It's possible this sentence hinges on "hacks" vs "hacking". I'd be surprised if PG had a problem with hacking for growth. In fact I think he would embrace such a thing mightily.
It's not really "hacking" - it's just marketing. Occasionally you may beat use a trick to beat a system, but mostly it's a bullshit buzzword that marketers came up with.
Unfortunately, it works really, really well.
I wrote a (free) book[1] on user acquisition, following the pattern of a lot of the programming tutorials that helped me learn to program. I originally called it "The Hacker's Guide to User Acquisition." The title got tons of traffic and interest - up to 100 tweets a day, many from people I'm convinced never read it. When I changed it to "User Acquisition for Developers," the traffic dropped significantly, so I changed it back. But I don't think I can live with myself, so when I have time I'm going to take the word "hack" back out of it.
Bullshit buzzwords sell. And for every critic in the comments section, this post has a bunch of upvotes. That's almost a marketing truism - a few people will be annoyed, but it's really easy to drive the masses.
I've been resisting the urge to use "growth hacker" as a title, so I still go by "user acquisition consultant." Every now and then I get asked if I can help a company with "growth hacking," and more often than not it's an early warning signal that the company thinks they can sneak their way to success without putting in real work.
This article is fair though. It takes the buzz out of the phrase and essentially states that there is no hack, only a deliberate focus on process and a continuous cycle of experimentation and review.
