Hackers vs. suits: Why nerds become leakers

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/11/hackers-vs-suits-why-nerds-become-leakers/

by Libertatea • 13 years ago

200 153 13 years ago

w_t_payne11• 13 years ago

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.

wavefunction• 13 years ago

>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.

w_t_payne11• 13 years ago

Well, that happens a lot too.

btilly• 13 years ago

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

penguindev• 13 years ago

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.

w_t_payne11• 13 years ago

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.

jenius• 13 years ago

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.

JamisonM4• 13 years ago

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).

hilko4• 13 years ago

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.

w_t_payne11• 13 years ago

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

signal9• 13 years ago

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

jlgreco11• 13 years ago

"FWIW"

It is worth fuck all.

bmoresbest55• 13 years ago

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.

theboywho2• 13 years ago

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

jmduke3• 13 years ago

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."

vadman• 13 years ago

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.

JamisonM4• 13 years ago

The warped mind of Timothy McVeigh as well.

swombat• 13 years ago

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.

prollyignored• 13 years ago

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.

milhous• 13 years ago

> 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.

ChikkaChiChi3• 13 years ago

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.

dalke3• 13 years ago

"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?

toyg5• 13 years ago

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.

JamisonM4• 13 years ago

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.

w_t_payne11• 13 years ago

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.

mogrim• 13 years ago

Unlikely: a standing army is a lot easier to squash than a load of unrelated, unconnected individuals.

rayiner10• 13 years ago

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.

toyg5• 13 years ago

"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.

ChikkaChiChi3• 13 years ago

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.

jiggy2011• 13 years ago

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.

ChikkaChiChi3• 13 years ago

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.)

Buzaga• 13 years ago

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.

kraemate• 13 years ago

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

theboywho2• 13 years ago

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

lettergram• 13 years ago

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.

GFischer• 13 years ago

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

chris_mahan• 13 years ago

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

gyom2• 13 years ago

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 ?

ISL• 13 years ago

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

louthy• 13 years ago

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

rayiner10• 13 years ago

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?)

lmm3• 13 years ago

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.

rayiner10• 13 years ago

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?

ciex• 13 years ago

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.

Jd2• 13 years ago

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).

mindcrime2• 13 years ago

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.

sharkweek• 13 years ago

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.

jmduke3• 13 years ago

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...

mseebach3• 13 years ago

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.

jakejake• 13 years ago

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?

TeMPOraL• 13 years ago

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.

hilko4• 13 years ago

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.

sanj• 13 years ago

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.

nawitus• 13 years ago

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.

somecoolguy• 13 years ago

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

jdietrich• 13 years ago

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.

nickpinkston• 13 years ago

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

JamisonM4• 13 years ago

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.

amirmc• 13 years ago

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?

peterwwillis8• 13 years ago

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.

glesica• 13 years ago

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.

lazerwalker• 13 years ago

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.

ebiester• 13 years ago

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.

yason2• 13 years ago

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.

dylangs1030• 13 years ago

"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.

mindcrime2• 13 years ago

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.

rayiner10• 13 years ago

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.

danmaz74• 13 years ago

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?

CleanedStar• 13 years ago

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.

kragen• 13 years ago

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?

cLeEOGPw• 13 years ago

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.

etherael• 13 years ago

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.

hilko4• 13 years ago

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'?

1morepassword• 13 years ago

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.

w_t_payne11• 13 years ago

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.

eli_gottlieb• 13 years ago

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.

cynest• 13 years ago

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.

yason2• 13 years ago

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.

mixmastamyk• 13 years ago

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.

mpyne• 13 years ago

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.

jorgeleo• 13 years ago

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.

scotty79• 13 years ago

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.

alekseyk• 13 years ago

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.

iguana• 13 years ago

“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.

DanBC• 13 years ago

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.

trust-me• 13 years ago

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

Hackers vs. suits: Why nerds become leakers

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