The Hacker Way

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No, that is not an address in the Bay Area. On second thoughts, it could be (too lazy to look up)

Amidst all the furore this week revolving around the Op-ed in New York Times questioning a company's moral standards, I sat wondering about what got us all here. What is that one thing we are forgetting about? What is important and means the most to you, me and everyone around us? And then while standing under the shower (yeah, I had a moment) it came out loud to me - Hacking.

Hacking is important.

Hacking is a way of life. It needn't just be computer code. It can be anything you build, you own, put it out there and relentlessly improve it over time. That solves someone's problem and makes lives easier. The best music you can make, the best books you can write, the best dances you can choreograph, the best lifestyle you can have, the best dishes you can cook....anything and everything you are passionate about can be "hacked". Notice how the word "hacking" is used in the positive sense :-) In a hacker's world, perfect is frowned upon and executing and shipping is welcomed. 

Last week, I was reading the Facebook S-1 from their IPO filing (yes, it took me this long) and loved how they summed up "hacking" in a page. Their mantra is "Done is better than perfect" -- I couldn't agree more.

And so like always got to share it here :-) This is an excerpt from their S-1 filing that describes the hacker culture:

"As part of building a strong company, we work hard at making Facebook the best place for great people to have a big impact on the world and learn from other great people. We have cultivated a unique culture and management approach that we call the Hacker Way.

The word "hacker" has an unfairly negative connotation from being portrayed in the media as people who break into computers. In reality, hacking just means building quickly or testing the boundaries of what can be done. Like most things, it can be used for good or bad, but the vast majority of hackers I've met tend to be idealistic people who want to have a positive impact on the world.

The Hacker Way is an approach to building that involves 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 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. To support this, we built a testing framework that at any given time can try thousands of versions of Facebook. We have the words "Done is better than perfect" painted on our walls to remind ourselves to always keep shipping.

Hacking is also inherently hands-on 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"

Hacker culture is also extremely open and meritocratic. Hackers believe that the best idea and implementation should always win - not the the person who is best at lobbying for an idea or the person who manages the most people."

PS: Their current YoY growth is at 88% while they are targeting a valuation of $100B, which sounds way too ambitious compared to their growth. But then they are hackers and anything is possible in a hacker's world :-)