
Three Types of Harmful Hackathons - nickgartmann
http://blog.rokkincat.com/three-types-of-harmful-hackathons/
======
joshstrange
I've done Startup Weekend once before and it felt like how the "The Business-
A-Thon" was described. My friends and I did not know this would be the case
going in and spent all of our time pumping out an MVP (which worked!) while
the teams that won largely didn't have ANY code to show for their time. It was
all slides and marketing talk. The winner DID have code but it was a <1hr
rails app thrown together with no styling just a form to submit data to the
backend and I don't even think they got it to process CC's (it was crowd
fundraising thing). Ours was well thought out, looked nice, and WORKED yet we
were beat out by people who could put together a more appealing keynote
presentation.

It was a pretty big letdown and I haven't been back to SW or any hackathons
since. I love banging out an MVP in a weekend with friends but not if we are
going to be judged on our presentation and not our work. I know, I know that's
how the real world works as well but I just expected better from the
experience. I also understand that maybe SW is not aimed at being a hackathon
but I just wish they could have given more weight to something that worked and
was accessible today (also we spend the whole weekend minus about 8hrs total
for sleep between 2 nights) vs a lot of marketing/sales talk (who left the
venue early and showed up late).

Quick edit: Just wanted to say that I see this more as my failing to
understand what SW was instead of me blaming SW for not meeting my incorrect
expectations. SW is fine but it's just probably not for me.

~~~
exelius
So team up with a business / marketing person next time. They can build slides
and do market research while you write code. I've judged a few hackathons
before, and I've seen teams like yours lose because your MVP doesn't actually
serve a market need. The market need doesn't even need to be profitable; but
you need to define and communicate the problem your product solves. Many
talented engineers can't do that.

This is how the real world works: the business side of things is often more
important than the technical implementation. If you fuck up the business side
of things and end up making the wrong product, it doesn't matter how clean or
well-implemented it is. But if you have the right product-market fit and a
good business process around improving it, you can become incredibly
successful even if your product is written in PHP (Facebook anyone?)

~~~
carlio
I feel like this is missing the point, as I think the point being made by
joshstrange also agrees with.

I don't want to go to hackathons to mimic the real world or simulate business
savvy. I want to go there to spend 48hours building something that is
technologically fun with likeminded people.

If "appropriate to become a business" is a criterion then it's not a hackathon
it's a businessathon.

Put it this way: can I spend 48hrs building a mini hydroponic lab powered by a
raspberry pi and arduino? Or should I spend that time making
[https://www.barkbox.com/](https://www.barkbox.com/) ?

~~~
exelius
> can I spend 48hrs building a mini hydroponic lab powered by a raspberry pi
> and arduino?

I don't see why not. Here's your pitch: recreational marijuana has been
legalized in 5 states, but commercial sale is only legal in two, while
cultivation for personal use is legal in all five. Additionally, if black
market sales are included, marijuana is the biggest cash crop in the US with
$35 billion annually. So there is BIG money in the market. A rpi/arduino
hydroponic system is the first prototype of a product you can sell to
consumers so they can grow their own in areas where they can't buy it. It's
like Nest, but for growing pot.

Now have some business nerd spend an hour making a few slides and you're done.
You have articulated the problem, the size of the market and the product
you're creating. You don't actually have to make the product beyond the
prototype stage, you just have to pitch it like you could.

~~~
Michie
@exelius, i think what @joshstrange wants to say is that a hackathon is a
place where people want to build things whether it make sense or no sense at
all.

Adding the business stuff is not appealing to hackers. It definitely is good
to earn money out of it, but the fun goes away.

@joshstrange, a lot of developers felt the same way as you do. Startup Weekend
should have emphasized that it is not a hackathon, but a business learning
event. Or if you are dev, and you want to build your own startup, it's a good
event to exercise a startup like environment. I have nothing against Startup
Weekend. I believe it is helping a lot of people to become entrepreneurs but
some of the organizers who are not well-trained might have misinformed the
participants the real intention of the event resulting to this confusion.

@exelius, you've mentioned this part: "Now have some business nerd spend an
hour making a few slides and you're done. You have articulated the problem,
the size of the market and the product you're creating. You don't actually
have to make the product beyond the prototype stage, you just have to pitch it
like you could."

\--->>> That does not define a hackathon. That is a business pitching
competition... Remember in a hackathon, you were able to build things, build
something. There is a product after the event which you are proud to show &
tell whether the audience like it or not... Based on your statement, what
you're implying is that a hackathon can be just a pitch deck with an awesome
pitch from the presenter, which is totally not what a hackathon is about.

~~~
exelius
No; I agree a hackathon isn't just a business pitch. You should also have to
build a prototype that does most of what you claim it to. But most hackathons
also make you justify that product's existence.

If you want to build something cool, you don't need a hackathon for that. Just
build it. But if you enter a competition where people are judging your
creation, then you have to be able to pitch it based on the judgment criteria.

~~~
Michie
A hackathon is a place where you can build your own thing, a place where you
learn new things from others. For info, a hackathon doesn't necessarily mean a
competition. It's an event where people come together and build things. People
just added the competition factor.

@exelius, you see things only in the perspective of an entrepreneur or
business dev. But what you are reading right now are the frustrations of the
developers -- the pain points that most developers/engineers feel on how they
are being violated with what's happening in these kind of events.

So in a hackathon, for you what should be the judging criteria? 90% can be a
viable product based on a presention & 10% execution? Is that what you are
saying? If yes, then it should be an idea-thon (not a hackathon), where people
present their ideas and whoever has the best idea (which you, as a judge,
think is the most viable product based on potential market size and potential
usability) wins.

------
vosper
I am a software engineer in the Bay Area. Of my friends, few are engineers
whom I can geek-out or talk shop with. Hackathons seemed like a potentially
good way to do it, but this article highlights the reasons I haven't been
attending them: I just want to meet some people, hack on something fun, and
maybe make some friends. I don't want to start a business, and I don't care
about winning a prize. I don't really want to stay up all night, either - I
have a wife, and other things to do.

I thought maybe Weekend Hacker would be fun, but that seems to be full of
people looking for help with their startup idea. Most of them aren't
engineers. Most of the Meetups I've been to (or hosted) are full of people
trying to get me interested in their startup, or recruit me. Nothing wrong
with that, but I don't see myself having a beer on the weekend with any of
those folks.

So, how do people do it? It's kinda happening slowly over time, through
friends and partners of friends, but I wouldn't know how to actively speed it
up.

------
mkremer90
Last Startup Weekend I went to had 7 devs out of 110 people. Definitely an
issue.

EDIT: All but one of the 11 teams were tech/programming required startups
guys. I'm not talking about "Startup Weekend" as a whole, I'm talking about my
experience at the event I went to.

~~~
dethstar
Does Start Up weekend specifies that the start up has to do with tech? Unless
you're saying that 103 people were the "idea person" I don't see what's wrong
with that

~~~
mkremer90
I can't speak for all Startup Weekend events, but at the one I went too, every
single project was a tech startup. On the team I was on, the vibe from the
"idea person" was definitely "How can I get a developer to help me for free?"

~~~
dethstar
from the blog post:

>Restrict to those who are there to code, design, or build something, not to
write a business plan - this gives participants the freedom to work on
projects that don't need to have profit potential.

That makes sense, but you know, don't restrict it to tech start ups. And from
what I read at the SW website, it DOESN'T have to be tech. How were the
projects from that SW you mention?

~~~
mitchh
I went to one in 2012, and a majority of the projects, as well as 2 of the 3
winners were tech.

------
serve_yay
Just skip these things and write code for people who will pay you, or open
source something useful.

~~~
stoodder
I think there's value in writing code for yourself at times. Every other time
in life engineers are told by their managers, professors, and anyone else
who's overseeing them what to make and do. Doing a hackathon in this format
minimizes that pressure and gives people a time and place to gather and just
be creative for themselves.

------
gfodor
If you're an API provider you can do everything in this post but also say "and
by the way, we will give you X free credits to use against our API if you want
to build something on top of it." You still might not get as much battle
hardening, etc as if it was a hard requirement, but it might totally change
the dynamic.

------
morgante
This is why I only attend university hackathons. For the most part, they are
still about building cool new tech—not startups. Plus, their increasingly high
admissions standards ensure that everyone who attends is either already a
developer or eager to learn. Nobody walks away without coding.

One point I disagree with in the article is that cash prizes are harmful. I
just don't see evidence of that—prizes at university hackathons have been
getting bigger and bigger (tens of thousands of dollars) but it seems like the
technical sophistication of hacks continues to rise. So long as you have good
judges (ie. hackers, not marketers), large prizes just provide an awesome
reward for awesome hacks.

Also, most of the shitty bizathons I've been to actually had relatively small
prizes (some API credits, maybe "mentorship") relative to the major
hackathons.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _One point I disagree with in the article is that cash prizes are harmful. I
> just don 't see evidence of that—prizes at university hackathons have been
> getting bigger and bigger (tens of thousands of dollars) but it seems like
> the technical sophistication of hacks continues to rise. So long as you have
> good judges (ie. hackers, not marketers), large prizes just provide an
> awesome reward for awesome hacks._

I think the point of "avoid big cash prizes" rule in the article was to foster
inter-team collaboration and minimize competition. It's a good goal. On one
hackaton I attended where prizes were cool but not _that_ big (items worth
less than $1k each) it was not uncommon to see people spending some time
talking to other teams, helping them set up, solve some obstacle they
encountered or just playtesting their project.

Competition creates a bad atmosphere and it's better to reduce it to minimum.
It's much more fun to care about maximizing the amount of cool projects being
created than just fighting for the top spot.

~~~
morgante
> Competition creates a bad atmosphere and it's better to reduce it to
> minimum. It's much more fun to care about maximizing the amount of cool
> projects being created than just fighting for the top spot.

I understand that theoretical viewpoint, but I've never seen it play out that
way.

Even at huge hackathons with prizes of thousands of dollars, I see lots of
people helping each other across teams. At the end of the day, true hackers
will like the money but also like helping out new developers.

I don't like the societal assumption that competition is automatically evil.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _Even at huge hackathons with prizes of thousands of dollars, I see lots of
> people helping each other across teams. At the end of the day, true hackers
> will like the money but also like helping out new developers._

Thanks for the data point.

> _I don 't like the societal assumption that competition is automatically
> evil._

The societal assumption, at least the one I grew up with, was that competition
is Good and Awesome, because it drives the Great Capitalist Economy (as
opposed to socialism that ended just around the time I was born). But it seems
more and more evident that competition has only very limited applications.

------
vishaldpatel
Running a Hackathon costs money.

We can have a hackathon where:

\- The costs are split up by the number of participants.

\- A bunch of teams participate.

\- Everyone builds whatever they want, and they own it.

\- There can be multiple show-and-tells, to allow teams to ask / answer
questions, get to know each-other, and iterate.

\- Everyone walks away having made some wonderful new friends, having learned
a thing or two, and also maybe even some useful code.

If someone else is organizing, and you're participating for free, then it will
_always_ come with strings attached. Remember, if you're not the customer,
then you're the product!

~~~
peregrine
A Hackathon cost less money than you'd think. Typically for a day long event
you can rent the place, get 3 meals, drinks and snacks including time spent
for 40-50 people for about $2k. Which for a business isn't really all that
much.

Disclaimer I help organize the described at the bottom of the article.

~~~
sycren
I think it depends where, when and who you are organising it for. I organised
a student hackathon in London last year and it cost about £4K/$6K but we had
the venue free and some sponsors paying for a meal or two. We had 150 students
at the event. If the venue wasn't free we would be looking at another £2K/$3K
at the least. The numbers stack up very quickly.

------
sayangel
I really think it depends on what you want to get out of a hackathon. At the
end of the day you get out what you put in.

After graduating from college I spent some time going to hackathons, some of
which were of the type you described. But I didn't care because I just wanted
to go somewhere where I could hone my ability to think fast and ship. I got to
do just that while also meeting awesome dev evangelists, eating free food, and
occasionally going home with some prizes.

I also don't think the following is necessarily the right thing to do:

"Restrict to those who are there to code, design, or build something, not to
write a business plan"

especially if the intent is to create "better builders, better collaborators,
and better teachers."

Learning to work with the MBA type that a lot of people vilify can be a
valuable skill. I think the ability to dilute business speak into features you
can program or being able to communicate your complex programming ideas to
someone less experienced are super valuable. And that's where I've seen a lot
of hackathon pitches fall apart. Someone creates something so technical and
awesome, but can't break it down into something that non-technical people or
new programmers can understand. And that sucks, but being able to do so is a
necessary communication skill.

I also think hackathons are a great place to find future co-founders. Maybe
that's another programmer, but maybe it's someone who can help you sell your
product and has a more developed business sense. Again, it all depends on why
you're at the hackathon in the first place.

------
theyCallMeSwift
The single biggest indicator of the quality of a hackathon is who is
organizing it. I've seen countless events where the people putting on the
event are doing it for selfish or greedy reasons, and 9 times out of 10 those
events look like the 3 kinds the author is describing [1].

That said, there are tons of _good_ hackathons out there that actually do have
the developers interests in mind. Specifically, I'd point to all the amazing
things that are happening in the student space [2].

Bottom Line: Figure out who's organizing an event and use that as gauge to
determine if it's worth your time.

[1] [http://theycallmeswift.com/2013/10/25/dont-throw-that-
hackat...](http://theycallmeswift.com/2013/10/25/dont-throw-that-hackathon/)
[2] [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/12/education/edlife/the-
hacka...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/12/education/edlife/the-hackathon-
fast-track-from-campus-to-silicon-valley.html?_r=0)

------
mgkimsal
Looking at going to battlehack (from paypal) this weekend. Wondering how it
fits in to the "3 types" from the article - doesn't _seem_ to fit in to any of
those 3 specifically.

~~~
jefflinwood
Hi,

I went to BattleHack Austin two years ago (and then to the world finals in San
Jose), and really enjoyed it.

I would say that it doesn't fit into any of those categories - it's not a
business pitch-a-thon, PayPal doesn't own your code, and it's not a recruiting
deal either. BattleHack is still the best hackathon I've ever been to.

They're doing the BattleHack hackathons to raise awareness of their developer
programs with coders, for a company like PayPal, it's not a lot of money to
spend.

~~~
mgkimsal
Thanks for the info. I'm a bit concerned about the 'staying up for 30 hours'
bit, but we'll see how that goes.

------
jogjayr
I recently went to a hackathon where participants owned code they wrote, but
no mention was made of who ideas belonged to. What category does that fall
into?

Since the general HN consensus on such things is "execution > idea" is it all
right if a hackathon says "We might use your idea in our products"?

PS. Obviously, it's never OK if they say "We own your idea and you can't use
it anymore".

------
peregrine
A key detail that seems to be missed by this article: these are three types as
a subset of hackathons. Not all have to be that way, and many are not.

------
jbutewicz
My biggest problem with hackathons is that they are usually student-only
events, which I feel is a terrible and unnecessary restriction. I have
participated in a hackathon several previous times as it was lax with its
entry requirements (I was not a student but an alumnus), but their sign-up
page now says it is open to undergraduates and high school students with
special permission.

I have a BS and MS in Industrial and Systems Engineering and an MBA but my
passion for the last few years has been anything and everything related to
programming. I’m willing to travel all over the country and the world to
attend these events as they are great opportunities for learning, meeting
people, working with technologies that aren’t available, and providing a good
reason to be in front of a computer for 24 or more hours at a time. I’m
willing to pay a non-student entry fee or do whatever else is necessary to
help out to offset the additional cost that I would bring. Having a bunch of
computer science students working together is great, but the hackathon
experience can be greatly enhanced by people who have different backgrounds or
industry experience, are entrepreneurial, or have connections to companies,
financing, jobs, etc.

Different backgrounds bring different people and thinking together. How would
having a marketer, pianist, chemist, or sports therapist change the idea
generation process? Industry experience is provided on the tech side by some
of the sponsors or organizers, but you will never know what software
pharmaceutical companies need unless you have someone with a Doctor of
Pharmacy who has been working with pharmaceutical software for several years
like my one friend who attended the hackathon. You will never know what huge
opportunities are available in the Department of Defense or data architecture
fields unless you have someone like myself with years of experience working in
those industries. Our mix of two people with industry experience (PharmD in
pharmaceutical, MBA/Engineering in DoD), and students in Psychology (med.
school ambitions), and traditional computer science can lead to both some wild
ideas or practical software that is desired or needed in industry.

Trying to include entrepreneurs and people with business interests are another
way to improve hackathons. I was really impressed that there were over 100
submitted projects for this hackathon, an incredible number and an
accomplishment for a hackathon that has been growing bigger every semseter.
Most of these projects will die and never be developed for in the future. And
while that is a good idea for most of the hacks, some are promising for future
development. I would love to see some of these hacks turn into businesses,
start generating revenue, or start accumulating large user bases. This is
often too much of a time/money constraint for a broke student to accommodate
amongst the many classes, projects, exams, work, and debt that they have to
deal with. Opening hackathons up to non-students can get entrepreneurs,
funding, and people who have the time and money resources to take the project
to the next level involved.

Bringing in non-students also can bring in connections to companies which can
be invaluable to students. This can bring in people who have access to jobs,
internships, and exclusive technologies. It also can bring experience to show
students how technologies or work flows exist in industry and what to be
prepared for as ideas move from one or two person teams into businesses with
hundreds or thousands of employees.

I stole this off of my blog, as the concerns I had previously are the same.

[http://jbutewicz.com/hackru-fall-2014/](http://jbutewicz.com/hackru-
fall-2014/)

------
MichaelCrawford
How is equity divided among the members of a team? There are many ways it
could be but unless it is discussed - and agreed to - up-front, if a
successful business results, or perhaps if lots of debts result, so will
lawsuits.

By contrast I greatly enjoyed MacHack. It saddens me that it's not held
anymore. Most people work on their own things, as individuals. The prize is an
"A-Trap". It's a type of rat trap; the A-Trap was chosen because Mac OS System
and Toolbox calls were implement as "A-Line Exceptions", that is, an illegal
instruction, the first byte of which was 0xA.

The objective of MacHack was to hack the system in some clever way; it wasn't
to start a business. It was to have fun.

