Why Are There No Middle-Aged Hackers?

Creativity.  Flexibility.  Drive.  These are characteristics that people admire and strive to exhibit globally, and they are especially valuable in the workplace.  As a matter of fact, they are valuable everywhere.  In sports.  In life in general.  Surprisingly, as pointed out here (https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/10/oxford-professor-paulo-savaget-successful-people-use-hacker-mentality.html) by Oxford University Professor Paulo Savage, these are also the primary characteristics of a Hacker, and they form the foundation of “The Hacker Mentality”.   

I recently wrote about “The Service Mentality”.  That is an approach focused on the primary drive to solve problems for your clients.  The Hacker Mentality is related, with some differences.  The Hacker Mentality is more about a compulsive need to make progress no matter the barriers placed in front of you.  A Hacker doesn’t have to be a criminal, and a Hacker is almost never a perfectionist, but a Hacker will do what needs to be done to accomplish a goal.  In fact, I would argue after reading some of the various articles around The Hacker Mentality, that perfection is the enemy of progress.  A Hacker Mentality is more akin to the idea that there is “good enough” to continue momentum, and you do enough to find a better way.  Hackers like to break things because if you find the weaknesses, you improve the overall strength.  The Hacker Mentality is also about never settling for the answer “no” or “we can’t do that”.  It’s about always believing there’s a way, and having a maniacal approach to finding it.

I love this view of The Hacker Mentality because I feel it closely aligns to “thinking differently”.  This approach is entrepreneurial in nature.  Entrepreneurs love to solve problems, and distinct from The Service Mentality, they’re usually solving problems they pose themselves, rather than for a 3rd party.  Both approaches are keen to find ways to overcome hurdles and bypass blockers.

When you are faced with a problem, what do you do?  Do you run through your mental reserves to find how you may have tackled similar problems in the past?  That’s a logical approach - we all start there.  That’s not a Hacker Mentality approach.  Your historical approaches only cover so much ground, and even more importantly, your age and level of experience will only provide you with so many solutions to choose from.   They constrain you.  You have to go outside the comfort zone of your historical experience to find solutions, and there’s a direct correlation between comfort, age and experience.  I hate to say it, as someone approaching fifty years of age, but The Hacker Mentality is more easily accessed when you’re young and you have less experience to draw upon.  As you get older, the approach you take becomes more rooted in experience and you begin looking for ways you’ve tackled similar situations in the past.  The Hacker mentality thrives through discomfort, a lack of experience, and that unsettled feeling that fades with age and wisdom.  Traditional approaches work well in matters of leadership and management where experience is invaluable because you’re dealing with emotions, but they can be less effective when it comes to challenges in technology and development.  Emotions are predictable and we have thousands of years worth of experience to rely on.  Technology is far younger, and ever-changing.  Technology adapts quickly, and humans with more experience are hamstrung by what they think they know.  The most important developments of the last fifty years (i.e. my lifetime) have been made by people with far less experience than one might think.  I also note the lack of a Hacker Mentality in people who spend a very long time in a single company, or in a single role.  Your synapses become too deeply rooted in organizational structure to solve problems in a new way.  As these organizational synapses get stronger, The Hacker Mentality becomes more difficult to tap into, and you enter the zone that can make it more difficult to think differently and find new ways of solving problems.  That’s a comfort zone.  In these instances, experience is a governor that slows the speed of development.  You need fresh perspectives, raw talent and new eyes to see a different way of approaching something.

But does that mean you lose the ability to have a Hacker Mentality with age?  No.

The Hacker Mentality doesn’t dwindle with age, but it does get pushed to the back of your mind in favor of feelings of comfort.  It is human nature, but not something to be defeated by.  You can foster your own Hacker Mentality as your career progresses by doing two things.  First, never get comfortable.  Second, when things are going well, that’s the perfect time to break it down, disrupt the status quo, and try something new.

Never getting comfortable is actually far easier than you think.  It means moving around and fostering a taste for learning.  You can switch jobs every few years if you want, but you don’t have to.  It means you have to find new things to learn about in whatever role you are playing.  You need to search for new people to talk to, and find any way of making yourself feel a little bit, well, “off”.  If you’ve been doing the same thing for years, and solving problems the same way for years, you’re not engaging the Hacker Mentality.  Your synapses are getting stale and you need to share things up to find a new approach.  You need to have new problems to solve and you need to disrupt your own historical viewpoint.  You have to strive to move forward and you have to, you have to, avoid perfection.  Perfection is never achieved, and you are lying to yourself if you think you can get there.  Keep.  Moving.  Forward.  Forward is better than standing still, and Hackers know that.  Sharks die if they stop swimming.  Be a shark.

Deconstruction can be fun.  

I have always believed that when things are going well, that is the best time to deconstruct them and try something new.  You don’t have to throw out the old ways completely.  You just need to allocate some portion of your time to testing and doing something differently.  What works now is never going to stay effective in the future.  The context changes.  The world changes around you.  As the world shifts, you need to anticipate and shift in advance.  Deconstruct what works, question it, and try something new.  This is the epitome of the Hacker Mentality.

You can be a Hacker at any stage of life.  You don’t need to be a youngster to hack away.  Maybe there are indeed older Hackers.  Maybe I can be one of them, and you can be one too.  After all, I would rather be a Hacker than a Hack.  Wouldn’t you?

photo accompanying this post is courtesy of UnSplash