Re: Request for input from someone who has hired or managed an ex-hacker

From: Walter Roberson (roberson_at_ibd.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca)
Date: 01/26/05 

Date: 26 Jan 2005 16:49:14 GMT

In article <NZOJd.1089$rM.630@tornado.tampabay.rr.com>,
TC <no-spam@yahoo.com> wrote:
|Walter Roberson wrote:

|> The greatest difficulty I have noted with hackers is getting them
|> to -stop- working and take a break. The second greatest difficulty
|> would perhaps be to get them to focus on just one thing instead of
|> exploring tangents or working on many things at once.

|Do they still accomplish tasks on time?

Difficult to say. Our particular environment does not have many
deadlines, and those that are present are often given with
short notice; and the hackers are usually doing more than their
share of work (which they are expected to continue to do while
working on the "emergency".) If they weren't hackers they
probably wouldn't have as high of a work-load to juggle... and
the completed work would probably not be nearly as thorough.

Q: What kind of X should we buy?

Non-hacker: I saw a big ad for Y the other day.

Hacker: I examined the records for the last year and determined that
our average and peak consumptions were N and M, and that our rate of
increase is Z. I did a google search and examined newsgroups to find
out who the key vendors in the market are, and I went through
their product lines and matched features between vendors and products, and
then I researched the meaning of those features and the circumstances
under which they would be applicable. I identified the key features
that we are likely to need over the next 3 years taking into account
our growth, and then I searched through again to find the offbrands
that offer the same capacities. I found user reviews, single-device
reviews, and competitive reviews, and narrowed the field down to
a reasonable number. I did an analysis of the various options available
with each of the models and created a configuration for each that
would be most appropriate for us, and then I obtained 4 quotes on
each of them. Here's the list, ranked by price/performance.

Q: Did you do your timesheets yet? 

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