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So You've Hired a Hacker (Revised and Expanded)
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2.1: My hacker doesn't fit in well with our corporate society. She seems to do her work well, but she's not really making many friends.
This is common. Your hacker may not have found any people around who get along with hackers. You may wish to consider offering her a position telecommuting, or flexible hours (read: night shift), which may actually improve her productivity. Or, even better, hire another one.
2.2: My hacker seems to dress funny. Is there any way to impress upon him the importance of corporate appearance?
Well... let's look at your view of clothing first, so that you'll have a better chance at understanding how your hacker sees things differently.
You believe in showing respect for the company and those you work with. To you, much of that respect revolves around little details. These details are to you much of the substance of respect--such as that classy suit you wear to the office. So when a hacker wears jeans and a t-shirt to work, he must be showing disrespect, right?
Not really. Those jeans--kneeholes and all--are what he wears to see his best friend, whom he respects deeply. If your hacker happens to be a Christian, he may wear jeans and a T-shirt to church on Easter. I sometimes do, and when I dress up for church, it is more to avoid distracting other churchgoers than any need of fancy clothes in order to worship God. Hackers look past appearances, and it seems strange to them that you think they need uncomfortable clothes to work well: if it's what's inside the clothing that matters, why not wear something comfortable and be able to concentrate better?
If your hacker isn't dressing up, how can he still respect your company? He works hard, solves problems, and probably thinks about ways to help your company be more productive--even when he's at home. If he wants to wear comfortable clothing at work, it's not disrespect; he just understands what IBM, MicroSoft, and Ford all recognize: employees are most productive when they choose what to wear--not their company. If you ask your hacker respectfully, he'll probably wear clothing without any holes, and might even dress up for a few special occasions.
Your suit is a professional asset. It helps other people see your professionalism. Your hacker's t-shirt is also a professional asset. It's part of a culture that judges a person by what's inside his clothing, and he works better when comfortable. He doesn't try to get you to dress like him; why don't you extend the same courtesy to him?
2.3: My hacker won't call me by my title, and doesn't seem to respect me at all.
Your hacker doesn't respect your title. Hackers don't believe that management is "above" engineering; they believe that management is doing one job, and engineering is doing another. They may well frequently talk as if management is beneath them, but this is really quite fair; your question implies that you talk as if engineering is beneath you. Treat your hacker as an equal, and she will probably treat you as an equal--quite a compliment!
2.4: My hacker constantly insults the work of my other workers.
Take your hacker aside, and ask for details of what's wrong with the existing work. It may be that there's something wrong with it. Don't let the fact that it runs most of the time fool you; your hacker is probably bothered by the fact that it crashes at all. As your customers will be--consider your hacker to be an early warning system. He may be able to suggest improvements which could dramatically improve performance, reliability, or other features. It's worth looking into.
You may be able to convince your hacker to be more polite, but if there appear to be major differences, it's quite possible that one or more of your existing staff are incompetent by his standards. Note that hackers, of course, have different standards of competence than many other people. (Read "different" as "much higher".) Is this necessarily appropriate? All people have weaknesses. It would perhaps be nicer if hackers were more charitable to people who can't match their talent, but you're lucky to have someone on staff who's competent enough for this to be a problem.
3.1: My hacker plays video games on company time.
Abraham Lincoln said, "If I had ten hours to chop down an oak tree, I'd spend the first eight sharpening my axe."
Some jobs are done best by getting your hands dirty immediately: if you hire a kid to rake your leaves, you probably want him to start raking as soon as he arrives. But if you contacted a building contractor to make a new office building in the morning, and he was pouring concrete by the end of the day, you would not be impressed--at least not in a good way. Something is very wrong: there are all sorts of things that need to happen first. If your contractor begins work by pouring concrete, you will end up paying for some very expensive mistakes that could have been completely avoided by simple preparation.
Your hacker is probably honest, too honest to start off by writing poor-quality code "so my manager will think I'm working." He'd rather be productive and spend two weeks preparing rather than two years fixing needless mistakes.
Perhaps it would be easier if hacker ways of preparation coincided with what you do when working--writing memos or something like that. But there is an elusive productive zone, and your hacker is doing whatever he can to gain that productivity. I often write best after taking meandering walks--and, if you have difficulty believing that walks are a way to produce something good, I'd encourage you to read A Dream of Light--which, walks and all, took me very little time to write. I averaged over ten times the normal speed of a professional writer. Your hacker who plays games on company time is using the same areas of his mind as I did. Your hacker is sharpening his axe, and it's a good idea for him to do so.
Hackers, writers, and painters all need some amount of time to spend "percolating"--doing something else to let their subconscious work on a problem. Your hacker is probably stuck on something difficult. Don't worry about it.
3.2: But it's been two weeks since I saw anything!
Your hacker is working, alone probably, on a big project, and just started, right? She's probably trying to figure it all out in advance. Ask her how it's going; if she starts a lot of sentences, but interrupts them all with "no, wait..." or "drat, that won't work", it's going well.
3.3: Isn't this damaging to productivity?
No. Your hacker needs to recreate and think about things in many ways. He will be more productive with this recreation than without it. Your hacker enjoys working; don't worry about things getting done reasonably well and quickly.
3.4: My hacker is constantly doing things unrelated to her job responsibilities.
Do they need to be done? Very few hackers can resist solving a problem when they can solve it, and no one else is solving it. For that matter, is your hacker getting her job done? If so, consider these other things a freebie or perk (for you). Although it may not be conventional, it's probably helping out quite a bit.
3.5: My hacker is writing a book, reading USENET news, playing video games, talking with friends on the phone, and building sculptures out of paper clips. On company time!
He sounds happy. The chances are he's in one of three states:
Any of these factors may be involved. All of them may be involved. In general, if the work is challenging, and is getting done, don't worry too much about the process. You might ask for your corporation to be given credit in the book.
3.6: But my other workers are offended by my hacker's success, and it hurts their productivity.
Do you really need to have workers around who would rather be the person getting something done, than have it done already? Ego has very little place in the workplace. If they can't do it well, assign them to something they can do.
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Miscellaneous Nonfiction >
So You've Hired a Hacker (Revised and Expanded)
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