
Hackathon Be Gone - nharada
http://brianchang.info/2016/02/28/hackathon-be-gone.html
======
caseysoftware
In Austin, we started running an event called "Finish Up Weekend" or FU
Weekend - [http://fuweekend.com/](http://fuweekend.com/) ;)

We have some simple rules:

* you can't start anything new;

* you have to celebrate something being _done_ \- usually with a round of applause;

* there are no prizes - only the satisfaction of being done.

While there is plenty of coding, we've had designers finish their portfolios,
screenwriters finish pilots, an artist finish his display, and even saw a
sewing project completed.

And to top it off, we charge a nominal $20 for the weekend - with 4 meals, a
great deal - and sell out every time.

We're putting together a howto doc to franchise the idea.. just need to finish
it. ;)

~~~
gboudrias
That sounds amazing! I went to Austin once for a tech conference and the vibe
was really amazing.

I could really use something like this, though I feel like 20$ of your food is
a lot better than 20$ of our food (I'm in Montreal).

~~~
graeme
Another vote for Montreal. This event sounds like a great idea.

(Already spoke with the organizers about this in another thread. I think they
need someone who's organized an event of similar scale. That's not me, but I'm
very willing to help out anyone who can take a lead role)

------
octref
The worst thing I feel about hackathon is that it instills a bad culture of
software development into young programmers. People spend a weekend writing
crappy code and wiring APIs together, expecting to get money and fame. In the
real world, we don't need more crude and fragile apps which leverage most of
its work to frameworks. We need more solid, performant, well-designed apps.
Sadly, none of these points are priorities at hackathons. We also need more
programmers with empathy, perseverance, dedication, and ability to work on
large projects without burning themselves out physically and mentally.
Hackathon doesn't seem to cultivate these traits either. I hope instead of
going to hackathons, more people can try building semester-long, meaningful
projects and take time to maintain them, or try contributing to open source
software.

~~~
sotojuan
Hackathons cultivate the _opposite_ of "empathy, perseverance, dedication, and
ability to work on large projects".

They make people hypercompetitive and unwilling to collaborate or help just so
they can get their `sponsor_api` mixed with `sponsor_api` app done. I'm making
a big generalization but IMO sponsored hackathons cultivate some of the worst
aspects of our culture.

~~~
reitanqild
So, basically you violently agree? ;-)

------
mdxn
The hackathon that they mention in the post (Mhacks) put up an application
process and enforced a 50/50 gender ratio. In the weeks leading up to the
event, I overheard many defeated conversations from fellow CS students over
anxiety of getting rejected from this hackathon because they were male. The
females didn't share the same anxiety, but it definitely made them feel down
that they wouldn't be able to participate with their male friends who were
rejected/waitlisted. Overall, the fact that things ended up this way made
everyone feel very awkward, guilty, and discouraged. Hopefully its success
makes up for the hidden fractures that will be felt by our student body for
quite a while after.

Mhacks lists the 50/50 gender divide on their site followed by the reasoning:
"because it’s about time for a little change in the tech world"

Disclosure: I am a CS-Eng student at this university. I did not plan to attend
or care about this hackathon.

~~~
turkishrevenge
Just exploit the identity-political zeitgeist that's overtaken universities
lately: claim yourself genderqueer, non-binary presenting as male. With the
right incantation, the organizers will fold like a house of cards, lest they
suffer the blowback to excluding a "righteous" participant.

~~~
dogecoinbase
It actually turns out that cargo culting the language of social justice works
about as well as the sovereign citizen idiots that cargo cult legal jargon --
both of these phenomena exist in a broad, clear social context and it's
laughably obvious when someone who doesn't know what they're talking about,
like you, attempts an "incantation" with the idea that it's magic words
because they don't or can't understand what's actually happening.

~~~
Chris2048
> it's laughably obvious when someone who doesn't know what they're talking
> about, like you

You can tell from a single comment?

------
nkozyra
Anti-hackathon has been in full swing for a few years now, but I think it
makes sense to recognize that for some people it has social - and some times
professional - benefit.

It's neither inherently good nor bad, it's a chance to create with some new
individuals over a short time period. Yes, it gets co-opted by corporate
marketing, yes you eat pizza for a day or so. But these are minor issues if
you find other benefit like learning of new processes, tools, technologies,
etc.

More than anything, it just seems inherently "uncool" at this point, a
proverbial pet rock for developers. Which is a shame, there is value there if
you're willing to separate the concept from the aesthetic that surrounds the
events themselves.

------
im_down_w_otp
I really dislike the corporate hackathon format.

It can be great fun as an informal community gathering of developers to work
on random pet projects, but the reality of the corporate hackathon trends
toward being company sponsored and promoted technical debt creation.

It often seems like the corporate hackathon is the clearest distillation of
the "business" people not understanding how to create a mature, healthy
culture and continuous process around engineering autonomy, ownership, and
innovation. Instead relying on campy caricatures of basement dwelling Mtn. Dew
& pizza fueled "hackers".

~~~
YZF
I'm with you. Where I work Hackathons happen because someone in management has
heard it's a cool thing to do. Practically nothing that happens in those ever
is shipped and nothing is learnt from the experience. It's just a way of
wasting people's time and appearing to be cool.

When I was younger I used to work through the night with friends on stuff we
wanted to do. It was fun and social. There was no commercial motivation or
value. We just had a lot of time on our hands being geeks with no social life
and we enjoyed building things. In a corporate setting this is maybe similar
to Google's 20% time which as far as I hear isn't really working any more
either. The closest thing to this in my day job world is people taking some
time to just do whatever they want to do without giving a damn what management
thinks. If you can do a little of that in your workplace then you're basically
getting the "true" hackathon effect ...

------
BinaryIdiot
I think for Hackathons to be a positive experience it depends one two things.

First it has to have an end goal where, even if you don't come in first place,
you still leave with something that will be useful. From an incredible
learning experience to something that could make you money.

Second it shouldn't cost you anything directly except for time. Working extra
hours for your own company? That's costing you more than time because it's
becoming a requirement ("Look at Johnny over there, he's gone to all our
hackathons and now look at him in a more senior position. Do you not want to
move ahead?").

For instance I just finished participating in Launch's Hackathon this weekend.
Other than the costs I paid for my travel I paid nothing but time (they
provided all food, drinks and not all of it was unhealthy) and in the end,
even though I didn't win a prize, I left with the start of a really cool
product (if I do say so myself) where, realistically, I think I'm about a week
from delivering a decent, beta experience. I even created a Twitter account
just so I could post my fun experience as I went: @heysimex

TL;DR: hackathons that cost money, that don't provide you with SOMETHING
useful even if you don't win or that are run by your own company are rarely
good experiences (unless you win). Hackathons that cost you nothing but time
and you have something at the end of the thing? Awesome. I love it!

------
fgandiya
Personally, the main reason I go to these hackathons is just to expose myself
to a bigger network and places with stronger CS communities than the one at my
really small liberal arts college just to see what I'm missing out on (which
is a lot).It seems like a necessary evil and it has worked in a way since I've
finally been able to get an internship interview from it.

Otherwise, I agree with his points. Not sleeping for 24+ hours really takes
its toll, especially if you need to drive back to where you came from. Food is
mostly junk, but this one other hackathon I went to had really well-made food,
so there's that. They have been unrewarded since I always lose steam before I
get to make an MVP and they do seem to be very commercialized and they're
really trying to get groundbreaking stuff from us within a weekend, like the
last hackathon had very specific prizes relating to using certain company's
API as well has performing "health innovations".

I also like Brian's suggestions to provide more specific hackathons so that I
know exactly what to expect from them. These events take up a huge portion of
my weekends theI should be using on school, so it seems like a good idea to
pick those which seem most useful at the time.

------
kamens
At Khan Academy we've been running ours as "Healthy Hackathons" — we kick
people out at 11:45pm to get sleep, bring in healthy food, snacks, and
activities, and always include our work week as part of the schedule (not just
weekends).

We actually just held our Monday-Friday Healthy Hack Week last week
([http://healthyhackathon.khanacademy.org](http://healthyhackathon.khanacademy.org)).
One of my favorite weeks ever, particularly because we encourage "hacks" of
all kinds that don't have to include coding, and the entire company dives in.

They've been internal only so far. Maybe some day we'll open it up.

After a week of hackathon'ing intensely I'll walk in tomorrow more energized
than ever (and eager to figure out how to use some of the team's work in
upcoming projects). The commitment to staying healthy while hacking feels like
it's paying off for us.

Plus it demonstrates our commitment to long-term investment in teammates.

~~~
jbarham
Actually what your so-called "Healthy Hackatons" demonstrates to me is that
not a lot of Khan Academy employees are married with kids. I know my wife
would be annoyed if I was goofing off at the office until midnight for a week
leaving her to feed our kids and put them to bed by herself. But, hey, it's
all for the greater good of "disrupting" education!

It's ironic that obviously very few Khan Academy employees have children of
their own, but that's probably because it's only a few years since they were
children themselves...

~~~
kamens
Not really worth arguing online with somebody who'd make a statement about the
demographics of a company they know nothing about -- but for sake of
clarifying your demonstrably false claim: we have lots of parents and family
folk at KA, at all levels including senior leadership.

We do not require that anybody stays at our hackathon until 11:45, but we do
require that people get sleep. These decisions -- and the decision to not only
host over a weekend -- come from our family-aware mindset.

~~~
UweSchmidt
Can't make statements about things we don't know about, so we gotta go by what
we read. It feels like this debate may set expectations and shapes culture
about things like hackathons everywhere, so maybe this touches a sensitive
spot for many.

So I read that your employees actually do have family (which makes the thing
about staying late worse), that you don't "require" that people stay until
midnight (as if that was a thing you could require), and patronizingly insist
that people get sleep.

Maybe I just didn't read that correctly, language barrier and all that but...
I don't know, these extra hours, are those paid overtime or is that a further
erosion of the 40 hour work week?

~~~
shawabawa3
> So I read that your employees actually do have family (which makes the thing
> about staying late worse)

I think you're being overly negative.

Nobody is forcing anyone to go to these things. If you have other stuff to do,
fine. If, like some people, you actually enjoy it, you can go. Maybe you even
have an understanding husband/wife who understands that once in a while you
might be out as late as 11:45pm

~~~
Chris2048
Maybe if you don't go you'll be fired to make way for someone more passionate?

~~~
stuxnet79
This is just it. The goal posts are always being moved. Hiring is a farce at
this point, and I get sick of these recruiters / employers pontificating about
this "passion" nonsense.

------
hoodoof
I takes me the better part of six months to build something worthwhile. I know
I'm a slow programmer but it's still hard to see that anything but
trivialities can be built in a weekend.

~~~
nxzero
Point is to get something done, force you to make choice, have a deadline,
etc. -- not something else, like production ready code.

~~~
alexashka
The older you get - the less patience you have for tight deadlines and
'forcing yourself to make a choice'.

That's just having more energy than you know what to do with.

The tragedy is young people have lots of energy and are scatterbrained and old
people are sometimes wise but too tired.

The future is having older wise folk write out proposals to ambitious
projects, and have young people fill in the necessary parts.

Too bad it's just not 'sexy', ambitious projects are long, boring and require
upsetting other people who are old, boring and don't want to listen.

Modernizing the medicine field is one simple example of such an ambitious
problem.

~~~
BinaryIdiot
> The future is having older wise folk write out proposals to ambitious
> projects, and have young people fill in the necessary parts.

Absolutely not. The most brilliant of minds made their marks on history at 30
or younger. Science has shown that, over time, learning becomes more difficult
and slower. The whole idea of an older person being more "wise" is more of an
old wive's tale more than anything else.

Young people and old people alive can have great ideas. Inversely young and
old can be great at simply cranking away at building things. The future mixes
the young and old more and more making the young younger for longer and the
old far more capable than ever before.

~~~
alexashka
I don't disagree with you - I just mean something else by ambitious projects.

Take politics for instance - can anyone under 30 accomplish anything ambitious
in politics? Probably not.

The brilliant minds who've contributed to math/science I imagine oftentimes
had great teachers along the way. Not always.

The ambitious projects I have in mind go beyond solving a previously unsolved
math problem - I am thinking of something more calculated and long-term like
wikipedia.

If we can give a lot of people in the world the best educational materials by
the best teachers - that's a massive win.

If we can secure funding for people who show promise and let them affect the
real world, not just 'do research' \- that's a massive win.

In other words - the problems we're facing are not really science problems,
they're philosophical and societal problems that require a willingness of the
current ruling class to say ok, this isn't working, let us try something new
here.

That'd be nearly unprecedented - another smart kid solving another science
riddle, that's cool too :)

~~~
BinaryIdiot
Okay we're mostly agreeing here just one point

> Take politics for instance - can anyone under 30 accomplish anything
> ambitious in politics? Probably not.

Maybe? It's hard to say considering we have laws preventing the young from
getting into politics. President / Vice President have to be 35, 30 to be a
senator and 25 for the house of representatives. Most states also have age
restrictions for many other political offices that I'm too lazy to look up
(some are similar to the federal ones, some are simply 21).

Making it not possible for them to do it doesn't mean they couldn't if given
the ability. Many politicians are career politicians. That may not be good but
the young folks can't be career politicians, at least not right away.

I would be very curious to see the data if we removed all agent restrictions
then let 1-2 generations go by and see if the demographic changes much / some
/ none.

~~~
alexashka
It's nice to agree sometimes :)

I'd say moreso than the laws, is just the hierarchies entrenched in every
sphere of life are the real mechanisms preventing any real change.

On one hand, stability is good, but at what cost, right?

Something as small as the apple app store - everyone knows it's bad, nothing
has been done about it for years.

If Apple tomorrow, came to HackerNews and said hey, we know the app store
sucks, we are going to hire a 20 person team of stars to re-build it. We will
give you full autonomy, high paycheques, lots of publicity and a full year to
do it.

Wouldn't that be an overwhelmingly positive move? Even if a year later, the
team failed to deliver, at the very least it'd generate a ton of enthusiasm
and new ideas.

This is a small example of big companies not willing to do anything outside
the stale old box, even when there is absolutely no downside. It's those old,
bored farts earning a paycheque that are the problem every time.

Apple has the money, just not the wisdom to go outside the box every now and
again. Politics is 1000x worse I imagine.

------
p_eter_p
The worst is company hackathons. I will always remember the look on my boss's
face when I told him I was quite happy to participate in the (mandatory) 24
hour hackathon, as long as he paid me for my time outside of normal business
hours. Turns out it wasn't so mandatory.

------
jmspring
I've never been a fan of "hackathons" for long term projects going back a
number of years.

That said, the group I am part of, we regularly engage in focused "hackfests",
where there is a clear goal, people work together, and a lot gets done in 3-5
days.

Is it always complete, no, but for solving spot problems, short term deep
dives can be great.

Generalizing that, as hacktahons try to, there will be some interesting
successes, but that won't be the norm.

------
ansy
Your commercial and competitive hackathons are already covered well by
TopCoder and similar competitive programming competitions. There are
commercial challenges which generally build against some kind of proprietary
API. Then there are competitive Single Round Matches (SRM) which are purely
data structure and algorithm based.

Grandstanding and networking sound like b-school entrepreneurship
competitions. Who can make the best slide deck. Plenty of companies got
funding with nothing more than a few presentation slides and some good talk so
I agree it's a potentially valuable thing. It just doesn't reward technical
prowess so why feature it at all?

Hackathons are a blend of all of this and it doesn't really do any of them
well.

My main complaint about hackathons is that they are a poorer recruiting tool
than most people want to believe. Corporate sponsors think they'll be able to
spot top talent easier. And some participants think hackathons improve their
chances of getting hired. In my brief experience, the success rate is very low
on both sides. At best, I think a hackathon is a fun, creative, and social
collegiate experience for the participants and another avenue for companies to
market their brands to impressionable young minds.

------
kdkooo
Couldn't agree more with so many of the views expressed in this. I felt the
same way after participating in the LinkedIn DevelopHer Hackathon last August.
I came home and was so physically ill from sleep deprivation, eating nothing
but oreos, drinking soda for the caffeine, etc.. that I was out for another 2
days. I don't know if I've ever felt as sick as I did after that hackathon,
and it was all elective abuse to my body.

------
DGCA
At my previous company, we had a hackathon where the theme was, more or less,
bringing the company more together through technology. ~12 of us made 3
separate teams, came up with ideas, and worked like 12 hours on a Saturday
hoping to be declared the winner.

When all was said and done, the judges—all non technical—took about 30 minutes
to decide that it was a 3-way tie. If you're going to make something a
competition, just pick a winner.

~~~
shultays

      the judges—all non technical—took about 30 minutes to decide that it was a 3-way tie.
    

in GGJ, we worked pretty much non-stop with like 5 hours sleep a day for two
days and they decided not to make judges. hell, the GGJ ended around 5pm and
we couldn't even check other project because everything was so rushed.

------
callmeed
_> > Salesmanship is rewarded. The rewards are given strictly based on the
presentation_

This is not a bad thing. I've won hackathons partly–but not _strictly_
–because we had a team that could present well in front of judges and an
audience.

Public speaking, sales, and presenting to others is an important skill in
business and entrepreneurship. The author would be wise to convey this to his
students. A hacker who can build a product of value AND sell it well is a
force to be reckoned with.

Sorry, but I love hackathons as long as they're run somewhat well. If I don't
like the food, I'll go eat somewhere else. I'm too old these days to work
through the night so I usually get a hotel room and get a good sleep. But
college students are already used to studying through the night, so I don't
see what the big deal is.

Beyond the intersection of making <-> presenting (see above), I also love that
hackathons force you to work within constraints–most notably time.

Its a great way to network–especially if there are corporate sponsors. I've
met some great friends at hackathons and I've received job offers from
companies I've met. I've even been offered investment in a project.

Yeah, people cheat. Yeah, some hackathons are poorly run. The pros still
outweigh the cons for me though.

~~~
collyw
"Public speaking, sales, and presenting to others is an important skill in
business and entrepreneurship."

Not so much with writing software. Communicating with others yes, but not
necessarily in a public setting.

------
matt_wulfeck
Is it possible that the value derived from a hackathon depends largely on your
age and nothing else? When I was 18 I loved this kind of stuff and would do it
for fun, if nothing other to learn and make friends. Now you'd be hard pressed
to get me there unless my team was people I know and worked with in the past.
And it would be almost irresponsible to see parents there.

------
alexashka
Hackathons are a fundamentally unsustainable, bad idea that can only thrive on
young people having more energy than they know what to do with.

I imagine they'll continue to drag along, like most conferences, like most
people, who just don't know what else to do, so they do something that someone
else said was a good idea and isn't intimidating.

------
TACIXAT
I stopped playing CTFs because the crunch time was too much. Burning a weekend
reverse engineering and programming is fun, but then I lose the weekend. I'd
like to see some casual CTFs / hackathons. Extended timeline, a few weeks to a
month, fine if people with jobs play for fun.

~~~
CiPHPerCoder
Something like MicroCorruption of CryptoPals, then?

(I haven't tried Star Fighter yet, but I imagine it's similar too.)

~~~
TACIXAT
Thanks. MicroCorruption is on my to do list. CTF style can be fun because of
the collaboration and the variety of categories.

------
pritishc
I've always wondered how people with chronic disorders/diseases manage
themselves at a hackathon. That 24-hour non-stop insanity has always dissuaded
me from attending one. Turns out there _are_ people who see the downsides of
one.

------
ww520
The point on marketing is spot on. I've seen team won first prize solely based
on Powerpoint.

~~~
hueving
They wrote PowerPoint? If so, that's impressive enough to win a hackathon IMO.
Lots of people use PowerPoint every day.

------
rhizome
I'm sure good work comes out of these, but I think it would probably happen
anyway. I really don't understand why people are going to these things still.

~~~
EdHominem
The ones I go to are free and don't ask for ownership of the product, only
pictures and screenshots where applicable to advertise the event.

It's like working in a hackspace for a night (which I often do when on the
road) combined with a friendly competition.

I'd avoid a for-profit hackathon like the plague.

------
warrenmar
Selling Out and the Death of Hacker Culture by Rodney Folz

[https://medium.com/@folz/selling-out-and-the-death-of-
hacker...](https://medium.com/@folz/selling-out-and-the-death-of-hacker-
culture-fec1f101b138#.b3o5c9x4c)

Previous discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10249887](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10249887)

------
nalllar
I've participated in three hackathons involving pizza and sleep deprivation,
StrathHACK[1] once and Do You Have The GUTS[2] twice.

It's a great way to have a fun weekend, get job offers from local sponsors and
learn new technologies in an environment where you can ask get help from
experienced people. It's not about writing realistic, maintainable code - but
that isn't really the aim.

On the health side of things: Going to an event and having unhealthy food
isn't terrible. It's a short event - having pizza for a day isn't going to
kill you, and at these hackathons healthier food (sandwiches, cereal,
burritos) was also provided. If you want to sleep, you can, but there's
nothing wrong with occasionally working through the night.

[1] - [https://hack.strathtech.co.uk/](https://hack.strathtech.co.uk/) [2] -
[http://gutechsoc.com/hackathon](http://gutechsoc.com/hackathon)

------
dheera
"There are a lot of teams who bring their existing projects to the party"

I wonder if this can be approached with rules, such as:

* Provide datasets, interesting hardware, or other things that the participants do not have in advance. Release them only at the start of the hackathon. In the judging criteria, have heavy weighting for how well the teams make use of the provided resources.

* Forbid, on honor code, to bring your startup (or any other project you have started before) to the hackathon.

* Prohibit, on honor code, use of any code written prior to the hackathon unless said code has been under an open source license for 3 months, advertised and available for the public to download, AND your team does not represent the majority of the contributions to said code.

* Define one or more problems to solve, within the scope of the hackathon. Don't release the problems until the start of the hackathon. Require all teams to work on a solution to any of the stated problems.

~~~
potatolicious
You can put the rules in - some of your suggestions are already standard in
many hackathons, but I doubt it would make much of a difference.

Many hackathons are judged or attended by major investors, so the incentive to
cheat is extraordinary. The last hackathon I went to there were several teams
that clearly had everything lined up ahead of time and were there to pitch,
and I doubt you can get rid of this without getting rid of the investors.

More than that, many hackathons pride themselves on being interesting for
investors, so they're incentivized to look the other way so that the
presentations are as impressive/fundable as possible.

I don't think I'll be going to another hackathon for a good long while - the
combination of people who seem to have no interest in the spirit of hacking on
stuff, and the incredibly toxic culture I saw (getting smashed, pounding back
energy drinks, flying drones around annoying people, nerf gun fights through
the hallways, it was like a goddamn freshman dorm but sweatier and somehow
more childish), makes me completely not interested at all.

~~~
dheera
Get rid of the investors then. :) Get corporate sponsorship instead to run the
hackathon.

------
kumarski
YC and hackathons break my ketosis. :(

The downregulation of dopamine is partly my fault, but damn the food is beyond
just visually tempting.

------
timwaagh
Where i live i wish we had more of them and that they were more advertised so
people are aware of these events. you don't have to go but the one hackathon i
went to was a good event. I'd go again. it was small scale, there were few
students there mostly people with jobs. half could not code, most were not
very good. but it was cool. i impressed a few people with my skills met some
interesting international people (who had flown in for this). one of the more
memorable experiences of my life. I think the best hackathons are those which
mix up the teams. other than that, please bring me more hackathons. people
need to spend their free time on something, right? Although I'd not go if i
had to be selected for them. the organisers need to be somewhat grateful for
the fact people would like to attend and the atmosphere needs to be friendly
rather than uber competitive.

------
mightybyte
None of the hackathons that I've gone to seemed to have any of these problems.
Hac Phi [1] in Philly and Hac Bos [2] in Boston are both fantastic and have
been tremendously valuable to my career. Last year Hac Phi started to distance
themselves from the more recent connotations of the word "hackathon" and
started using the word "exchange" instead. This switch makes me a little sad
because I think the portmanteau of "hack" and "marathon" is still very
relevant to those events.

[1] [https://wiki.haskell.org/Hac_%CF%86](https://wiki.haskell.org/Hac_%CF%86)

[2] ([http://www.meetup.com/Boston-
Haskell/events/223607923/](http://www.meetup.com/Boston-
Haskell/events/223607923/))

------
sbierwagen

      In addition to all the provided stimulants, hackers are 
      encouraged to work through the night. Sure there may be 
      reminders that you should sleep when tired, but why a 24-
      hour event instead of a 12-hour one then?
    

Shut off the power and wifi from 10 PM to 6 AM.

~~~
ajdlinux
The one hackathon event that I regularly participate in (GovHack) generally
closes down between 11pm and 7am or thereabouts.

------
fengwick3
Well, the motivations to attend hackathons don't seem to be about winning.
Many of us students attend hackathons knowing that the chances of winning
something is marginal at best, yet we still regularly attend for the singular
reason of fun. It's not every day that you can just spend two days of your
life, cut off from the rest of the world, working with your buddies on
something you all love. Even for professionals, attending hackathons could be
a means to break away from the monotony of normal work.

------
phamilton
This highlights a bigger problem over been mulling over.

How does one without free nights and weekends (eg, has kids and a family) get
the benefits (network, exposure, etc) without being able to participate?

That sounds entitled. Let's reverse it. How does a company find individuals
who have better things to do than code for free all weekend? This is of course
based on the assumption that such individuals are valuable.

The only answer I've come up with is coaching little league.

------
ChemicalWarfare
Was at a couple of "internal" hackatons ran by my employer as a part of the
offsite all hands meeting. There was plenty of corporate politics involved
with judging, other than that it was time well spent.

The angle was to bring new ideas to the table and build an MVP/POC to demo the
idea. Overall was a positive experience other than the politics involved.

The event was voluntary, took place in the hotel with beer in the hotel bar
and nice catered lunches.

------
hueving
The author says this:

>If this sounds like advocacy for mediocrity, instead of merit, it is not.
Keep in mind the following facts

And then follows up with a bunch of excuses about how they are not measuring
merit by any means because traditional presentations and different project
timelines are to difficult to compare for merit.

"it sounds like we don't want reward merit, and that's because we don't have
the competence to measure it"

------
alt_rox_haxer
The only thing i disagree with in this article is the whole "Everyone
participated, everyone gets a prize" thing. Don't get me wrong, I understand
these youngsters poured their heart and soul into these projects, but not
everyone can win, and people should know this. It creates the young, entitled
generation we have now. We dont need more of that running around.

~~~
gaius
The article says the wrong things are rewarded, we also don't need people
thinking that slick presentation beats real work.

~~~
alt_rox_haxer
"Despite students pouring out their heart and souls, in the end, the majority
do not win a prize. I am a staunch supporter of rewarding participation and
effort. If this sounds like advocacy for mediocrity, instead of merit, it is
not."

------
apatters
How about a hackathon sponsored by an open source project? Where everyone
spends the allotted time contributing some improvement to that project. Seems
like fun, something I would participate in, and the sponsor potentially gets a
lot of benefit for cheap/free.

~~~
0xcde4c3db
OpenBSD hackathons have been held at least once per year for ~17 years [1].

[1]
[http://www.openbsd.org/hackathons.html](http://www.openbsd.org/hackathons.html)

~~~
nayden
Should also add that they are a very different type of events than the ones
outlined in this post. Competition is replaced by collaboration. Prizes by
internal reward. Junk food by beer drinking.

------
escherize
Going to corperate sponsored hackathons and hacking on your own side project
is the way I've really enjoyed myself at a few hackathons. I don't really want
to learn $COMPANY's API, so I just hack on whatever and enjoy the atmosphere.

------
stirner
This has certainly been my experience. All the hackathons I've participated in
have felt very geared toward corporate shilling, and most of the prizes are
for "best use of [company's product]".

------
unethical_ban
Whatever. Company hackathons are bullshit, but if people do it for fun, who
cares if it's unhealthy and unsanitary? (supposedly).

It's like LAN parties, but programming instead of gaming.

I do like the FU Weekend idea, though.

------
hoodoof
The only "thon" I am willing to hack is my own.

------
rememberlenny
I've been organizing Hackathons for the past few years. They have been
incredibly successful in a number of ways.

The group that organizes them has recognized a few powerful factors:

\- The organizers are diverse and have a wide array of skills

I didnt start the group that I have collaborated with, but I immediately tried
to contribute to the best of my ability. We have people who are good at
promoting, thinking about diversity, good a logistics, organizing speakers,
etc.

\- Intentionally diverse groups in gender/skill/background

We spend time to open applications, then manually select the participants who
are accepted. From there, we keep a high touch relationship with 100-150
people, so that they are excited even before attending.

\- Pre-crafted/well-rounded teams

Based on applications, we make pre-crafted teams that have balanced skill
sets. We make these teams based on our understanding of the participants, and
their own experiences.

\- (most importantly) NO PRIZES

We make our events based on the valued gained from meeting and working with
people who are fundamentally interesting. We build the concept of the event
based around getting cool people together to work on cool problems.

For the past two years, we have welcomed well over 600+ people in 4 different
cities.

\- Partner with awesome organizations with strong brand names

We spend significant amount of time to raise sponsorship. We make a point to
involve cool organizations in the space, so that the event attracts high
quality participants. Even if a great organization that we like cant sponsor
money, we try to involve them as a partner in someway, so we can involve their
staff. This has always paid off.

\---------------------------

Reference:

\-
[http://hackingjournalism.com/mobile/](http://hackingjournalism.com/mobile/)
(Based on mobile journalism at MIT in Cambridge)

\- [http://hackingjournalism.com/video/](http://hackingjournalism.com/video/)
(Based on video production at Conde Nast in New York)

\- [http://hackingjournalism.com/](http://hackingjournalism.com/) (Based on
data science at Washington Post in DC)

\- [http://codexhackathon.com](http://codexhackathon.com) (Based on book
publishing at SF and Boston)

\- [http://audiohackation.com](http://audiohackation.com) (Based on podcasting
with ThisAmericanLife in New York)

~~~
marssaxman
I'm curious: how do you market these events? I have literally never in my life
encountered a hackathon directly and only know they exist because people talk
about them; they are a purely theoretical construct in my world. Through what
channels do people discover your events?

~~~
wgman
[https://mlh.io/seasons/s2016/events](https://mlh.io/seasons/s2016/events) Is
very popular for promotion.

~~~
marssaxman
Are hackathons just a university thing, then...?

~~~
rememberlenny
No. Not at all. The average age for our hackathons was closer to 35 than 20.

~~~
marssaxman
Where do you advertise them? How do people find them?

~~~
rememberlenny
We used journo-tech communities like Hacks/Hackers, college boards, company
mailing lists (ie. the post design group), or directly in touch with
influencers (ie. NYTimes technical evangelist).

~~~
marssaxman
I ask because I feel like I keep up pretty well with tech news, reading
multiple news aggregators every day - and yet I am clearly not connected to
whatever information channels people are using to promote hackathons, since I
never hear about them. I have no idea whether I'd want to participate in them
even if I did hear about them, but it makes me aware that there must be some
avenues for tech news communication that I am totally missing out on.

------
mruniverse
I lump company hackatons in with company team building activities. Shallow
attempts at making something happen.

------
stevebmark
This seems like a strange critique because hackathons are so opt-in. Yes there
are often problems but no one I know goes expecting to win any prizes. Who
cares about the prize? If you're going to try to win something, don't go.
There are people who earn their income gaming hackathons with big prizes, and
you won't compete with them.

------
k__
Hackathons are cool, but not those company funded ones.

------
zwetan
I see hackathon as a scam

or how to teach early to young new passionate developers that the "norm" is to
work long hours for next to no pay, pizza? yeah good enough.

It also vehiculate the idea that code is a just commodity, that anyone can
piss some code over few days and build full working apps supposed to impress
people.

Well, understand those poor company, they are not sure you can be a good
slave, so they need to test you over a week-end: does he/she complain for not
being paid? not sleeping? being forced to use this API vs another?

howdy boy, "slap on the back", here your prize, by the way everything you have
produced this week-end is owned by whoever organized the hackathon and they
can do whatever they want with it while still not paying you, now go away you
need to sleep and you stink.

I saw companies organizing hackathon for their own employee, not something
open to other developers or involving a public API, no sir, a company week-end
event.

They did those hackathon to allow their own employee to work on "what they
like" or "what they did not have time to work on during working hours", but
still have to be related to the company business, in exchange of beers and
pizzas .. oh and if you don't show up we'll know you are a lazy bastard not
inline with the company direction.

So yeah maybe not all hackathon are like that, but most of them has this feel
of scam where at the end you want to scream "fuck you pay me".

