While revenue growth is likely to slow at Facebook, the company has made it clear in its S1 that it intends to maintain its developer culture. It’s a culture that CEO Mark Zukerberg refers to as, “The Hacker Way.”
“The word ‘hacker’ has an unfairly negative connotation from being portrayed in the media as people who break into computers,” Zuckerberg wrote. “In reality, hacking just means building something 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.”
Zuckerberg’s view on the word ‘hacker’ is one that security researchers have also been pushing for several years. In 2011, a top security researcher at the U.S Government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) also stressed that the word ‘hacker’ isn’t a bad thing. Hackers are a pathway to innovation in a manner different than the typical structured and hierarchical approach to software development.
“The Hacker Way is an approach to building that involves continuous improvement and iteration,” Zuckerberg wrote. “Hackers believe that something can always be better, and that nothing is ever complete.”
Zuckerberg explained that to foster The Hacker Way at Facebook, there is a testing framework that supports thousands of different versions of Facebook to continually try out new things. Though testing is critical, even more important is actually completing new features and then continuously iterating them to make them better.
“We have the words ‘Done is better than perfect’ painted on our walls to remind ourselves to always keep shipping,” Zuckerberg wrote.
Read the full story at Datamation:
Facebook IPO Highlights Hacker Culture
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of the IT Business Edge Network, the network for technology professionals. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist
