Slashdot Mirror
How To Hire a Hacker
itwbennett writes "If you want to hire a hacker, you need to take a more psychology-based approach to the entire interview process to determine whether he or she has changed their ways enough to be a trustworthy employee, says Mich Kabay in a recent Network World blog post. But this approach is also 'germane for highly skilled staffers, even those that don't come with arrest records or who have done something questionable in their pasts,' says David Strom. For example, in your next interview, ask a question that will suss out how much of a sense of entitlement a candidate has — or how much you or your company has. 'One time when I interviewed with Microsoft in Redmond I couldn't get over this sense of corporate entitlement — it was one of the biggest turn-offs that I had during my interviewing day there,' says Strom. 'I got the feeling that I wasn't going to fit in, no matter how smart I thought (or they thought) I was.'"
I consider this blatant hacker discrimination morally reprehensible.
Is hacker culture so bad that anyone who identifies as a hacker needs to pass special scrutiny?
Isn't it a bit insulting to the hacker community to say they shouldn't be hired, unless they've "reformed", and imply they have arrest records, suggesting they are all criminals ?
Perhaps you mean cracker
Because that is an interesting real world scenario to consider in this context. In fact, it would make for a good litmus test: would your hiring process stop the SF admin problem from occurring?
Particularly given that it's not at all clear that the admin was even the problem...
"Another problem is that some criminal hackers may exhibit traits associated with clinical personality disorders such as the narcissistic personality disorder." I'd say a large amount of IT staff exhibit personality disorders. Not just 'hackers'.
It is a job requirement. If we got on well with other people, how would we spend enough time alone with computers to become experts?
I am anarch of all I survey.
Childs is an interesting case. It seems he's a victim both of his own hubris and of sloppy management.
I'd like to think that a skilled interviewer could determine whether a person like that would make it in a given organization, but I just don't know. I do think that articles like this help in identifying factors that might help in deciding
(And who the hell modded you Troll?)
Team building does simply not work out. You cannot build a team. It happens or it does not. It's just that simple.
If you really insist in "building" a team out of people who don't know jack each other, simple way: Grab them all for an afternoon, put them in a pub, sit down with them and get them drunk. Really drunk. Then have them talk. You'll have a team the next morning some of the times. And if not, you at least got a good hangover out of it on corporate pay.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Took awhile to see the joke-- I guess i really am stupider at 2am. :D
Crap. What did the new CSS do with the "Post anonymously" option??
Two things - first a hacker is simply a skilled computer technologist and it is only the media that has twisted the term to mean something like 'evil child killer whose probably a communist'. Second er I think I covered my second point already, i.e. from TFS: 'But this approach is also 'germane for highly skilled staffers', as though hackers aren't skilled!
works great until the legal team hears of your machinations and fires your ass back to 1954, approximately the last time your ideas would have been good advice.
Only if the distribution is symmmetric.
617B3B7F7E7C7D7F00EOF
Someone who is intelligent, competent, and has a difficult time finding acceptance (or even a modicum of comfort-with-others) in new environments could very easily get falsely labeled a misanthrope.
True, but.... far more often, they're just misanthropes *. You only have to look at the vitriol aimed at the "sheeple" that we see posted every day here to see that. It's possible to hate humankind in general while still liking specific people in your personal "circle", in the same way it's possible to be a racist while still having friends of another race.
If they're capable and know up from down, calling them self-important is a wee bit counter-productive - and I dare say, quite possibly why they'd be viewed as misanthropic.
It may be that they're viewed as misanthropic because of the scorn and disdain they heap onto others whom they don't view as being as smart as themselves -- which is usually 99.999% of the population.
Yes, there are a lot of people who are simply "socially clueless" as you've described. But there are also a lot of misanthropes in the IT/IS fields. A rose by any other name, etc...
*disclaimer: recovering misanthrope
You have it backwards. The vast majority of people read hacker as 'one who uses a computer to gain unauthorized access to data'. It is you, and others like you, who have been trying to twist the term to mean 'skilled computer technologist'. Please see here for different meanings of hack. You'll notice that your sense of the word is in the list, and it is certainly your right to use hacker to mean skilled computer technologist. But to claim that your definition is correct while everyone else is wrong is preposterous. Words take on meanings when people use and understand them to have that meaning, not when some obscure group shrilly insists it should have a certain meaning and no other.
and the second is even more interesting, including the rather apt statement: "Today, mainstream usage mostly refers to computer criminals, due to the mass media usage of the word since the 1980s", which of course follows a potted history of hacker culture in the 60's!