Weaknesses of the Hacker Personality

Weaknesses of the Hacker Personality
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Hackers have relatively little ability to identify emotionally with
other people.  This may be because hackers generally aren't much like
`other people'.  Unsurprisingly, hackers also tend towards
self-absorption, intellectual arrogance, and impatience with people
and tasks perceived to be wasting their time.

As cynical as hackers sometimes wax about the amount of idiocy in the
world, they tend by reflex to assume that everyone is as rational,
`cool', and imaginative as they consider themselves.  This bias often
contributes to weakness in communication skills.  Hackers tend to be
especially poor at confrontation and negotiation.

Because of their passionate embrace of (what they consider to be) the
{Right Thing}, hackers can be unfortunately intolerant and bigoted on
technical issues, in marked contrast to their general spirit of
camaraderie and tolerance of alternative viewpoints otherwise.
Old-time {{ITS}} partisans look down on the ever-growing hordes of
{{UNIX}} hackers; UNIX aficionados despise {VMS} and {{MS-DOS}}; and
hackers who are used to conventional command-line user interfaces
loudly loathe mouse-and-menu based systems such as the Macintosh.
Hackers who don't indulge in {Usenet} consider it a huge waste of time
and {bandwidth}; fans of old adventure games such as {ADVENT} and
{Zork} consider {MUD}s to be glorified chat systems devoid of
atmosphere or interesting puzzles; hackers who are willing to devote
endless hours to Usenet or MUDs consider {IRC} to be a *real* waste of
time; IRCies think MUDs might be okay if there weren't all those silly
puzzles in the way.  And, of course, there are the perennial {holy
wars} -- {EMACS} vs. {vi}, {big-endian} vs.  {little-endian}, RISC
vs. CISC, etc., etc., etc.  As in society at large, the intensity and
duration of these debates is usually inversely proportional to the
number of objective, factual arguments available to buttress any
position.

As a result of all the above traits, many hackers have difficulty
maintaining stable relationships.  At worst, they can produce the
classic {computer geek}: withdrawn, relationally incompetent, sexually
frustrated, and desperately unhappy when not submerged in his or her
craft.  Fortunately, this extreme is far less common than mainstream
folklore paints it -- but almost all hackers will recognize something
of themselves in the unflattering paragraphs above.

Hackers are often monumentally disorganized and sloppy about dealing
with the physical world.  Bills don't get paid on time, clutter piles
up to incredible heights in homes and offices, and minor maintenance
tasks get deferred indefinitely.

1994-95's fad behavioral disease was a syndrome called Attention
Deficit Disorder, supposedly characterized by (among other things) a
combination of short attention span with an ability to `hyperfocus'
imaginatively on interesting tasks.  There are grounds for questioning
whether ADD actually exists, and if it does whether it is really a
`disease' rather than an extreme of a normal genetic variation like
having freckles or being able to taste DPT; but it is certainly true
that many hacker traits coincide with major indicators for ADD, and
probably true that ADD boosters would find a far higher rate of
clinical ADD among hackers than the supposedly mainstream-normal 10%.

The sort of person who routinely uses phrases like `incompletely
socialized' usually thinks hackers are.  Hackers regard such people
with contempt when they notice them at all.