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Why Your IT Department Needs To Staff a Hacker
First time accepted submitter anaphora writes "In this TED Talk, Rory Sutherland discusses the need for every company to have a staff member with the power to do big things but no budget to spend: these are the kinds of individuals who are not afraid to recommend cheap and effective ways to solve big company problems. This article argues that, in the IT world, this person is none other than a highly-skilled hacker. From the article: 'To the media, the term “hacker” refers to a user who breaks into a computer system. To a programmer, “hacker” simply means a great programmer. In the corporate IT field, hackers are both revered as individuals who get a lot done without a lot of resources but feared as individuals who may be a little more “loose cannon” than your stock IT employee. Telling your CEO you want to hire a hacker may not be the best decision for an IT manager, but actually hiring one may be the best decision you can make.'"
I don't need a hacker on staff. I'll just leave a few ports open, like FTP, Telnet, HTTP, RDP, etc. They'll find me and I won't have to spend a cent on payroll! ;-)
They must have had a slow day at TED and needed a talking head.
I can agree to a point. I certainly know people/places that just throw money at a problem. And I know that when systems and down and the customer is starting to panic, that I've come up with some interesting and very good solutions. However there are problems with always trying to solve solutions with 'hacks'. They become unsupportable, they fail in unexpected ways, and they make it harder for you to get a budget to do things you simply can't/shouldn't hack a solution together for. 'What, why do we need a SAN? Remember how you wired those netbooks together for our web farm! Figure something out for us. KTHXBYE.'
But I do agree you need someone who can think creatively and not be locked into marketing speak anytime a problem comes up.
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
To the general public, the term “hacker” refers to a user who breaks into a computer system.
FTFY.
Best not to go to your boss asking to hire a "hacker." And I sure wouldn't use that term in writing.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
It might result in a lot more "debugging" than you want. STDs are bad, mmkay?
I'm a big fan of standardized solutions from a name big enough to provide consistent support. That said, sometimes 2 hours spent writing a script is cheaper than 20,000 spent to your vendor to accomplish the same thing.
It's a balance, and it's up to the manager to determine the best financial choice.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
One of the most annoying things I deal with at work is people who think they are "hackers". The best and brightest people follow the rules - that's why they are the best. They break the rules in great times of need. When a project blows up on the weekend and we are going to miss an SLA, etc.
The idea that you want to work with someone who spends their time trying to half-ass things to save themselves time is not only stupid, it's completely the opposite of what you want in a professional environment.
"Hack" in your spare time. Enjoy it, have fun. I know I do. My home-grown projects have none of the constraints my work does. But, don't do it on my company time.
You're joking, right? A hacker is, by definition, someone overqualified for every job where the dress code includes the word "business" in its description. Why the hell would someone like that want to work for peanuts, creating miracles out of thin air with no budget? Because they find it challenging? Bitch, please -- we want to get paid, and if I'm working for a place that values IT so little they can't even come up with a budget for things that would (by your own definition!) render improvements to their infrastructure, what are the odds of promotion? A raise? Benefits? Answer: Zilch. Nothing. Nodda. Zero.
I know it's an unrelated field, and some of you will probably laugh, but when I was in school for graphic design (I already know enough for a degree in IT), one of the things my first teacher told me is: Don't work for free. You're not going to get any exposure, leads are worthless, and charity work doesn't get the bills paid. As a graphic designer, most of us are self-employed and it's essential we know to the nearest half-hour mark how long a project is going to take in billable hours. We need to make our own budget for every project, and everyone and I mean everyone is looking for free work or thinking they can do it themselves with photoshop.
IT is approaching the same commoditization of labor -- Many of us are "contractors" already, but eventually people are going to wise-up and become self-employed because contractors are paid shit and treated as such. Be ahead of the curve people: Don't work for peanuts, and if someone says "there's no budget for what you do," take the hint and move on.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Someone who has coding chops but whose happy place is 50 pages deep in documentation.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
I suppose I'm my department's hacker. One of the more fun things is I've begun repairing touchscreen wallmount PCs in-house rather than sending them out for repair at $350-$1000 each. A shame the money I save likely won't be rolled back into my salary.
It doesn't sound like that's what they're talking about.
I think they're talking about the "I'll just get shit done where it needs doing, by whatever means I feel most appropriate" type worker. In my work experience, that guy is usually the one that is just an OK programmer, but the only one in the building that actually knows how to work on his machine, too. He probably also doesn't much mind office politics because he'll blow right past it and deal with any fallout when the problem is solved. He may or may not have read the manual. He's the practical person more than the academic, if you're brave enough to stereotype like that. ;)
You wouldn't believe the supposed "really great programmers" I've seen that just throw their hands up when something goes sideways on their workstation, or sit on their hands for days over a management dispute. They're there for one job, to write textbook quality code for a single project, collect the paycheck and be out the door at 5:01 unless someone insists that he stay. That's it. If anything else happens that complicates that arrangement, it's like a train derailment.
I know, I'm being a bit obtuse about the difference where there's a million shades of grey... but it's something I've seen a lot and I agree with the general point.
True enough. If you really want to hire one, though, replace the name "hacker" with "troubleshooter" or "all-round developer". Management can understand why you would want to hire a troubleshooter, as opposed to a hacker who "just makes trouble".
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
why not go for the socially skilled hacker? You know, one that is not thinking that the company is there so the IT department exists.
I know, many will say that without IT the company would not exist. Well, that goes for any other department as well. If the company could do without them, they would not exist.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Always use antivirus and firewall while debugging :)
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
Where I work "hacker" is a derogatory term for coders who write non-maintainable solutions.
Must suck to work there.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
You just described the job requirement for a trade floor tech. I've been working in the trade support role for ~10 years and that's exactly what we do. On a trade floor where seconds count management doesn't care if you skirt company policy to get a problem solved in the shortest amount of time. IT can address the issue formally post trade close. Corporate IT doesn't always get the urgency with these environments and explaining to them why you need the firewall turned off because it just went postal and started blocking the main trading hub isn't likely to get you anywhere.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
What you describe is what I call the "Just get it done" attitude, and it's one I've personally had for a very long time. People with this attitude sometimes do get themselves in trouble (I know I have) but they're also the guy who can pick something up and poke at it for an hour or two and produce a result, which is a useful skill to have, particularly if the shit hits the fan.
There are a couple of problems with this type of person, and to be clear, I tend that direction myself and fortunately, so does my boss. I've seen cases where we've built circuits on a verbal request, but then the service orders never get put in and the customer never got billed. I've seen cases where we got a project 75% complete, but then the customer pulled the plug before there was a contract signed, or the requirements were changed so that we had to start over. I've seen cases where what was documented and what was actually built were two entirely different things. And I've seen cases where a union was in a pissing match with...someone, I don't actually know who...and they got their collective boxers in a wad and grieved a bunch of guys and their managers because on the day that the order was due for a customer (after a month wait), they still hadn't even strung the CAT-5 in the data center, so a bunch of my coworkers just went in there and did it themselves.
I'd still much rather work with a "just get 'er done!" type than the typical bureaucrat, though!
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
"To a programmer, “hacker” simply means a great programmer. "
I've been doing this since 1986. I have never, ever heard anyone, in a large company (10,000+) or small (11) one, call a great programmer a hacker. I have heard them call "hackers" irresponsible, self important jerks who have little regard for the fact that a company will out live the brief time of their employment and that those who follow will have to deal with their non-standard, obtuse, "brilliant" way of doing things.
It's not about You, it's about providing the infrastructure for the company to do business in a reliable and predictable fashion. All of the safeguards and practices developed over the years to provide stable systems, delivering accurate results argue implicitly against the romanticized definition of a hacker and certainly against the reality of your average hacker.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
There is a difference. The hacker is an expert in haste and improvisation. When the network is down due to a failure of a nonredundant fiber interface, the troubleshooter is the one who leaves everyone working on pen and paper while a 24-hour urgent delivery of a new SPF is arranged. The hacker is the one who is trailing ethernet cable out of the window on the top floor and back in on the bottom to make a quick-and-dirty workaround that'll have the network somewhat operational again in fifteen minutes.
In the moment of crisis, they are a lifesaver pushing your software out moments before you piss off the customer. Of course, they are also often the reason you lost three weeks of development time chasing a bug in undocumented code that isn't in the repository and they don't remember writing.
To a programmer, “hacker” simply means a great programmer.
I have been programming for over 20 years and my definition of a hacker is some one who writes quick and very dirty code to fix a specific issue for a short period of time. In my experience hackers have a tendency to leave behind fragile, undocumented code that may or may not work in the future. Some hacks stand up over time but most fall down when run long enough. All hacks need to be eventually documented, tested and approved before they become permanent parts of the code base. The worst thing that can happen is to come across a hack a year later and no one know what it does or why it is there. In my experience most hacks need to be replaced as soon as possible.
There is a difference. The hacker is an expert in haste and improvisation. When the network is down due to a failure of a nonredundant fiber interface, the troubleshooter is the one who leaves everyone working on pen and paper while a 24-hour urgent delivery of a new SPF is arranged. The hacker is the one who is trailing ethernet cable out of the window on the top floor and back in on the bottom to make a quick-and-dirty workaround that'll have the network somewhat operational again in fifteen minutes.
I beg to differ. The REAL hacker is the one who's been running on their own clandestine ethernet (possibly Internet) connection quietly for weeks or months, and simply turns it on for the rest of the company the moment he sees a connectivity problem. And that's ten minutes before anyone else realises what's happening.
At least that's what I'd do. (Hi, Boss!) 8^)
I have a problem with the 'no budget' part of the assertion, though. It doesn't have to be a lot, but a good hacker does need enough discretion to spend a little money from time to time on 'useless' things like that extraneous ethernet cable or a network-enabled KVM that isn't strictly necessary but sure comes in handy when a server stuffs in a way that nobody can fix, or a 3G modem with a decent data plan that allows him to back up his music collection^W^W^W^Wmonitor mission-critical backups from the road. Most importantly, the hacker-in-residence needs to have discretion enough to contract outsiders from time to time to do little needful things that he can't be arsed to do himself.
Likewise, the real value of a hacker is someone who has management's ear. It's one thing to be the friendly, half-mad hermit living in the cave that nobody visits until they need a Ben Kenobi; it's another thing entirely to be able to explain in clear terms to the CEO that while this Enterprise Solution will indeed increase synergy, maybe they should just use this $2 hack running on PostGRES on a 3 year old server until such time as the company figures out what its requirements really are.
(P.S. In case it escaped you, I am my organisation's hacker. I don't have a lot of budget, but I do have some. And I have real authority, though I don't tend to exercise it for its own sake.)
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
That said, when management decides they can just keep using the quick-and-dirty cable out the window solution instead of paying for something proper they will soon get into trouble. When I took over the network at my workplace after about 10 years of symbolic funding, there were flat layer 2 networks spanning some 120 WAN sites over 480 square kilometers using multiple radio hops and FreeBSD based tunnels for encryption. Very cheap, very clever... and very useless for getting any actual work done. When management finally woke up they had to spend a LOT of money to rebuild everything from scratch, a process that has taken tree and a half years and still isn't finished.
Every company needs a hacker, but they also need someone in charge with enough technical insight to know when to let loose that hacker and when not to.
Time flies when you don't know what you're doing