
Announcing the Facebook 2011 Hacker Cup - m3mb3r
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=467531498919
======
huntero
Even the Facebook comments on a geeky announcement like this make me question
humanity.

"Lol... what?" "May as well call this site HACKBOOK! IT'S ALL GARBAGE NOW!"
"This is freaking scary coz pipol will be able to hack into any fb ccount they
want to. This is crack..."

Let's not forget that we all live inside a cozy little bubble where some level
of intelligence and familiarity with technology can be assumed.

~~~
tlrobinson
Yeah, but I'm glad Facebook (and especially Zuckerberg) is doing their part to
change mainstream perception of the word "hack". For example in the 60 Minutes
interview:

 _"I see 'hack' everywhere: 'Hack,'" Stahl pointed out. "It has a negative
connotation, doesn't it?"

"When we say hacker, there's this whole definition that engineers have for
themselves, where it's very much a compliment when you call someone a hacker,
where to hack something means to build something very quickly, right? In one
night, you can sit down and you could churn out a lot of code, and at the end,
you have a product," Zuckerberg explained._

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_wucE5Giko&t=2m20s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_wucE5Giko&t=2m20s)

~~~
yesno
... and bugs... lots of bugs... of course bugs in your Facebook albums are
exceptions.

I wish I could write code without consequences during maintenance stage :(

~~~
yesno
Not quite sure why this is being downvoted but let me put my more "politically
correct" hat on.

I don't feel strongly with the presence of the word hack in the same line with
engineering. They just don't gel.

I rarely and hardly seen any engineers pulling one-nighter writing code with
lack of automation tests. I see a lot of young hackers do that.

I would strongly suggest the downvoters go to InfoQ.com and search for
Aditya's presentation regarding Facebook engineering to understand the issues
arise for having a "hacker" culture.

And I'm telling you the fact that Facebook albums have had UI bugs; they
frequently re-appear after what I felt is a re-deploy of their updates/newer
versions of the website

Back button doesn't necessarily work sometime

One can see other people pictures but can't see their album (can't click the
"photo" link but can click the photo in their profile page)

On iPhone, often one can't see "more..." pictures.

When I say those bugs in Facebook albums are exceptions, I truly mean it.
Facebook can have buggy code yet they probably won't get penalized by their
user. None of their user fled for other social networking sites.

~~~
tlrobinson
I agree "hacking" and "engineering" aren't the same thing, but they're good
complementary skills to have as a developer.

Hackathons are great for prototyping ideas/products/proof of concepts.
Engineering is essential for building large/stable/scalable systems. Clearly
Facebook is good at both.

I like to think of myself as both a hacker and an engineer. Neither word
describes what I do completely.

~~~
yesno
Whether FB wants to call it hackathons, hack-a-tack, tick-hack-toe doesn't
matter.

But the message from the parent here is that it's cool to build a product by
pulling one-nighter. (And we all know that's the culture in Facebook).

The same theme again and again that sort of... screw our industry as a whole:
romanticizing the notion of hacker.

On the other hand, I don't think FB Chat was written in one-night.

------
benofsky
Very smart (and relatively cheap) way to find good engineers!

~~~
tlrobinson
Pseudo-related random anecdote: In college (circa 2005) I came across some
programming puzzles Facebook had posted for people interested in jobs. I
thought Facebook might be an interesting place to work, so I came up with
solutions to a couple of them, but never sent them in because I wasn't
graduating for a year or two.

I mentioned this to a few friends who laughed at the idea of working at
_Facebook_. Not so funny now, eh?

~~~
brown9-2
Makes you wonder about what prospective employers people are laughing about
today.

~~~
ardit33
I remember in 2007 I was at the Zynga party in Portreo Hill. thrown with some
other startups. I think at the time it was only 17 people, and they were
looking for engineers.

My friends and I were like, nah, another silly gaming company. Now their cap
is almost equal to EA.

The beauty of the valley that every 5 years the landscape changes and roles
reverse.

Be nice to other people, your fellow engineers, your employees if you are a
manager, as they might be your boss in few years.

Something that I am learning myself, live and learn.

------
njrc
Looks like fun. Some of the people commenting on that page don't appear to
understand the intended meaning of the term hacker in that context. But then,
they probably aren't the target audience of the competition either. :)

~~~
ilovecomputers
But..but, they "liked" Facebook Engineers!

------
ilovecomputers
I'll be honest. My incentive to make it to the final rounds isn't to get a job
at Facebook nor money, but to make a bunch of dumb and tired Social Network
jokes on the Facebook campus.

 _"Yes a compile error! Now to take a shot. WTF? Where's my shot? I was
promised liquor!"_

 _"Hey don't distract me, I'm connected to the grid."_ "Sir the competition is
over, please leave the facility." _"I said I'm hooked in!"_

 _"3rd place‽ It's because you never got into Finals Zack, isn't it?"_

------
l0nwlf
Google is organizing similar event aka Google Code Jam (
<http://code.google.com/codejam> ) for years. Facebook Hacker Cup feels like a
clone of it.

Similarities:

1\. Annual algorithmic competitions.

2\. Various online elimination rounds.

3\. World finals at headquarters.

4\. Prizes: 1st place = $5000 USD, 2nd place = 2000$ USD, 3rd place for $1000
USD and $100 for 4th through 25th place.

~~~
sparky
GCJ is itself similar to the much older ACM's ICPC (
<http://cm.baylor.edu/welcome.icpc> , around in some form since 1977
[http://cm.baylor.edu/ICPCWiki/Wiki.jsp?page=The%20Early%20Ye...](http://cm.baylor.edu/ICPCWiki/Wiki.jsp?page=The%20Early%20Years)
), though of course it's not limited to college students.

~~~
staktrace
The ICPC is fairly different in format though. For one, it's always team-
based, and usually has much harder problems since the entrants are always
university-level students who have taken advanced algorithms courses. I've
participated in both TopCoder contests and the ICPC and the GCJ/HackerCup are
definitely TopCoder-style rather than ICPC.

------
trotsky
cheaper than the recruiter fees, i'm sure

------
mkramlich
smart recruiting tool

