Am I the only one who has trouble categorizing himself a "hacker" and "entrepreneur"? For some reason, I have an easier time just saying that I am a computer programmer and I have an interest in business opportunities. I am increasingly running into blogs of twenty-something folks calling themselves "Millenial Serial Entrepreneur" because they started a web design business and have some other source of income, and for some reason it comes across as a bit over the top.

I was just sort of curious. My own answer was simply 'hacker', even though I wouldn't rate myself a very good one compared to some of the really amazing hackers I've met (I got to watch Paul Mackerras start a Linux port to a new PPC machine... he started out by fiddling with the memory by inputting hex numbers to see what came out. It was seriously impressive). I was also curious about the number of people who actually run profitable firms as opposed to those, like myself, who just want to.

I submitted a similar poll a while ago. Results here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=198272

I'd go with neither. I'd describe myself as a scientist -- certainly closer to hacker than to entrepreneur, but with rather more caution mixed in.

I added a 'none of the above'.

Hacking for awhile, went to business school and now on my second startup. So I fit into a few of those categories.

I consider myself to be a hobbyist more than anything else. Unprofessional ;).

You should add "with an unsuccessful exit" to the poll as well.

How can 130 people say they are "entrepeneurs" when they don’t come up for their salary/living expenses themselves? If you don’t do that you’re an employee or not?

I think the founders of every pre-revenue bootstrapped startup fall into those two categories simultaneously.

In my case I am living of the money from a previous exit.

I don’t know much about pre-revenue bootstrapped startups but to me seems they carry no risk since everything is paid for them. So they are company-owners but no entrepeneurs in the sense of the word because that would mean they hold all responsibilities for their doing.

Because coming up with salary/living expenses for themselves is not the definition of entrepreneur. The successful ones do it, but there are plenty of not-yet-successful entrepreneurs.

I consider entrepreneurship a part of my identity.

That I'm having to work part-time while building my own business only means that I'm not a self-sufficient entrepreneur yet.

I'm a little nervous describing myself as a "hacker", because I am not really sure I qualify for that label yet, and maybe I never will --- I'm no Stallman or LPD or JWZ or Landon Dyer or James Hague or Chuck Moore or Bill Gosper. But I seem to have more or less been accepted as at least a proto-hacker. I won't call myself an entrepreneur until my company is profitable and has expenses of more than twice my and my wife's salary.

I wish we could do opt-in non-anonymous polls as well. For example, this poll could be a tree structure and we could explode out the "Designer" node so I could see who my fellow design peeps were, let the subgroups flock together. The only equivalent right now would be to hold a different poll altogether - "who here is a designer?", "raise your hand if you're a designer?" - and those get pretty annoying quickly.

I don't know if either one fits me. I don't like hacking so much as I like making stuff work. But I don't tinker. If something works well enough, I don't try to take it apart.

Similarly, I love money very much, but I'm not obsessed with it. I'm more into making things. So I guess designer, if anything?

Student; I aim to become a hacker, but that's some way off even if I motivate myself better.

A sincere bit of advice from personal experience; the motivation is not "some way off"; it will not happen upon you. It's already there somewhere, so if you don't feel you have it, you are going to have to find it yourself.

Otherwise, you might end up burning a bunch of years of your life coasting by and then realize "why haven't I made any really cool stuff yet?!?"

As for hackers, I have a very inclusive definition: someone who likes to tinker with code or other technical stuff without the need to get some gainful result from it. People who code at work and then clock out and turn off completely, for example, do not fit the definition.

What defines a "successful exit"?

When our current business started growing rapidly/accidentally, we sold our previous business simply because we didn't have time to do both. We sold it for enough to pay off our SBA loan and take home a little extra money.

I'm a hacker, designer and sysadmin who happens to be an entrepreneur because I'm unemployable at conventional companies. Having to go to an office at the same time every day is enough to pretty much drive me to kill.

Student, hacker and wannabe entrepreneur.

Ditto.

Entrepreneur, designer, and tech proficient, a former hacker in my youth. Switched to design during web 1.0.

Wanna be entrepreneur, student

I picked the first 4 and the last 1. It's a pretty good position to be in!

Hacker. About to become an be entrepreneur, looking for a co-founder...

Well, what's the difference between entrepreneur and freelancer?

I think a freelancer isn't an entrepreneur because your business doesn't work without you billing for your time.

If you have some other people working for your web development business and you can go to the Bahamas for 3 months without your business going down the toilet, then you're an entrepreneur.

But I think most people on HN will think of an entrepreneur as someone who builds a product that has its own value, and you can sell the product to multiple people to earn money. Or generate repeated advertising revenue.

So I think entrepreneurship is creating something (a product or a service) that leverages your time so that you don't have to work some part of an hour for every dollar you earn.

Where's the engineer category? :)

Where's designer?

Student.

Ok, but that doesn't mean you can't be a 'hacker'... it's not really a profession, more an approach.

I'm just learning stuff right now, I don't possess enough knowledge to "hack". But I suppose I'm a hacker at heart, dunno, maybe I don't have enough experience to know yet.