
Things Hackers don’t tell you about Hackathons - vjs3
https://blog.mindorks.com/things-hackers-dont-tell-you-about-hackathons-7bdeb165efa2
======
onion2k
_We all love participating in Hackathons._

Erm... That's not true.

There are two sorts of developers who don't like hackathons. There are the go-
to-work-and-write-code-and-then-do-other-stuff-in-the-evening sort of
developers who are the overwhelming majority of the sort of devs you meet in
business. For most developers writing code is nothing more than a job. Those
people see a hackathon as work, and they don't like it. That's great for those
people; they get code done and go home.

The second sort of developer who doesn't love a hackathon (and I'm in this
group) is the sort of person who enjoys the process of writing a great piece
software rather than just concentrating on the fun bits of solving a problem
and getting something on a screen. I see a hackathon as _literally_ all the
worst things about software development compressed in to a single event -
practically no planning, very little testing, _zero_ documentation, no sleep,
bad food, not seeing your non-dev friends, and not stepping away from the
keyboard for any substantial time. I've worked on real world actual paid
projects like that and it's _awful_. I definitely don't want to do it for fun
when someone isn't even paying me for it.

I love seeing the result of other people's hackathons, and I'm glad that
people who attend them enjoy them, but seriously, if you think all developers
love a hackathon you _really_ need to expand the group of developers you hang
out with.

~~~
bjpbakker
Many hackatons are organized around the host company's business goals. They
are either organized for recruiting purposes or to get cheap labor (sometimes
both)

I love coding and do code a lot in my own time. But I'm not gonna work for
free for some company or government (it's your solutions to their problems)
just because they market an event as a hackaton.

There might be better events out there but this is my experience.

~~~
zelos
Is cheap labour really a consideration? Are companies seriously basing
products off code written at hackathons?

~~~
richardknop
They don't base products off them but it is useful as quick prototyping /
hacking together some minimalistic MVPs. Outside of hackaton they would have
to actually pay developers to do this sort of prototyping / hacking work but
they can get it for free in hackatons.

It's obviously not a major thing but it still irks me, especially when
hackatons are over the weekend when you would normally charge double of normal
rate for overtime if it was a part of normal work and you agreed to do it for
some reason (meeting deadline etc).

------
albertgoeswoof
Hackathons are a professional embarrassment.

Developers get all excited about coding overnight, but in reality they're
being taken advantage of - what other industry do we see this in? You don't
ask a lawyer to stay up all night eating pizza and churn out a bunch of legal
documents. Why? Because they'd tell you where to go.

"Non-technical" people see a neat demo coming out of a 24 hour hackathon and
wonder why it takes their company's developers 6 months and 300k to build an
app for them. The expectations this sets (that developers work for free, all
night, without any quality or discipline) are not acceptable.

~~~
piker
> You don't ask a lawyer to stay up all night eating pizza and churn out a
> bunch of legal documents. Why? Because they'd tell you where to go.

That's precisely incorrect.

~~~
richardknop
The lawyer will charge you a hefty hourly rate for overnight work (couple
hundred per hour) while developers will get free pizza and beer / soda drinks.
So it's exploitation in this way. I wonder how many companies would do
hackatons if they have to pay their devs overtime rates for their
participation.

~~~
albertgoeswoof
> I wonder how many companies would do hackatons if they have to pay their
> devs overtime rates for their participation

0

------
drej
> They are amazing fun events where tech geeks come together to create
> _something useful_.

No. (Emphasis mine)

~~~
nitemice
The one hackathon I've been to, the emphasis was way too heavily on not only
making something "useful" but something that could be turned into a business.
It wasn't advertised this way, and my group went in just wanting to have a bit
of fun, making something quirky in a hurry.

We ended up scrambling for ideas, then when we finally found an idea or two
that we kind of liked, we were talked out of it by the industry-rep mentors
that were supposed to be helping us. One even took our idea, and twisted it
into a really weird financial solution for a totally different problem to what
we were thinking about. After spending about 5 hrs trying to make it work, and
struggling with the basics of the concept, we just gave up and walked away.

Best part of the whole thing was the free RasPi 3 that I got because one of my
group went to one of the talks.

------
AJRF
I've won every hackathon i've ever entered (around 10 now).

I enter them to win money or prizes, and as such take a cynical view of them
which helped to find a formula to present at them. Being confident wins over
technical talent in most of the ones that offer prizes.

Simply you need to show or tell the audience an example of you using X piece
of software, pretend to be frustrated and then dramatically pause, and then
start selling your version of it. Make them be sure they've had this problem
before, even if they haven't.

------
holografix
Where are you guys going for all these hackathons where real devs show up and
can code? The ones I attended in Sydney are 90% marketing/sales/designers
desperate for a dev and they spend all the time faffing about.

~~~
codingninja
Hey mate, I'd love to know what languages you deal with?

~~~
holografix
Mostly Python and learning React which strangely gave me a taste for
functional programming so might try something like Scala next. You?

------
staticelf
If you actually want to build something meaniful it's probably better to do so
from the comfort of your home with proper rest and breaks.

------
golf1052
Weird. Every hackathon I've been to has tried to inform first time hackers of
these things.

HackMIT FAQ (every year): [https://hackmit.org/#faq](https://hackmit.org/#faq)

Numerous HackBeanpot posts:

[http://blog.hackbeanpot.com/simple-advice-for-first-time-
hac...](http://blog.hackbeanpot.com/simple-advice-for-first-time-hackers/)

[http://blog.hackbeanpot.com/check-yourself-before-you-
wreck-...](http://blog.hackbeanpot.com/check-yourself-before-you-wreck-
yourself/)

(Disclosure: I helped organize HackBeanpot 2017)

~~~
romanovcode
There is nothing weird in catchy title in a blogspam article. Not even sure
how this got to the frontpage.

------
arjo1
I hate those business oriented hackathons where 90% is about the pitch. I tend
to prefer ones where actual coding gets done.

~~~
shash7
Seriously. A solid powerpoint presentation is all you need to win in those
ones.

------
lin_lin
I've been to a few demos at the end of hackathons (absolutely refuse to take
part in one myself) and have only ever seen one somewhat useful project come
through. And it was quite obvious that the team had done a fair bit of pre-
hackathon prep...

Last company I worked started pushing these in a big way. Free pizza and
goodies so I code all night, unpaid, at our work offices... who on Earth does
this kind of thing appeal to?!

~~~
Piskvorrr
It would appeal to me...or to be exact, it would have appealed to a two
decades younger revision of me. No more.

------
pjc50
The hackathon in this context seems to be an extension of the good old "lan
party", but with programming instead of games.

------
bergie
I build developer tools, and so hackathons are a useful way to evaluate
various assumptions about the toolchain: [http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/msgflo-
noflo-in-hackathons/](http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/msgflo-noflo-in-hackathons/)

That said, I hate the "build a fake startup during a weekend" concept that
pretty much all hackathons here in Berlin follow. And since the judges are
typically 100% non-technical, the best powerpoints win, without consideration
of what actually got done.

------
mianos
Also, in Sydney, quite a few of these make you sign away the rights to the end
result in exchange for the prize. (Free publicity and you can work on it
further for funding as a contractor). Imagine if you actually had a good idea
and you came to one to colaborate and ended up losing your rights to your own
idea.

------
pasbesoin
Been decades since I've been to one. I came up with an elegant solution. But
the stress was enormous. Not the work, but doing the work in the face of a
very noisy and distracting environment.

So, no, not for me. On the other hand, the equivalent work when I can go off
and think on my own, and come back and collaborate when I have an idea to vet?
And collaborate in the true group activities involved? Sure.

------
knbknb
I think Hackathons, however small, provide useful feedback for estimating your
"fluency" in a specific technology. Self-assessment gets a reality check.

------
xchip
The comments are more useful than the article (which doesn't really address
the topic)

------
petraeus
replace hack with work and you're closer to representing what a workathon is.

