“The Hacker Company”: Facebookers Snag A Vintage Sign For New HQ
It all started last April when former Facebook engineer Chris Putnam (of 
fame) was visiting his girlfriend’s mom in Lake City, FL and saw the striking sign — ‘The Hacker Company.”
Putnam, who had left Facebook in August 2010 to do his own thing, felt an immediate affinity for the sign, after all, he actually had been hired by Facebook after hacking the site so hard it got co-founder Dustin Moskovitz’ attention. “I’ll always feel pretty close with the culture and all my friends there, so I immediately thought ‘Man, this should be on FB’s campus,’” Putnam said. So he posted a picture of it to Facebook with the caption, “Facebook NEEDS this sign.”
Current Facebook Engineer Serkan Piantino saw this update and took Putnam’s request super duper seriously, starting negotiations with the sign’s owner, a one Mr. Tony Hacker, in order to bring the sign to Facebook’s new Menlo Park HQ at, fittingly enough, 1 Hacker Way,
While Putnam has no idea how much money Facebook paid for the sign, he does tell me that Tony Hacker was considering getting a new sign anyways. And it shouldn’t be too hard to make a new one, as “The Hacker Company” is actually a sign manufacturer.
“This was like a seven month project,” writes Facebook Facilities Manager Scott Oligher, ”Negotiating with Mr Hack for his beloved sign, shipping this huge thing, permitting it and finally getting it installed. We have had the install scheduled 6 different times. Glad it is finally in, it will be lit up on Monday.”
While it might have the sweetest backstory, the sign isn’t the first piece of HQ hacking to come out of Facebook. Two weeks ago during a “Space Hackathon,” six engineers initiated a project that ended up in a giant QR code painted on the company’s roof. Yeah.
(Source: techcrunch.com)
