Sony has been clicking around these internets quite a bit lately it appears, having a look for underground or otherwise simply undeniably talented developers to hire for their R&D team. One of the people they found most recently was Android OS hacker Koushik Dutta (aka Koush.) – if you do not know, Koush is an acclaimed fellow, having been posted about thousands of times across the web, most recently here on Android Community for his efforts in rooting the Motorola XOOM. Upon trying to recruit KD to their team, Sony received a rather pointed reply.

What the above letter says, (and you can view this again in the gallery below,) is the following:

From a recruiter at Sony:

Hello Koushik,

I’d like to introduce myself, my name is Sarah McRae and I work onsite for Sony PlayStation in the Talent Acquisition department. We came across your blog and thought we’d reach out to you to see if you’d ever be interested in exploring opportunities with us here at SCEA. I am in the process of opening a Software Engineer role within our R&D team and you may be a good fit. Please let me know if you’d be interested in talking on the phone to further discuss…

Koush, in reply:

Hi Sarah, I appreciate that you reached out to me. The opportunity does sound very interesting!
However, due [to] Sony’s recent treatment of a fellow hacker, George Hotz (@geohot), I could not in good conscience word at Sony.

Regards,
Koush

Oh man, Sony you just got told. We’re living in a rather futuristic community now where a move like harming Geohot will ripple through the ranks of all developers and hackers (those two titles which are often synonymous), causing untold damage. This is a great example of the future in which online communities will be stronger than neighborhood communities or one day countries made by physical boundaries.

All of this said, there has been an important note made by Koush over on a Reddit thread with just the email image you see above and below:

To clear up any confusion, I was not offered a job, just an interview, which I declined out of principle. For those saying “I’m going to regret being principled”, etc. Probably not. Android App sales have been more than good to me. Good, enterprising, devs should never find themselves short of opportunities.

GG Koush, gg.

[via Gadgets DNA]

20 COMMENTS

  1. Sony is playing the game of “You work for me, then anything you do and will do in the future we will OWN”… simply shutting down a “root-er” ability to work on sony products in the future without facing the courts…

    Thanks but not thanks is the way to go 😉

    Cheers Koush…

    • They censored the email address. The name was already mentioned in the article and within the text of the email, and is not important. The email address is hidden so that people to not spam or message them.

      • The email address is the same as the name (with the underscore lol)… but then with “@playstation.blabla.com” appended to it. 😉

    • They censored the email address. The name was already mentioned in the article and within the text of the email, and is not important. The email address is hidden so that people to not spam or message them.

  2. Oh for fucks sake these “hackers” real;ly find themselves important. Thanks for hacking my phone so I can run linux on it, instead of using it what it should be used for telephone calls! This technology bullshit is so useless, just like the world it seems.

  3. Oh for fucks sake these “hackers” real;ly find themselves important. Thanks for hacking my phone so I can run linux on it, instead of using it what it should be used for telephone calls! This technology bullshit is so useless, just like the world it seems.

  4. Ha, I guess their decision to ban geohotz was a horrible one. I actually meet geohotz online once. so to know that people respect as much as I do, makes me feel that we’re doing what’s right.

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