Great Hacker != Great Hire ?

In response to Paul Graham's essay and talk at OSCON titled Great Hackers (a good read, I highly recommend it) Eric Sink responded in his blog that Great Hacker != Great Hire. He disputes Paul's claims that a company should try to lure so called great hackers to work for them. I both agree and disagree with Eric and Paul on this.

One thing you need to decide when hiring an employee (not that I have a lot of experience in this reguard as being an employee myself) is if you want a drone or a free thinker. Many companies want a drone (think the Borg). They show up at work on time and they do exactly what they are told. In fact, if management suggested that they create a web service in COBOL then they would happily do it (or at least work at it until you tell them to stop). They don't question anything.

At the opposite end of the spectrum is the free thinker. The free thinker challenges everything. Management says that the web site should be redesigned to use ASP.NET and MS SQL Server. The free thinker says that PHP and MySQL would be the way to go. Management suggests that the company picnic is catered by company XYZ and the free thinker says it should be a pot luck.

Many companies favor drones over free thinkers. Their thinking goes that they can mold a drone into the ideal employee. The problem is that management cannot know everything about all aspects of technology. That is where the free thinkers come in - they can provide feedback to management when they are unaware of certain implications of decisions they are making.

Great Hackers tend to be Free Thinkers. Personally I think there is a sweet spot somewhere between Free Thinker and Drone. It is important that the "line workers" share their opinion and expertise with management, but it is also important that when management finally makes a decision that the line workers go along with it.

So a great hacker can be a great hire, if they can swallow their pride and follow orders when necessary.