Definitely - this is actually on purpose for the first phase, where we would rather focus on a small number of clients and hackers for whom it goes well, rather than trying to attract everyone who has something to outsource.

But, agreed, if we want to go beyond the types of clients who aren't scared of the word "hacker", we'll probably have to create a separate site for them.

I have a feeling that 'types of clients who aren't scared of the word "hacker"' will be most of your clients.

I'd say that depends on whether you want to become another oDesk. Their clients are certainly afraid of hackers.

If pg were looking to contract out work, he'd say something like http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html

I do agree that at some point entrepreneurial "hackers" and established software companies look at things differently, and should engage each other productively in finding the right balance.

tl;dr Hackers could do better at being socially adept.

It really depends how far you can go with redefining a word.

This will be especially difficult because I imagine if you asked 10 HN readers what their personal definition of a "hacker" was you would probably get 10 different definitions.

If you are trying to imply a "hacker" as somebody who is in someway superior to the average software dev then what criteria would you put in place?

What is to stop any kid who read a bunch of PHP tutorials and can put together a simple blog app from calling him/herself a hacker?

I don't know for sure, but I would suspect that Facebook's description of "The Hacker Way" when they filed their IPO helped a bit to give it a positive connotation.