steren / hackerpledge

To Be Launched - Don't post this to HN yet please!!

The Hacker Pledge v0.1

This document is a list of pledges that a company is willing to make to its engineers so they can thrive and continue developing their skills, to their common benefit.

This is a living, versioned document based on broad consensus from a community of hackers.

The pledges

1. Curiosity and initiative should be encouraged and rewarded.
2. Hackers should be free to choose their tools, both hardware and software.
3. Hackers should be allowed to attend a few conferences a year on their work time.
4. Giving back to the community should be encouraged, through open sourcing of projects or support of community organizations.
5. Hackers (and everyone else!) should be treated without discrimination regarding gender, ethnic minority or beliefs.

F.A.Q

Does this pledge have legal status?

No. Still, it represents a strong, public commitment towards a hacker-friendly culture in the workplace.

As a company, how do I support the pledge?

We will announce an "official" protocol to publicly support the pledge, with a directory of companies having done so. It will probably consist of a tweet sent from the official company account and possibly a badge.

In the meantime, please contact us at [email protected] to be among the launch companies.

As a hacker, how do I support the pledge?

About the same. We should work on a good wording for a tweet to show support, something like "I would strongly prefer working in a company supporting the Hacker Pledge".

Why did you create this pledge?

As conference organizers (http://dotconferences.eu), we often see cases where companies are not educated towards the benefits of rewarding curiosity, initiative and openness of their engineers. We think it is mutually beneficial to have a hacker-friendly workplace and we hope to set a baseline for what this actually means.

How to contribute

This is a community-driven project, and we welcome all contributions directly on GitHub as Pull Requests. Please explain the rationale behind your ideas a bit more than you would for a regular PR though ;)

(Contributions on wording & style are also welcome.)

We will get a panel of highly respected hackers to act as moral authority in case of unresolved debates.