Does the 'Hacker Ethic' Harm Today's Developers?

snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister questions whether the 'hacker ethic' synonymous with computer programing in American society is enough for developers to succeed in today's economy. To be sure, self-taught 'cowboy coders' — the hallmark of today's programming generation in America — are technically proficient, McAllister writes, 'but their code is less likely to be maintainable in the long term, and they're less likely to conform to organizational development processes and coding standards.' And though HTC's Vineet Nayar's proclamation that American programmers are 'unemployable' is overblown, there may be wisdom in offering a new kind of computer engineering degree targeted toward the student who is more interested in succeeding in industry than exploring computing theory. 'American software development managers often complain that Indian programmers are too literal-minded,' McAllister writes, but perhaps Americans have swung the pendulum too far in the other direction. In other words, are we 'too in love with the hacker ideal of the 1980s to produce programmers who are truly prepared for today's real-life business environment?'"

Comments

Software engineering is not a new concept.

[Ethanol-fueled]

And though HTC's Vineet Nayar's proclamation that American programmers are 'unemployable'...

Flamebait. The article goes on to say that Americans are all prima donnas who are out of touch with reality and want to start with 80K a year and whatnot. Besides that being a bad stereotype and not always true, and when it is true it also applies to math or engineering or whatever grads whose parents buttercupped them with promises of the American dream when they finished school. It is their fault for not anticipating reality just as it will be the Indians' fault if they refuse to anticipate their jobs going somewhere cheaper.

there may be wisdom in offering a new kind of computer engineering degree targeted toward the student who is more interested in succeeding in industry than exploring computing theory.

They're already here, usually called "Software Engineering. The coursework is usually half business, half programming and IT. If you can survive rolling your eyes at all the buzzwords and colored charts, it's decent preparation for becoming a Dilbertian drone. Plus, you won't have to sweat learning the vector calculus you'll never use outside of school.

Re:Software engineering is not a new concept.

[nine-times]

it's decent preparation for becoming a Dilbertian drone

This makes me want to comment on something that may well be a valid point in all of this. I've run into a common problem in lots of companies with lots of workers. I'm not saying that it's limited to Americans or technical people, and I'm American after all, but it can be a problem: everyone wants to be a cowboy, and nobody is willing to be a drone.

Now lots of people are probably going to get pissed off that I'm claiming that "nobody is willing to be a drone" is a problem, but hear me out because it's not that simple. I'm not saying we need more "mindless drones", but I've seen the cowboy mentality go bad lots of times. People love to be the hero who saves the day, but in lots of real-life work situations, the day only needs saving when someone wasn't following directions in the first place.

Lots of people are so bored and frustrated with the menial tasks of their everyday work day that they let things slide. Then when all the things they've let slide come to bite them in the ass, they really enjoy the thrill, drama, and glory of pulling a quickie solution out of their asses just in the nick of time. They save the day, feel important, and get to tell the story of how clever and skilled they were right when their skills were most needed. It's very understandable, but it doesn't encourage people to do things right the first time, and so there are a lot more problems than their need to be.

It'd be really nice if people were willing to document things, make checklists for their regular procedures, and take notes in meetings. It'd be great if people were just thorough and actually paid attention to directions-- things like that. But I don't know if that has anything to do with a "hacker ethic". I'm not sure what the "hacker ethic" is, but the Wikipedia article doesn't make it sound too bad.

Re:Software engineering is not a new concept.

[dbIII]

We outsourced a lot of development and IT to an Indian office, and found the experience to be most similar to managing a workforce composed entirely of interns

There's a good reason for that. The most common scam is that as soon as the outsourced staff have learnt as much as they can from you they get reassigned to a more profitable projects and you end up effectively training a new guy for them. As for the attitude to customer data - it's not theirs so they really don't care.

Summary error

[IamTheRealMike]

HTC is a Taiwanese electronics firm. The CEO in question is (according to the previous summary) running HCL Technologies. Of course if the previous summary is inaccurate as well, this is also wrong. But that's slashdot - they should replace the /. logo with a box of chocolates ...

At least flame the right guy

[consonant]

Vineet Nayar does not 'belong' to HTC. he is the CEO of HCL Technologies. HTC is a Taiwan-based mobile handset manufacturer (among other things), and a pretty good one at that.