Where have all the hackers gone?
Have other people observed the sentiment the author observes, around hackers being less common?<p>The author has a list of reasons (VC money, business culture, managers, fear of the unknown).<p>I, personally, have observed this reduction over my career, and I have my own idea of why that might be, my own phrasing of it. Perhaps it gets at the same thing as the author from a different angle.<p>I think the reason, plain and simple, is that most developers aren&#x27;t really in it for the passion anymore, but rather the money.<p>When I first started coding, I didn&#x27;t get paid. I didn&#x27;t think I ever would. I was just having fun building stuff for myself. I, and the other people like that, moved into the workforce and brought that level of curiosity. Of hacker spirit.<p>However, as the idea of &quot;programming makes money&quot; became more well known, and bootcamps + college both upped their game, more and more people started coding just with the hopes to make money. To get good enough to make money, not care about &quot;huh, how does the bootloader actually work&quot; or &quot;Why did chrome just crash, let me open up gdb...&quot;.<p>At the same time, I think other people who came into tech when it was a less obvious career path (and thus was something you usually discovered based on having some initial interest outside of &quot;I want a paycheck&quot;) are getting older. They&#x27;re getting older, having kids, and now also have a reason to treat their job as a 9-5. &quot;Chrome crashed, I could open gdb and figure it out... but I&#x27;d rather watch my kid&#x27;s soccer game&quot;.<p>I think new hackers still form, but they&#x27;re diluted by programming becoming a career path desired for money, not just for a love of programming itself. I think existing hackers, over time, also often become less hacker due to life slowly grinding them down.