My best advice to any budding hacker would be for them to find a job as unrelated to computers as possible, but which leaves them with enough free time to tinker with whatever currently tickles their fancy.
I’m sure this works for some people in the right context, but so many great OG hackers were career computer scientists and engineers. I mean, people like the original Xerox PARC guys, Woz, Cerf, Diffie, the RSA guys, TBL, and too many more to name. They were all working in jobs or started companies that allowed them to devote the bulk of their time and energy to hacking and building. There are only so many hours in the day. If you’re devoting a third of it to something completely unrelated to your passion, it’s pretty hard to get the best out of yourself. And forget it if you want to have any other kind of “life” besides.
Most of those guys operated under circumstances vastly different from today.
If you can land a job like those at PARC or Bell Labs, then yes, "carreer hacking" is certainly possible. Considering how many IT professionals there are now and how few there were back then, I'd say those kinds of jobs are even more scarce now than they used to be.
It's not impossible, but it's not a realistic expectation.
> If you’re devoting a third of it to something completely unrelated to your passion
A programming job is likely to be as far from any kind of hacking passion as any other, with the added disadvantage of possibly poisoning the well, so to speak.
Imagine how different being a programmer was before the distractions of the internet. You might not even be in front of a screen all the time. I am sure a lot of time was spent preparing punch cards and in front of chalk boards. Overall I bet it was much better for mental health.
Yes, this is a major factor that's often overlooked. I grew up doing child-level hacking in the 80s and then got into real hacking in the 90s as the commercial internet was first starting to blossom. While the reality I inhabit now as a programmer is dominated by the Internet, my habits are more like pre-Internet programmers.
If I were to make an accurate account of all the time and energy that goes into my most successful and well-engineered software products, the majority of the productive time happens "offline" from the Internet and/or even my laptop's screen.
I spend a ton of time turning the abstract parts of the problem over in my head while doing "nothing" (or during the mundane tasks of everyday life), and even when I do get in front of a screen, I still spend a ton of time just sketching out notes in a text editor - basically arguing with myself until I've managed to jot down some good conclusions on how the design of a Thing should be done. Most of those notes get thrown away eventually, as they materialize into resultant source code. I have sometimes spent weeks or months turning an idea over in my head or in these textual debates with myself before a line of code is ever written.
But at least since the late 70s the kids then who were able to purchase a machine at home (Apple II, Commodore) did manager to stay 24 hours behind a screen. And a lot of interesting things came from that era.
I'd argue that it's not the distraction or time spent before a screen, but the complexity software engineering becomes. Back in late 70s and 80s if you owned a personal computer, you can literally map the whole memory into your brain. A commercial game could be developed in under 2-3 months. Just look at how ID Software managed to pump out tons of games in under one year. They are definitely very talented, but how come they don't do it nowadays, or even in the late 90s?
Nowadays computing is the red sea where competition is cut throat and even great talents only get to work in a niche area.
I'd say research position at Google of Microsoft. If research positions are not available then any position that gives you some freedom to poke at whatever you like.
I do agree that such positions are much rarer nowadays than the Cold War in which states were willing to invest X% for scientific progression. Nowadays? Let's cut everything that doesn't have a strong political backer.
Judging by the output of Google and Microsoft research units, they seem to be watered down variants of academia (with a lot more practical bent) and they certainly don't allow you freedom to pursue interests.
20+ years on I've had some good, some bad and some occasionally wonderful. It's not a bad profession, as professions go: things are generally very cushy and you can, from time to time, experience the same elation as when exploring on your own (though, for me, it's getting increasingly rare).
It's a big difference between sating your own curiosity in a hackeresque way, learning about what interests you, programming whatever the heck you like, and working professionally with software development.
If there's a programming job with no specs, no customer demands, no deadlines, no legacy maintenance, no market pressure, no platform preferences or language requirements, please let me know, would you? :)
Sort of tangential, but I find that when I escape one set of annoyances, another pops up. I don't mean that worse problems are replaced by better problems, but rather that I seem to create them myself. The pain point isn't really in what's required or what's happening, but how I react to things.
Unfortunately, we get paid to translate business requirements to a language a computer can understand. Is that programming? Maybe, but a limited, rigid subset, that I at least don't find particularly stimulating.
I try to balance both out having a day job and having stuff that motivates me for learning and or Side projects. Even though I take breaks on my side projects I think you can be an OK hacker but, if you are able to get a large amount of free time making around ~$50 then I would agree with you.
That's interesting. Not sure I agree -- being into computers as a kid is what got me into programming. But there's probably more than one way to do it.
Like most things, hacking is a lot like angling in the respect that it's a fun, relaxing and rewarding pastime, but most often neither of these when depended upon for survival.
Edit: readability