

Corporate Hackathons: The Fine Line Between Engaging and Exploiting - jf
http://jamiemsmyth.blogspot.com/2013/01/corporate-hackathons-fine-line-between.html

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bendoit
Jamie Smyth makes some very good points in his economic analysis. Having to
pay your own airfare to New York to do a presentation, and then 30 teams
building solutions, 29 that would not be paid for. That certainly is a good
deal for Campbell, and it sounds like whatever solution they buy for the
$25,000 prototype plus $25,000 on completion of the full system with all the
changes they request would have cost them a lot more had they hired a design
firm to attempt something of this nature, especially in that they get to keep
the best of 30 working designs.

Despite all this, much more fascinating than Jamie's post was the following
exchange between Campell's brand marketer Sam Niburg and Campell's Global Head
of Digital Adam Kmiec.

<https://twitter.com/adamkmiec/status/292833747701731328>

Regarding Mr Smyth, Kmiec says "Don't sweat it. I shared my opinion about him
& his company to every colleague I have client-side and agency-side."

So rather than respond to the very reasonable questions and issues Mr Smyth
has brought up, Kmiec publicly brags about having launched a personal vendetta
to destroy him and his company.

It's a fascinating exchange between a senior executive and someone tasked with
presenting a positive image of the company's brand reputation.

Usually these sorts of open and candid comments between insiders are only seen
in private emails. It's refreshing to see inner workings like this out in the
open.

~~~
dirtyaura
Just wow. That is amazingly clueless use of social media.

If I had read just Smyth's well-written post, I wouldn't have anything against
Campbell per se. They organized a lame hackathon, but a lot of companies do
that, and Smyth's post was about this corporate hackathon culture, it just
happened to use Campbell's hackathon as an example.

But after reading that Twitter exchange, I now think they really are clueless
assholes.

~~~
bendoit
Yeah, it kind of clashes with the careful Disney like feel good image Campbell
has developed and doesn't really indicate a lot of public relations awareness,
whether it was private or public.

Here's how I would have handled it if I was in charge of that thing. I'd have
read that essay and thought, wow, OK, this does look like an attempt to get a
lot of free engineering work and publicity. Then I'd either ignore it and hope
it blows away if I had no authority, or if I did, talk to the other executives
and point out that the particular issue of not paying travel and
accommodations to New York is really not fair at all to the individual hackers
and designers (since this is open to individuals and not design firms with a
sales team and funding). I'd then publicly thank him for his insightful
feedback, insist it was simply overlooked, and announce that OF COURSE
Campbells is going to be paying airfare and accommodations to the 30 people
that are selected to give presentations, and a family member if they like.

What I would definitely NOT do is pull out my rolodex and "contact every
colleague I have client-side and agency-side" (this must be hundreds if not
thousands of people) to inform them that a very mean and awful hacker has
found my hackathon has some flaws with it in that I'm not paying people for
the expenses necessary to comply with my demands, and so will they join in my
pile on against him, the stupid annoying hacker, and his filthy company that
has DARED, DARED I say to criticize the Almighty Campbells Soup company, which
has been around need I remind him longer than he has even been alive the
little piss ant!

Because that would be a really very stupid thing to do instead of just offer
to pay the accommodations and airfare for these people who are doing free work
for my company, and come out all roses having mastered such a minor PR
challenge which has such an obvious solution to it.

It's not like Campbells isn't a Fortune 500 company (it is) who drops tens of
millions on a Chunky Super Bowl XLVI Sweepstakes without blinking an eye at
the cost. Their advertising and software development costs should not be
subsidized by hackers. Given that most hackers are under IP contracts that
prohibit them from entering something like this in their free time, most of
the people legally able to enter are going to be hackers going through a spell
of unemployment. Expecting them to do extensive free design work and fly out
to meet clients for something that isn't even going to be all that much pay in
the end if they do win the contract isn't a reasonable expectation. I expect
though that a fair number of people will enter despite this. They might get
better quality material though if they are at least willing to pay actual
expenses of the finalists.

~~~
kami8845
>What I would definitely NOT do is pull out my rolodex and "contact every
colleague I have client-side and agency-side" (this must be hundreds if not
thousands of people)

meh. In almost certain likelihood the guy didn't do that. It would make him
look childish to his contacts and would waste a bunch of his time. Why do all
that work when he can get the same effects (scaring the guy and telling him to
fuck off) just writing a tweet?

Much more effective. Though it does tell me never to do business with
Campbell.

------
mmahemoff
It's strange that hackathons have become so high-stakes, just from the
practical point that it's extremely easy to cheat and extremely hard to detect
cheating. I don't want to be the "let's go back to the days when the winner
got a t-shirt" guy, but it's getting ridiculous. I heard a story last week
about a very substantial prize being won by a team who iterated on a previous
hackathon's result without mentioning so.

It might work in the short term, but I can see talented developers getting
turned off by the whole thing and not showing up at all, when it becomes clear
they have no chance of winning if they stick to the rules and start from
scratch. A better alternative, if someone wants to put out prizes like that,
could be to announce the competition with a deadline, say 4 weeks out, and
then host optional hacker spaces for the final weekend.

------
jalpino
I'm not sure that I understand all of the negativity around this. If Campbells
had called this a contest instead of a hackathon, would it change your opinion
on the details of the event? They seem to be pretty open about their intent
and what happens if you win and/or make it to the finals.

Some positive things to keep in mind:

* submitting an idea costs you nothing except for your time to write up an idea

* the winner will receive $25,000 for a 3-week build prototype, NOT a market ready application

* there are no posted rules on the level of completeness required for your prototype. Can you win with a slide deck that shows how you use their API to execute your idea? maybe.)

* presenting your idea in the finals does not require you to travel to NY, they clearly state that you can video conference in for the event.

* if you do win you are then offered, not obligated to take, an additional $25k contract to complete it (likely not worth it)

For all of the folks that don't win, it's not an entire loss either:

* a well written idea is all that is needed to enter the contest, not much lost if you aren't selected as a finalist.

* if you make it to the finals, your only cost is 3 weeks of your time for a 1:30 chance of winning $25k or less for winning the $10k as a runner up.

* if you make it to the finals you walk away with something tangible to tack onto your resume. "Made it as a finalist in a nationally recognized brand's competition for my idea" sounds pretty good.

~~~
olivier1664
The "1:30 chance of winning $25k" means you work at around $1k per month as
self managed develloper (in the US). It's just cheap.

It can be a goood deals for CS students that have some 3 weeks mandatory
project to do for school.

~~~
jalpino
Where do you get the $1k/month from?

Finalists are granted access to the API on Feb 11, 2013 and are required to
submit their entries by March 1, 2013. Assuming that they also notify you as a
finalist on Feb 11 and not before, that gives you 3 weeks to build and submit
your prototype.

$25k / 3 weeks == $8,333.34 USD per week. That's a pretty good payout for
anyone in my opinion.

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mimog
Is any actual software developer even considering entering? I mean a developer
that has a full time day job developing software. I do sw development by day,
so by night any sw project would have to be very very interesting for me to
consider participating. Otherwise I would rather spend time on my own sw
projects or interests. The soup hackathon is just a 'Please use our api for
something since we can't think of any useful thing ourselves' so I doubt it
would peak the interest of anyone who gets a salary doing sw develoment. So
who is left? Well as far as I can see, the unemployed sw developer looking for
a job and trying to spruse up his resume and make some money, and the
independent freelance/self employed developer who pushes out an endless supply
of small apps anyway. For those developers such a hackathon is just another
opportunity and better than nothing I guess, even though you are most likely
just working for free.

~~~
unreal37
So think of it like this...

You have a day job. But you're on the look out for something to spend a bit of
time on in your spare time.

You have a chance to spend a few hours putting together a prototype of
something and winning $50,000 for your efforts. Even runners up could get
$10,000. It doesn't require a full-time commitment to do. So the risk/reward
ratio (a few hours vs $50K) is there for you to do this.

Let's say you have a clever idea and spend 10 hours during your spare time
putting a prototype together.

Is 10 hours of your time worth a decent shot at $10K or $50K? That's $5,000 an
hour or $1,000 an hour. And assume you are up against 10-15 other clever
people, so rank your odds of that accordingly.

That's the question. Only you can answer.

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zx2c4
Most of all, it's just not an interesting way to spend your time, and it's not
even a "hack", and therefore not even deserving of that title. If you want to
play with technology at a "hackathon", hack on something interesting, not just
the usual web 9.0 "plug this API into that platform and claim to be a
disruptive innovator."

------
mvzink
I imagine some of my clients could have been in a similar situation to
Campbell's: they want a site or mobile app for marketing purposes or whatever.
Since it's not crucial for their business, they don't know what they want.
Yeah, maybe they have a marketing department, even a digital/social media
division. But that can only produce so many ideas, and there's too much
internal feedback to guarantee that ideas for, e.g. a mobile app, would be
effective or innovative. So maybe they decide to hire a design firm with
experience designing innovative mobile apps. In most relationships, the
process would only alleviate those problems slightly: they would get more
ideas, from outside their own offices, but only a few which the firm considers
"best" and they would be subject to the firm's biases anyhow. A 'hackathon'
like this is clearly a much cleverer option for a corporation: they get _many_
ideas from diverse sources, they get to choose which ones to prototype—and
they get _30 prototypes!_ And _then_ they pay up. This isn't really about
hackathons, it's about efficient economics. "Exploiting" is in the original
post's title, but it's really no different from the normal exploitation
inherent in every economic interaction.

As a consultant, I am used to a certain level of inefficiency—paying me even
as I brainstorm, for example—which hides the exploitation of my labor. I am
upset about hackathons like this because they reveal the exploitation and how
it is tipped in Campbell's favor.

In a somewhat different vein, being on a college campus, there are similar
exploitative relationships, in a sense, at the hackathons I go to.
hack@uchicago just had a really awesome hackathon. I was coding, and had an
excellent time, but I didn't compete. I know a few other people didn't compete
for the prizes either, but were still building cool stuff. We had three main
sponsors: UChicago's Physical Science Collegiate Division, UChicago IT
Services, and Inventables. All three were engaging in rational economic
transactions, beyond charity, much like Campbell's, but nobody's pissed off
about it because the economics aren't obvious and the exploitation is many
levels of indirection away: nobody directly got a product out of it. The PSCD,
however, got some marketing and something to put on their website which will
help get them more grants, researchers, whatever. IT Services regularly hires
students. I would be willing to bet that the folks from Inventables approached
multiple hackathon participants with an eye toward hiring, and I bet the
winner straight up got a job offer (which he deserves, for the record, if
you're reading this Paul). Meanwhile, I got free food and an excuse to work on
a weekend project. I'm not upset because I don't feel exploited by that
exchange. I think everybody got what they wanted out of the hackathon.

tl;dr: The economics make perfect sense for Campbell's, not for developers.
Chances are any time somebody sponsors a hackathon, it's also an economic
exchange, but this one is exploitative (or, if you're a Marxist, this one
makes the inherent exploitation of every economic interaction more obvious).

------
arikrak
"But for approximately 93% of the fortunate developers that “won” the chance
to write code against the Campbell’s soup API (!), they get… nothing." "If you
want to go it alone, just pay $25 to Google (or $99 to Apple) and start
writing and selling apps."

I don't think app developers have the best odds either:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/18/business/as-boom-lures-
app...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/18/business/as-boom-lures-app-creators-
tough-part-is-making-a-living.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)
<http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2404012,00.asp>

~~~
dannyr
Having a working app on the Play Store is good for developers. Even if the app
doesn't get a lot of downloads, they can at least show the app to prospective
employers.

For the Campbell Hackathon, developer has nothing to show since API access is
revoked at the end.

------
daveambrose
Good thoughts but generally I'd consider (1) who owns the IP for the winning
idea or product and even those that don't win? If a company is sponsoring a
hackathon with hopes of attracting disruptive ideas but owns the IP, there
must be other upside - maybe significant monetary prizes or marketing exposure
- to make it worth your weekend's time. (2) And the grave reality that most
larger companies cannot execute the winning app without internal support,
necessary team resources and budget...which may require lots of change.

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stratosvoukel
I agree with the article, but if we say that Cambell is unethical then where
do we draw the line in general? Eg. Is Kaggle unethical and exploitation as
well ? Like the Cambell hackathon, in Kaggle competitions you work for free
and only a limited number of people actually get paid for their work. Even if
Kaggle promotes that everyone's work actually helps (indirectly) to pin down a
good solution, not everyone is getting paid.

------
thomseddon
This has been on my mind recently as I have been invited to "Barclay's Social
Enterprise Weekend": <http://barclayssewnorth.eventbrite.co.uk/>

Two things kind of leave me undecided:

1) Narrow brief: Here they are very narrow and specific about what areas would
be suitable and it is clearly very closely aligned with their own interests.
(However a blog post from one of the companies on the judging panel gives a
more open ended brief: <http://import.io/barclays-social-enterprise-
hackathon-2013/>)

2) Outcome: There aren't any "prizes". I suppose this is social enterprise, so
you could consider a monetary (or similar) prize as slightly against "the
spirit", but really I was kind of expecting more of an incentive from a huge
multinational bank?

Anyone else seen this or otherwise have any thoughts on this event?

~~~
droithomme
The Barclays one is not exactly the same thing, but it doesn't appeal to me.

You have to pay £25 to donate 3 full days of your work time (likely more in
terms of work days given 16 hr days not 8 are the norm at hackathons - so this
is 6 work days of work.)

A big difference is the application is for charity rather than, as with
Campbells, being something that directly and obviously benefits the business
and would normally be something they would have to pay for.

Barclays does say "Each team will have access to at least one follow up
meeting with technology experts that have been involved in the design,
development or marketing of Barclays mobile applications." It's not clear what
this means, perhaps this is to get a brainstorming session with some of
Barclays developers, or perhaps Barclays might develop the "charity app"
further themselves.

When I have a 3 day weekend there are a lot of things I would rather do than
pay £25 for the privilege of doing 6 days of work without compensation beyond
a sleeping bag rental and a few pizzas, donuts and sodas.

------
alid
I can understand the motivations of those who do choose to participate...as a
creative outlet, as a way to cement or learn new skills, to meet new people,
and yes - it's incentivized. I appreciate his point but see no problem myself
lol.

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Kynlyn
I think Jamie Smyth should get over himself. I understand his point about it
not being particularly fair to the developers, but guess what? It's a free
market and if developers choose to spend their time working for free for
Campbells then that is their business. All of his self-righteous posturing
about developers "having the most sought-after skills in America" comes off as
very oddly paternal. We're all adults and we can all make our own decisions
about how we choose to spend our time. Nobody tricked or forced those
developers to work for free.

