
Ask HN: Does your company allow Hackathons? - zoba
Our company does not and I&#x27;m trying to get a sense of how common&#x2F;uncommon this is.<p>Reasons given by leadership:<p>1) It is a lot of time (and therefore money) to not put towards roadmap items &#x2F; things that &quot;will never get used&quot;<p>2) It creates dissonance between Eng and other teams (eg why don&#x27;t the other teams get a day to do events like this?  And of course, to suggest involving the other teams would invoke #1)<p>3) Though they have heard arguments that Hackathons might be good for culture building, they &quot;honestly don’t see the connection between a hackathon and culture building&quot;<p>I have never heard of a company outright saying &quot;Absolutely not, we will not have a Hackathon&quot;, so I&#x27;d be curious to hear if any of you have.
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urbantumbleweed
I guess the reasons could depend on many factors. However, my past experience
with employers is that they wanted to participate in hackathons and community
meetups in order to 1) stay up-to-date with what is new, 2) cultivate a
relationship with people that are passionate about building, 3) give back to
the community from which they derive benefit, 4) make space for ingenuity and
creative thinking, and 5) Recruit/collaborate with the best candidates and
companies.

While it is true that many of the projects that result from a hackathon are
not going into production, in my opinion the learning of new tech, the
exercise in fast-paced collaboration, and the fun factor of building obsurd
things and sparking creativity do have a value that a company shouldn't shut
the door on.

