[johnl87]

The author treats a "hacker" as some kind of sub-human species and write an article on owning a "hacker" that reads as if it was a book on owning a dog or something. Hacker != Lack of social skills. "Insults skills of other workers, doesn't know how to dress, plays games on company time, talks to friends on the phone." I don't know what kind of people this guy hires, but I definitely would not hire someone like that. Let's not box everyone who like to write code into a stereotype. I seriously doubt this is based on reality.

[swedegeek]

Well, on the flip side, he also writes about managers as if they are all stamped out from the same cookie cutter mold. As a former hacker/engineer now manager, I generally thought this way off on both sides of the fence. And I laugh at the notion that I "closely resemble about 40% of the population." I can maybe relate to that much of the population, but resemble them... nope.

As far as the author's understanding of "hackers" and all their social shortcomings, those are clearly extreme to the point of being generally false. Initially I was rather shocked this could still be someone's understanding of hierarchy in software organizations. Then, I read his "bibliography" at the end. His main source for comparing managers and hackers has a copyright of 1984. WTF!?! Sure there are a small handful of technology related books that withstood such a test of time (e.g. The Mythical Man-Month), but obviously "Please Understand Me" is not one that should still be quoted for relevance... at least not the way he's using it.

The other thing to note is the author's bio. He is beyond doubt an extremely intelligent person with a litany of academic credentials, but scant mention of "real world" experience to back-up the claims being made in the book/article. I'd even go so far to say he did put a lot of effort and thought behind the writing. It's just a bit off the mark from my experiences... which should be similar to about 40% of the population. :)