From Michael Lopp’s Managing Humans - ch 30 “Hacking is Important”:
Back in the early 1990s, Borland International was the place to be an engineer. Coming off the purchase of Ashton-Tate, Borland was the third-largest software company, but, more importantly, it was a legitimate competitor of Microsoft. Philippe Kahn, the CEO at the time, was fond of motorcycles, saxophones, and brash statements at all-hands meetings: “We’re barbarians, not bureaucrats!”
From Mark Zuckerberg’s Letter From The Facebook Filing by David Benoit published in The Wall Street Journal on Feb. 1, 2012
Our favorite snippet:
The Hacker Way
… hacking just means building something quickly [done by] idealistic people who want to have a positive impact on the world [via] continuous improvement and iteration. Hackers believe that something can always be better, and that nothing is ever complete. They just have to go fix it — often in the face of people who say it’s impossible or are content with the status quo. Hackers try to build the best services over the long term by quickly releasing and learning from smaller iterations rather than trying to get everything right all at once. [This is a] hands-on and active discipline. Instead of debating for days whether a new idea is possible or what the best way to build something is, hackers would rather just prototype something and see what works. There’s a hacker mantra that you’ll hear a lot around Facebook offices: “Code wins arguments.” … the best idea and implementation should always win — not the person who is best at lobbying for an idea or the person who manages the most people.
To encourage this approach, every few months we have a hackathon, where everyone builds prototypes for new ideas they have.
[Principles:]
- Focus on Impact
- Move Fast
- Be Bold
- Be Open
- Build Social Value