothing, so they invent the bogus idea that they have to do it 24/7 or it doesn't count, and since this is unreasonable they do nothing. This isn't reality, it's a lazy person's circular reasoning, and this is fairly obvious to all.

You're talking about something you seem to know little about. Is Noam Chomsky not a real activist since he studies computer and human language at MIT? Was Edward Said not an activist since he was a professor of English literature at Columbia? Virtually everything you said is obviously bogus to anyone who has actually been involved in activism.

The hackers I know who work in activism full-time include Seth Schoen, Jake Appelbaum, Richard Stallman, and Zooko O'Whielacronx. Are you suggesting that these people would be more effective if they hadn't devoted their lives to activism? Or that they'd be more effective in the future if they did it only part-time?

Explain me, how contributing to free software is not a public service? Programmers serve public in their own way, not everybody must directly help people in order to make a difference. Besides, if liberal arts students would have a passion for problem solving I can guarantee there would be much less public servants.

This divides the world neatly into two camps, those with the desire to participate in government, and those who do not, whilst simultaneously ascribing an unquestioned halo on those in the first group and jumping straight to the assumption that those in the second group are not prepared to engage in that system because they are too lazy, selfish or busy feathering their own nests.

I'd say the opposite, lawyers and politicians and public servants tend to be passive, arm-chair participants in society. They involve themselves mostly in ritual and horse trading, trying to figure out how to apportion shares of the existing wealth created by people utterly unlike them and to whom the only way they can relate is parasitically.

Meanwhile, back outside the structure of the government; people in the shadows are reinventing trade itself and releasing the very core ingredients of the products of their labour for free to anyone who wishes to participate.

Businesses are being started every day by people who hope for a better future. To better their own conditions through their own efforts as well as everyone else's also. They build products and make new things that are the source of all wealth in human civilisation. If you don't want what they have to offer you simply choose not to trade with them of your own free will and they will ask nothing from you by force or fraud.

The aforementioned vultures you hold in such high esteem on the other hand, deem themselves fit to distribute that wealth according to the baroque and corrupt rules of their game, which they do not accept a refusal to participate in by anyone alive on penalty of kidnap, assault and if it comes down to it, death.

You'll have to excuse me if I can't help but see your perspective as tragically delusional.

In my experience most 'hackers' I meet fall in two camps concerning 'moral causes': 1) too shy / world-strange to even find a cause to fight for, or 2) too obsessed with and paralyzed by a kind of perfection that keeps them from diluting their views to make some practical change.

I've often wondered what my place is in this, and if I can contribute in connecting these hackers, often very skilled and capable, with something 'bigger' to fight for or work towards.

Instead, most talent around me works on silly apps and the next big startup (some restaurant finder, no doubt).

(I'm not being condescending, by the way. I feel that it is not my job to judge people for their choices. But personally I want to do something that I consider worthwhile in some 'grander scheme', and it frustrates me to see talent wasted, but only wasted from my personal point of view)

Any ideas on how to get hackers 'involved'?

And one by one those who go into public service sell out and fail to change anything. They become corrupted cogs in a corrupted machine.

Changing policy from the inside does not happen. Been there, done that, walked away from it.

I've seen up close how these so-called ideologists start behaving once they get any kind of power or influence. They are not the ones that affect change, they are just the next generation of those who maintain the status quo. They're not even just part of the problem, they are the problem.

I have, in the past, worked for government - both local and national; as has my wife - (also in the "third sector"). Our collective experience suggests that the public sector is filled more with cynicism than aspiration - the rot that corrodes all long-lived deep hierarchies having long corroded any goodness; any hope; any generosity away. The third sector is a little better; but is so frequently counterproductive; feeding nothing but networks of dependency that one easily despairs of being able to do good in a straightforward way. The world seems designed to frustrate our ambitions and thwart our plans -- we must instead approach doing good sideways; social enterprise being the current great hope.

Honestly? If I could get a low but livable wage to do public service, I might. But the key thing stopping me is knowing that I'm simply not personable enough for it. I'm too much a consummate nerd to work with people 100% of the time.

I've gotta agree with Appelbaum - this thesis is ridiculous and unsupported.

There are tons of activists in many different fields, and there's nothing about being a computer programmer that makes you more likely to be an activist. Just because this guy cited a couple of activists who were also computer programmers is just not support enough -- if he really wanted a balanced review, he would have talked about any activists in any other fields as well for comparison.

The reason it was easy for him to make this connection between digital rights activism and programmers is because it's easy to find activists within a field they work in. So if you're talking about digital rights and internet openness, of course the champions of this are going to be people who work with computers for a living.

If you look at something else like politics, or civil rights, or helping out poor people or people in war-torn countries, you'll find a whole lot less programmers stepping up to the plate on these issues, and for a totally sensible reason - it's not as relevant to them.

I'd like to propose an alternate thesis: Within any field, there will be a certain small number of people who have strong morals and are willing to disobey authority to champion what they think is right. At the current moment, there is a particularly high rate of activism within the "digital rights" field because the internet is comparatively young and people are still trying to figure out what rights you have.

What you wrote here is exactly what sprung to my mind upon reading the headline, never mind the story itself. But then after reading it I got to thinking of all the developers that I have met that are absolutely resolute in their belief that, for example, the whole project was done wrong from that start and needs to be written despite the fact that I think it is clear that the risk-reward for such a thing is a terrible trade off. And then there is the over-representation that I perceive in libertarian-types in the tech business.

I don't know, maybe there is something to the idea that spending most of your time engaged in total control over a virtual environment that executes pure logic turns people into activist-types or attracts them. I think the most important thing to being an activist is to be sure you are right and I have met no shortage of hackers that are sure they are right (often no matter how wrong they actually are).

I think the hacker problem is that we're too damn happy to solve a problem successfully, no matter if it is a problem of consequence or not.

FWIW: A lot of terrorists had/have an engineering background.

This is what you can likely to expect to hear on television in the coming months.

> "FWIW"

It is worth fuck all.

Possibly, yes ... but there may be something to it. Certainly, as a problem-solver, I get frustrated when I find a problem that I cannot solve. I tend to stay away from political (aka insoluble) problems for that very reason. My wife works in a more political field, often on problems where positions are held intransigently; where progress is measured incrementally; and where "solutions" may never be found. I would go insane in such a grinding; pointless environment. Insane enough to commit murder? In my case, probably not, but I don't think I would be too far off, and I can well imagine those who might be driven to such extremes.

Pointing out that many terrorists are engineers is about as actionable as pointing out that many terrorists are religious.

Really, there is nothing you can do with this information. It is worthless, even if it is true.

Again, possibly, yes -- the only insights on offer are seemingly rather obvious: that those seemingly predisposed to violence may be content with engaging with the problem in some other manner; if avenues were made available; That political engagement helps reduce societal tensions, and that providing avenues for political engagement that are as broad in participation as they are deep and detailed in substance may well engage and divert tensions that would otherwise lead to violence; This is well understood; and forms the basis of many peace processes around the world (Northern Ireland, for example).

I would also have to agree with this. Hackers or technologists in general are simply a group of people that are not any more predisposed to activism. I know activist from many backgrounds and they all are at different levels of activism.

Hackers are seen in this light of activism because computer are just the newest frontier of unknown limits and boundaries. Also, a lot of information is shared through computers now, possibly more so than any other medium in the history of the world (large claim, I know).

This puts technology under a large microscope and therefore when a "hacker" comes out and says anything it is seen as extra important or highlighted more so than if it was not under the broad umbrella of technology.

This is not to downplay the seriousness of the NSA scandal. This is something that is unprecedented for everyone, not just hackers. Just happened to be a hacker that is at the center of it.

The author of this article was a victim of the availability bias http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic

Software developers generally occupy positions of considerable (if unacknowledged) power and trust within their organizations. The practice of software development necessarily involves dealing with minutiae in large quantities; in making making dozens of mostly small (but consequential) decisions each day. In aggregate, the effect of these decisions can be (and often is) of enormous import to the business or organization that employs the developer.

The number of decisions that a software developer must make, in general, precludes effective scrutiny by the traditional authority structures of the organization (the bandwidth required to communicate the context and consequences of each decisions would increase the time taken to make the decision by two or three (base 10) orders of magnitude). As a result, organizations are forced to place a large amount of trust in individual developers, effectively granting them carte-blanche for their actions.

As a result, software developers are often in positions that confer considerable power and authority, with little of the visibility or accountability (or remuneration) that normally comes with such positions.

Furthermore, the interaction between developers and the traditional management hierarchy is typically pretty dysfunctional. Most organizations management structures are staffed with individuals who tend to emphasise and practice "soft skills" centred around sales, communication and persuasion, rather than attention to detail, patience and persistence. As a result, rather a lot of what developers do all day tends to slip under the radar.

Is it any wonder that the politics of the software development community tends to be oriented towards decentralisation, individualism, and (borderline) anarchism? This is the world that most software developers inhabit in their workplaces already. The superiority of decentralised decision making over centralised decision making is manifest to all of us - we see the evidence every day.

>>Most organizations management structures are staffed with individuals who tend to emphasise and practice...communication and persuasion

If only. More like "do it this way cause I say." Looking back at some of the places I've worked, it would be a pleasure if this were more true.

Well, that happens a lot too.

Emphasize and practice does not mean emphasize and practice effective methods.

I was attempting to say that typical management stereotypes create an image of a person who either deals primarily in perceptions and impressions and only secondarily in facts and truths; or of a person who is so concerned with either being busy, or appearing to be busy, that only superficial communication and (mis)understanding is possible.

This is not necessarily an assertion about the extent to which particular individuals act out these stereotypes, or even a criticism of those who do: the situations that people are put in are often very difficult, and it is not obvious how one might ease the systematic dysfunctions of our institutions and organisations.

Furthermore, to say that the systems that we inhabit are imperfect and dysfunctional is to state the obvious: utterly uninformative without some sort of exploration or discussion of the whys, hows and wherefores. Fortunately, we have several models that we can apply to the analysis:

Any attempt to route significant information flows through a lossy and bandwidth constrained channel such as the human brain is bound to suffer distortion and loss. The dysfunction is with the system; indeed, any system that attempts to move the power to make decisions any sort of distance away from the sources of information which that very decision making process requires, without making adequate alternative arrangements. Indeed, if you look at Hayek's take on the free market economy, the main magic is in how prices signal the imbalance between supply and demand, and, indeed, we see analogous attempts to summarise key information through statistics where stereotypical and long-lasting information flows exist. However, it is less obvious how to summarise and/or compress idiosyncratic and short-lived information in rapidly changing and evolving circumstances.

How to fix this? Software and Information Technology is supposed to be a major part of the solution, but I have seen little that promises the paradigm shift that (more than likely) will be required to achieve the orders-of-magnitude improvements that we seek.

That was a great post, thanks. I'd like to add another point - one may need paranoia [the common, not medical, interpretation] to make all that power work without bugs.

You know the quote about a good programmer needing laziness, impatience, and hubris? I disagree, for many systems it should be laziness, impatience, and _paranoia_. Paranoia puts in asserts and assumes any untrusted input is just that, and puts in documentation for the future 'you' on the project to consult. Because as you say, nobody has your back or will review your trickiest code (on the average funded project with one smart guy doing most of the work), and frankly, hackers _are_ out to get your code.

So when we don't have an explicit check against something, the behavior is undefined. And when there is no check against power , we know where the road leads.

Well, one of the nice things (I think) about being a software developer (and one-time "scientist") is that you get to measure your mettle with nature - to test your ideas out in the real world - to see if your preconceptions hold, or if your ideas are only so much hot air ... and all too often, they are. My initial ideas are always wrong (well, most of the time), and I pretty much always need several rounds of testing against reality to refine my designs into something workable.

Getting the right answer is hard. Really hard. I never understood how some people could go through life and avoid ever being wrong; dancing around responsibilities, never taking the blame, being driven by a (frankly irresponsible) culture that demands perfection.

For me, my failures are lessons; mistakes marking a path of learning and progress.

Good will; systematic persistence; humility and humour - all recipes for learning and improvement: Flashy self-aggrandisement, an emphasis on performance and (self-proclaimed) brilliance: all recipes for deceit, lies and failure.

A nice quote from Jefferson that I spotted in the comments:

"[a] strict observance of the written law is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to the written law, would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the ends to the means."

The quote is nice but it's a great justification for illegal/unconstitutional actions. Those in power can do a lot of harm while abusing this idea.

The warped mind of Timothy McVeigh as well.

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 something out of nothing.

Most businessmen, politicians, managers, their world is built around getting other people to do their work for them by any means necessary. I don't disagree with them that its a good idea, but their goal is to get the job done, half the time they don't even know nor care if it is done "right."

The point is that people who get to build, manipulate, the movers of a society, they usually don't deal with politics, manager, or try to explore. They just want to keep building, they enjoy it, they (including me) love to build and wouldn't sacrifice it to manage someone else.

All of that being said, yes programmers (including me) in general don't like a centralized government/management because in their eyes it is something that takes away from their ability to achieve. Perhaps I am speaking to generally, but from the people I have met they seem to rather live by building than by trying to manipulate the builders. So to me (and others I have met) it is disgusting to be watched and manipulated, we all want to be free to build and taking that away (or threatening to take that way via surveillance or manipulation by the government) is a sin.

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

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 things. If you were "That Computer Guy/Gal" you were a pioneer along the Oregon Trail that helped pave the way for the common person to have access to the breadth of human knowledge.

While the government spun (and continues to spin) its wheels on how to legislate, tax, and control this virtual landscape, many of us were forced to develop of our code of ethics; many times in complete isolation from one another.

A select few had the worlds biggest glass up against the world's biggest door; and most of us chose (choose) to honor that responsibility by respecting the privacy of one another.

There are some that are corrupted by this power and choose to monitor everything they can about everyone they can but by and large the majority of us drew the line on privacy issues a long time ago. Most of us know how easy it would be to fire up email archives, chat logs, and remote screenshot tools but we've made a conscious decision to not do so outside the context of our daily responsibilities. Even more so, I do not stand alone in my past decisions to inform company users of any changes in the assumed privacy of their workspace instead of merely turning on a new fizzbuzz feature that ends them up in my office.

We developed our own morality in a vacuum where historically the opposite has been done. Nietzsche would be having a field day with this.

The "We Watch Everything" concept pisses us off because it's old thinking. Just because you can doesn't mean you should and the technical elite community has proven that absolute power does not have to corrupt absolutely. We can self-govern while respecting the right to privacy of the individual.

That, in a nutshell, is why I think so many of us are appalled at PRISM and the other programs we all assumed existed.

"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.

Then you do not understand my objection.

ChikkaChiChi said "We (meaning the tech elite) are first army in human history, ..."

What makes this tech army categorically different than that of abolitionists?

Don't Barlow, Gilmore, and Kapor, founders of the EFF, count as "wealthy and well-educated members of the ruling classes" just as much as Garrison and Tappan, founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society?

"People like Locke or Voltaire had little or nothing to gain"

You veer into a trap with that viewpoint. Frederick Douglass escaped from slavery, and fought against slavery and for equal rights. He had much to gain in his effort, including love and marriage. As a side-effect of doing so, and as a mechanism for achieving that goal, he gained political and social power.

ChikkaChiChi said "less concerned with the acquisition of power and control", but that balance point becomes a subjective view. The only people that cannot fit those constraints are either 1) those with power and control but who don't want more, and 2) those who have no power or control, and therefore neither you nor I have likely heard of them.

I actually agree with your opinion, sorry if it wasn't clear :) I was just pointing out that, generally speaking, many movements who were "fighting for our oppressed fellow man" were in fact produced not by the oppressed, but by dissenting elements of the oppressing classes. Not all of them, of course.

Ahh, I didn't understand. I couldn't figure out where "the opposite is true" was supposed to apply.

How do you tell when a movement was produced by the oppressed, but where the strongest and most influential voice that the oppressing class hears is from a dissenting member of that class? Given how quickly Luther's views spread, it can't be that he was the only one who didn't like the actions of the Catholic church.

I still feel that you're walking into a trap. If a member of the oppressed class become notable and influential, then that person's work could be recast as a way to achieve personal power and thereby become part of an oppressing class. If so, then oppression is perpetual until we figure out how to make 7 billion people be equally notable and influential.

How does a dissenting element of the oppressing class ever leave that class?

Army? Give me a break!

We developed our own morality in a vacuum..

Sorry, there are plenty of old-timey hackers I worked with at telcos that were happy to look up phone records and just generally mess with stuff, including people's privacy. When they got old enough to fear losing their jobs or saw the new system with auditing in place they stopped.

Your comment sounds too much like hagiography to me.

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.

The truth very rarely gets in the way of perception and appearances.

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 to the U.K.'s bloodless internal revolutions.

> many of us were forced to develop of our code of ethics; many times in complete isolation from one another.

That makes no sense when you're talking about a bunch of people who are the least isolated group in history, being connected by the internet.

> A select few had the worlds biggest glass up against the world's biggest door; and most of us chose (choose) to honor that responsibility by respecting the privacy of one another.

Oh yes, great respect! As an industry, you only chose to sell their information to the highest bidder to Big Advertising.

> We developed our own morality in a vacuum where historically

What? No.

"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 incendiary statement in many countries). What were the writers trying to "conserve", exactly?

"U.K.'s bloodless internal revolutions"? Cromwell's Civil War was many things, but bloodless is not one of them.

I may or may not agree with parent, but your statements are very peculiar indeed.

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.

The removal of aristocracy and the establishment of a Republic were extremely radical acts. Even in countries like England, where the merchant classes were on a dramatic rise and parliamentary rule was expanding in scope (and for which it was seen as a wildly anarchic state by most continental nobility), aristocracy was still fundamentally dominant in many areas of life -- which is why there was an American revolution in the first place: non-aristocratic colonists were excluded from most political and military appointments in the Kingdom.

The fact that the founding fathers didn't have a holy call to abolish private property doesn't mean they weren't "radicals" -- that's a revisionist view with modern undertones.

(and on the bloodless, I can assure you that the Civil War was as bloody as most revolutions. It was exactly out of horror for the consequences of that event that most English political movements self-moderated themselves since then, trying to maintain their fights mostly inside the boundaries of parliamentary rule.)

> this was political and philosophical dynamite in the XVIII century

No, it wasn't, at least not in England. It was propaganda directed at what were already well-established political norms in the England. Pretty much the whole of the declaration, from the statement of principles at the beginning to the detailed list of particular grievances, was directed at explaining why the upper class landholding gentlemen of England's North American colonies were so upset at the upper class landholding gentlemen of the British Government for not treating them in the way that decent upper class landholding British subjects expected to be treated by their colleagues in government.

See my post above: they were treated unfairly because of this little thing called aristocracy, which was still dominant all over Europe; the fact that in some countries it was losing some of its powers doesn't mean that it wasn't still holding most of them. Removing aristocracy was an extremely radical act in the XVIII century, even for countries were the productive merchant classes had dramatically risen in relevance; it took another two centuries for most European countries to follow suit!

A more appropriate comment might be that any insular person or persons looking to achieve a position of authority is at risk of oppressing at least some of the people they aim to govern.

There are certainly people like you describe. On the other hand in the early days of the net there were legions of script kiddies and others doing all kinds of shitty things.

Also don't forget that there are probably a lot of geeks working at the NSA; considering that, their leak rate is really pretty low.

People are fundamentally drawn to power. Having an open and censorship free internet gives people who understand technology the most power. Having a regulated internet accessed through "walled garden" devices gives that power back to governments and suits.

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.)

Too bad most "nerds" these days work for firms whose sole purpose is to gather user data and violate privacy in general.

Very light article, with a half-assed counterpoint... shame. Could have been more.

I'd love for there to be a strong correlation between technical skills and opposition to authoritarianism... that would certainly help us in the battle against technologically-driven dystopias.

NSA hires the best nerds.

DoD hires all the scientists. The ones who don't get hired, go to pharmaceuticals (which have an excellent track record of morally dubious acts).

Nerds that I have have met or seen in mailing lists, have a strong co-relation with totalitarianism aka evil sysadmins.

I would like to call a distinction b/w Aron who is first and foremost a philosophy-geek, something that all idealists have in common.

>> NSA hires the best nerds.

I'm skeptical of this. In a hypothetical programming/engineering competition, I'd bet Apple and/or Google could clean the clocks of any government agency or defense contractor, sans building planes and weapons.

>> Nerds that I have have met or seen in mailing lists, have a strong co-relation with totalitarianism aka evil sysadmins.

Sad. That's what assimilation and institutionalization does to you. Hope that never happens to me.

From what I have seen of the NSA's campus recruiting, I am skeptical of that as well. It is possible that they get most of their talent elsewhere, but at the very least they are missing a large source of it.

It is probably more accurate to say that they hire the best math guys that only have a single degree. They certainly aren't getting those who go on to be quants.

I'm reading Harry Turtledove's Worldwar series right now, and I'm struck by the comparisons he makes between Soviet and Nazi military doctrines. Essentially, the former is controlled by individuals too paranoid to allow for any initiative on the part of individuals under their command, while the latter actively encourages initiative on the part of commanders and dog-faces (grunts). One side effect of this is that German soldiers get away with much less deferential behavior. The result are seen both in previous battles between the two, and with the conflict against the Lizards (invaders from another planet with a much more restrictive bent than even the USSR) where the Nazis generally perform much better given their technology.

I wonder if a similar level of encouraging initiative exists in technology due to the fact that there's a low ceiling on how far you can pass most decisions up before running into nontechnical persons. Looking at it from another side, technical careers might allow for more initiative simply by the ability to enter the market via unconventional means.

Unconnected to the above, it seems to me that these sort of leaks are easier to perform versus a lot of political actions especially with the technical skills of leakers. Leaks' effect per unit of time to follow through surpasses most anything else I can think of. The only real downside is the resultant criminal penalties. Infodumps like Swartz's are similarly relatively easy to perform.

"In the long tail of history just following orders is wrong." dang that is a nice quote.

It sounds nice, but when I think about what exactly is meant by "long tail" I can't come up with an answer that would be compatible with the idea of the "long tail" in statistics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_tail).

It does sounds better than just "in the long run, throughout history, just following orders is wrong". It seems like it's referring to people who are outliers and through which all the change is happening, but technically it's not really saying that. No ?

"In the long tale of history..." may resolve your concerns?

Oh, wow, I'm sorry. I should have seen that one. I guess I liked "long tail" and the alternative didn't occur to me. =)

Perhaps, an alternative: "In the long tale of history just following orders is wrong."

Is this hacker related at all or is it that hackers end up with (loads of) this sort of information more often?

If I had in my possession delicate information about government, military, or public sector misbehaviour I would need a really, really good reason to keep it secret. And I would assume that most people would face the same dilemma, regardless of hackerdom.

They might, as well as many hackers, choose to do so because they want to keep their jobs and feed their kids but they still couldn't get over the issue. Young people are more likely to leak because they have less to lose.

There are Stallmans of non-hacker origin, too. These are people who see a problem in society and set out to fix it. Civil rights groups, civil liberties groups, charity organizations. Stallman just happened to be a hacker so what he saw was a social problem in his own domain.

I do recognize the libertarian sentiment among hackers and I subscribe to that myself, too. Just wondering if it's really hacker specific.

I've known quite a few twenty-something hackers (including my younger self) that are absolutists about things... everything black and white.

From the preliminary details though, it looks like the government has significantly overstepped its bounds. This is the kind of thing that absolutists won't tolerate, and for that I am grateful that they exist.

That's very key. Kind of ironically, in my case, the reason I'm not nearly as worried about NSA overreach is because we have people like Sen. Wyden and the EFF and ACLU to strenuously push back against government overstepping their boundaries.

Even where I disagree on a given particular issue I know that they are doing good work, and that enables me to trust the government more.

This article is prone to the "Availability Bias"

We tend to believe something is true when examples confirming it are easily available to fetch from our memories.

This has been exploited for example by telling people to think about 12 situations where they were rude. People end up believing they are rude when they can easily come up with example situations.

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

You wear a suit to blend in. You hack and stick out. It's as simple as that. Hackers are just the people who don't care much for blending in but they are not stupid enough to be bums.

“In the long tail of history just following orders is wrong. That’s the key thing that really matters.”

Jacob Appelbaum hit the nail on the head.

And, as customers, we're just letting them have access because it's easy.

I use facebook because it's easier than any alternative, even though I don't like the privacy stuff. I'm just following the crowd.

I use gmail because, woah! 1 GB storage and they're reliable! And so I just follow the crowd.

I don't bother with encryption because it's slow and clunky and most of the people I communicate with can only just use a web browser, they have no hope of using GPG.

I'm quick to blame the big corps for rolling over and giving my data away, but I've done a lot to help them do it.

Because nerd's will inevitably outcompete suits in a perfectly fair environment. So it makes sense to work towards one.

I think that the article is misleading.

The question is not "Who these pesky hackers think they are that they can dismiss social niceties, establish law, and office smoothness". This misleads because it assumes that normal people should just accept authority, and questioning authority is dysfunctional.

The real question is "What makes people recognize authority?", and for this question there is a spectrum of answers that goes from Pure Label to Pure Proof.

Pure label would be the people that recognize authority because there is a piece of paper that say that you are authority, and you can inflict pain, so I should obey you, if not by recognition, then by fear. (The lion is not scary if it doesn't have teeth)

Pure proof would be the people that put others to test before acknowledging labels. You are authority because you ACTUALLY know the domain where you claim authority, you are authority because you care about the consequences of your decisions on the all people affected by them. I obey because I saw that you actually are better than me in the context, and pain has nothing to do with it.

Pure label people look at pure proof people as disorderly, rebellious, dis adjusted, and they don't comply but hack their way around. The sense of comfort for pure label people comes from a well known establish order, and they feel that without authority society will spiral into chaos. Order is more important than people. I think they are correct.

Pure Proof people look at pure label people as sheep, drones, overly compliant people that are too lazy to try understand what actually works. The sense of comfort for pure proof people comes from objectively understanding the context, see how it is supposed to work regardless of the current implementation, and once an appropriate solution is found, then passionately support it. They feel that with excessive authority society will be for a few, hence just another form of chaos. People is more important than Order). I think they are correct.

(I know that for a dualistic mind agreeing with both is non sense... you will have to stretch your brain if you want to understand how this is possible and is OK)

This is an spectrum, so most people is in neither pole, but somewhere in between.

I believe that the truth in this case, is in the balance. And society to progress needs both. Our current society implementation massively favors Pure label people for historically or manipulative reasons, and to the point of almost looking at pure proof people as pathological.

Since the situation is out of balance, our current implementation of society 3.0 is faulty. But this is not a hackers problem, actually, more hackers would be the solution to restore the balance.

hierarchy positions are much more political than technical ones, so hackers are picked by skill and quality instead of 'political reasons', in any strict hierarchical organization, the 'rebels' or 'dissidents' or 'opinionated' are gonna be weeded out of positions of power early on, and this serves to maintain, in the upper levels, only people who have the same exact vision and mindset as the people who are already there, be it because they are really strong followers of the institution credo or because they let themselves be molded by it.

Academia, military, corporations all are like this, I believe.

Both suits and hackers leak information, the difference is suits leak it to private parties that they can benefit from and hackers do it publicly.

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