The Hacker Way

http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2012/02/hacker-way.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+startup%2Flessons%2Flearned+%28Lessons+Learned%29

by sinzone • 14 years ago

121 21 14 years ago

startuplessonslearned.com

WadeF• 14 years ago

"Hackers believe that the best idea and implementation should always win — not the person who is best at lobbying for an idea or the person who manages the most people."

Hopefully Facebook's success will see more and more companies moving to this sort of management style.

rmason• 14 years ago

The more a company's decisions are data driven the less influence company politics can have on the outcome.

I don't think the practice started at Facebook but they may be the largest example of it.

ilaksh• 14 years ago

Wouldn't it be nice if governments worked like this?

gggrgraham• 14 years ago

The Hacker Way has taken Wall St. by force. Love it. The Letter from Mark is the Best Part. http://theairspace.net/commentary/letter-mark/

mvzink• 14 years ago

This is cool.

> The examples above all relate to engineering, but we have distilled these principles into five core values for how we run Facebook...

They are reconciling the business/management style well known in the hacker community with the traditional need for big businesses to have vision statements, guiding principles, etc. etc.

As Ries says,

> It is a 21st-century manifesto for a new way of doing business.

Cool.

pdenya• 14 years ago

"“Move fast and break things.” The idea is that if you never break anything, you’re probably not moving fast enough."

This explains the API timeline.

InclinedPlane• 14 years ago

I think the API timeline fiasco has other roots, probably mostly related to weak leadership in guiding the overall user experience.

This is a worthwhile nugget of wisdom though, I've found it also applies to delegation. If nothing ever goes wrong you probably aren't delegating hard enough, which means you are wasting a lot of time doing things that should be done by others (and also holding other people back by preventing them from taking on new responsibilities). The trick is finding the boundary.

kurtvarner• 14 years ago

This is absolutely the most refreshing outlook there has ever been from a public company. It truly is amazing that Facebook still has the hacker mentally. I'm confident their stock will do extremely well in there years to come.

flexterra2• 14 years ago

Best quotes: "Done is better than perfect" and "Code wins arguments"

flexterra2• 14 years ago

We made posters http://hacker-gallery.goodsie.com/

miles_matthias• 14 years ago

I don't disagree that they have a good culture there, but I don't think they've reached a good balance between done and perfect yet. Loads of Facebook is riddled with bugs and at times, rendered totally unusable. The only reason they're able to get away with such an imbalance is that their product taps into the primal urge to be connected with other people, so much so that their users will overcome all odds to get on Facebook and connect with their friends. And for that, I don't much care for Facebook. Make a great service, not crap built to take advantage of a human instinct.

kerryfalk• 14 years ago

Simply put: we don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services.

This reminds me of a company I respect for their history and ability to do great things (relative to their field). Things may have changed in more recent years but I recall a statement similar to this one made by Ferrari years ago. It went something like this:

We don't race so we can sell street cars, we sell street cars so we can race.

mpakes• 14 years ago

I believe the genesis of this line of quotes is Walt Disney.

http://startupquote.com/post/859040744

asher• 14 years ago

Interesting, because I was also thinking of Disney. They had enormous conflicts in Florida with the experienced hotel executives they brought in to run the new hotels.

Ultimately those hotel men were pushed out by the Disney managers, who all shared the same corporate DNA: fanatical attention to guest experience combined with unawareness of money.

One store generated $100k/year in revenue, and cost $1M/year to run. That was perfect from Disney's viewpoint.

Eisner put an end to this, of course.

gavanwoolery• 14 years ago

For a big company, I like the way Facebook is run...but, the word "hacker" is officially no longer cool.

I used to associate the word "hacker" with "badass." It was not a title to be tossed around like the village whore, it was only given to people who had proved themselves with years of hard work, and ingenious or innovative hacks. Becoming a hacker was the equivalent of finding Enlightenment. Any hacker can collaborate, but hackers also stuck me as renegades - people who would build something great with their own two hands.

Hacker culture is probably not something you will find in a company that has just gone public. A public company with as much money invested as Facebook has too much to lose to embrace real hacker culture - which cares nothing for deadlines, rules, managers, filling out wireframes, etc.

I am sure there are plenty of smart people at Facebook, but it all feels a little too rah-rah school spirit, ping pong tables in the break room, silicon valley kool aid, etc etc. Not the seedy basement you expect hackers to infest. :)

ColdAsIce• 14 years ago

Everything looses its meaning when the mainstream decides its cool.

kenrik• 14 years ago

I agree with the moving fast part, sometimes you need to just get something "working" to be able to work on another piece.

You need to watch out for Technical Debt though, It will catch up to you eventually.

cr4zy• 14 years ago

I wish Facebook would "Be Open". Facebook is a walled garden and holds a ton of valuable information within its walls. Hence G+.

thar2012• 14 years ago

The most funniest part is :)

"While Zuckerberg promised that thefacebook.com would boast new features by the end of the week, he said that he did not create the website with the intention of generating revenue."

phaedrix• 14 years ago

The definition of 'hacking' by hackers: http://catb.org/jargon/html/me...

"In fact, hack has only one meaning, an extremely subtle and profound one which defies articulation."

so regardless, defining the 'hacker way', especially in the context of a massive corporation, is a bit ridiculous.

scottilee• 14 years ago

Something else that stands out to me about this post is the comparison to Mark Zuckerburg's very first press interview.

I wonder how other startup founders have seen change in themselves over time?

The Hacker Way

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