
I’m tired of the opportunists and their hackathons - ryancarson
http://ryanleecarson.tumblr.com/post/23432270643/im-tired-of-the-opportunists-and-their-hackathons
======
olivercameron
I'm not entirely sure what hackathons Ryan Carson has been to, but this post
is seriously misguided.

Developers don't go to hackathons to be "code monkeys", rather they go to
build something cool in a fun environment. It's often a great break outside of
the day job to build something they would otherwise not have the motivation
to. No one is stealing their concept or forcing them to take it further, it's
just fun.

As for hacker mansions, people like to live with like-minded folk and code.
What's wrong with that? I fail to see how people are being exploited here.
Perhaps some examples would help.

~~~
ryancarson
I agree with you on the reason Developers go to hackathons. That's why they're
so likely to be taken advantage of. I'm simply saying that the young developer
community needs to be wary.

Regarding "hacker mansions" a cursory read of this job posting should reveal
what I'm referring to: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3961037>

It's clearly written by someone who thinks they can throw material things at a
Developer and then get them to work 20-hour days for three months straight.

~~~
olivercameron
I'm just not entirely sure how someone can be taken advantage of at a
hackathon. Are you implying that someone will steal their product? Or that
they'll somehow be convinced to give up a large % stake in their project by
someone who can't code? Again, an example of a hackathon where this has
happened would be great. Besmirching the name of hackathons in general is
wrong.

As for hacker mansions, the post you linked to opens with "Like the idea of
living/working in a Palo Alto hacker mansion?". If the answer to that question
is no, then the likelihood is you wouldn't apply to this job.

I disagree with your assessment that this ad is "clearly written by someone
who thinks they can throw material things at a Developer and then get them to
work 20-hour days for three months straight". From my perspective, they're
offering an amazing summer experience for the right candidate who wants to
work with them. This ad is clearly not aimed for experienced developers, but
rather young folk who are looking to get experience in the startup community.

Let's not forget that employment is at will, so if someone is not enjoying
working at such a place, they can leave at any time. I, for one, know a bunch
of people who love and thrive in such environments. As for "20-hour days",
that's just a number you've thrown out. Who's to say you couldn't have a great
work/life balance at a hacker mansion?

~~~
ryancarson
You can be taken advantage of simply by participating. Hackathons that are
tacked on to events are a great example: they're simply a way to sell more
tickets. I've been guilty of this in the past on shows we've done (Twitter's
Chirp conf, etc).

Can good things happen at these hackathons? You bet. That doesn't mean
Developers shouldn't be careful though.

 _As for "20-hour days", that's just a number you've thrown out. Who's to say
you couldn't have a great work/life balance at a hacker mansion?_

The whole point of a "hacker mansion" is to work 7 days a week for three
months straight.

~~~
olivercameron
Have you ever lived in a hacker house? I haven't, and if you haven't, then I
don't think either of us are in the position to say the whole point of living
in a hacker house is to work non-stop. You simply don't know that.

Of course lots of work is going to get done at such a place, but who said that
the experience and fun wouldn't also be incredibly beneficial to a young
developer?

~~~
koko775
I lived in the Palo Alto hacker house for a time. It wasn't "rah-rah
entrepeneurs!!!" - though it had some - it was just a comfortable place to
talk with people on similar wavelengths.

------
reledi
> It’s a joke and I’m tired of it. Developers aren’t monkeys in a cage who
> can’t wait to do the next “hackathon”. They’ve got families, bills to pay
> and every other pressure that normal people do. They don’t want to drink Red
> Bull all night and sleep under their desks.

Except I do want to do those things, and many others do as well. Not all
developers have families or lots of bills to pay. Even those with lots of
responsibilities enjoy the occasional hackathon.

If they don't appeal to you, don't go to them, but don't pass it off as a joke
because there are many people that really do enjoy hackathons and get some
value out of them.

~~~
kumarm
>>If they don't appeal to you, don't go to them

By the same logic if we don't like OP's opinion, we should stop reading and
may be stop questioning him instead?

People will and should question any new practice.

~~~
kragen
How are hackathons a new practice? We've been doing them since the 1960s if
not longer.

------
alecco
Heard at ISOJ 2012: "Making software is easy. It's the journalism that's hard"
(13th International Symposium on Online Journalism)

I can only speak of the Buenos Aires startup scene. It's even worse than OP
states. For example, this weekend an organization called "Palermo Valley"
(claims to be non-profit but runs on a .com) organized a "Geeks on a Plane"
meetup. If you see the about us pages and speakers it's full of marketroids,
SEO "experts", journalists and douchy business types. A hacker friend was
there and reports: "I just went to a palermovalley meetup and it was crawling
with nontechnical people and too loud to talk".

There was another conference-meetup oriented to startups recently, but not for
programmers. One of the talks was about how to handle the "monkeys". It was
basically how to manipulate and find ways to make junior programmers work
overtime for free, and pay them less by giving away token gifts. And of course
never hire people over 24 or "too experienced".

Make sure you get paid fairly for every hour of your work. They need us more
than we need them.

~~~
kragen
I'm the hacker friend in question (thanks!) and I seem to recall that you've
come to and enjoyed a couple of hackathons at my place :)

I've also been disappointed with other nominally hacker-oriented events. I
keep going to Argentine Bar Camps and keep being depressed at the lack of
technical content other than infosec. (Argentina has a fantastic infosec
community, which I have no interest in.)

However, I've been positively impressed with RubyAr and PyAr events. JSConf
this weekend was apparently good too. Any other recommendations?

I think there are substantial realms of human endeavor where it's really true
that "making software is easy," because they need software that's so easy that
nonhackers can make it. I think that's a huge credit to all the hackers who
have worked on software for making this stuff easy over the years.
Unfortunately, it does result in some people thinking that that's all there
is...

------
bmelton
I appreciate the sentiment greatly, and I'm only in the valley about once a
month or so (and not in the startup circles) so I can't speak to how
intentional the exploitation is, but from the other side:

At 34, I can hardly be considered the youthful optimist he casts us at. I have
a life, and a family, but I really enjoy the occasional hackathon. In fact,
I'd suspect that a lot of my best code is done without the distractions of the
house and family -- without worrying about whether or not the lawn is getting
too high, or needs watering, or if the dogs need feeding, or whether my kid
needs help with her homework, or if there's a spider that my wife needs me to
kill.

Lock me up in a room for a few days and give me root on a server and I'll bang
something out, and I'm happy to do so. Working at home is rife with
distraction, but working at the office is even worse, but while there are
certainly hackathon environments that aren't conducive to productivity, most
of them at least free the developers of any responsibility that isn't 'code
production'.

In short, they're enjoyable if they're done correctly, and they're horrible if
they aren't... but I've never felt exploited by them, so either it's unique to
the valley or I've just done a good job of avoiding that sort of thon.

~~~
ryancarson
Agreed - focused time without distraction is golden. But having experienced a
lot of hackathons, they're just thinly veiled attempts at pushing ticket sales
at events or ways for companies to get more work out of their staff.

------
petercooper
_They don’t want to drink Red Bull all night and sleep under their desks._

Some of us do from time to time. It's fun. I've got a family, etc, but I like
geeky extra curricular activities in the same way other people like gardening,
hiking, or whatever.

All that said, I've seen the sort of hackathons Ryan's describing and they're
a kind of stereotype in the same way "brogrammers" are a programmer
stereotype. They're not the majority, they're just the cases people seem to be
gossiping about. (Scoble has been to and written about quite a few good ones
over the years, I think, and here in the UK, they're certainly more down to
earth generally.)

So I think Ryan has a point for the _opportunists' hackathons_ but not
hackathons generally, and it's easy to misinterpret it that way.

------
jpdoctor
> _They’re probably just trying to cash in on your youth and optimism._

It is the nature of optimistic youth that they rarely notice. And when they
do, they quickly become old codgers (like the person typing this comment.)

~~~
Jach
I don't think you're giving enough credit to the optimistic youth! They notice
all right, most of them just don't care enough because all they really want to
do is _programming, motherfucker._ After X years in the industry their passion
might fade (and possibly their skill if they stop coding altogether), but it's
not naïvety that gives rise to the occasional optimistic youth who gets
screwed.

~~~
edwinnathaniel
I think you're giving more credit than youth deserved. Almost all youth are
exactly like that: naive.

~~~
jrockway
Conclusion: the only thing in life worth doing is telling kids to get off your
lawn.

------
Zak
I've been to two hackathon type events. I would have gone to more, but I was
living in an area without much of a startup/hacker scene.

The first was SuperHappyDevHouse, following Startup School in 2006. It was
mostly hackers working on their own projects and occasionally collaborating. I
saw no evidence of anybody attempting to exploit anybody else, especially not
non-hackers trying to get free work from hackers.

This was the second: <http://hackd.it/>. I've gone a couple times now, and
didn't feel like there was any exploitation going on there. The ratio of
hackers to non-hackers was good and people seemed to mostly be working on
things they had a stake in.

A similar event run by non-technical people looking to get their ideas built
cheap/free wouldn't be enjoyable for hackers, I expect. If you know an event
is like that, don't go.

------
wylie
Developers go to hackathons because they like to build things. What could be
simpler to understand?

~~~
mmphosis
Kinda like this...

 _Dear Hackers,

Here is the challenge:

Please create the next killer app, and give all the rights to me so I can take
all of your work and make a bundle of cash. I know you like building things,
and I like making money. Seems like a good arrangement to me. I might even
throw in a free T-shirt._

~~~
reledi
You've been going to the wrong hackathons then. If you look hard enough you'll
find some where you don't need to sign anything, and if you can't find any,
start planning one.

~~~
njharman
And that is what this post is about. Looking __hard __enough.

~~~
jarofgreen
In my experience it's the other way around. None of the hackathons I've been
to in the UK have asked for rights. I'm sure if you looked you could find one,
but clearly most aren't stupid enough to try.

------
mmahemoff
I feel that Ryan's conflating hackathons - 1-2 day coding events - with 2+
week residence situations where you would probably be trying to actually build
a business.

Some developers do enjoy drinking redbull and sleeping under a desk because
evidently they do it voluntarily. I don't see the problem with that.

What's missing from the arguments in the article? I'm generally a supporter of
hackathons, but if I was to play devil's advocate and advise caution among
developers, I'd say:

* Although the entry price is usually free/nominal, there's still the opportunity cost of your time. And hackathons can leave you pretty drained for the next day, so a weekend hackathon needs to be justifiably worth it in terms of the learning, fun, and/or social connections you'll make from it.

* Most hackathons nowadays are sponsored by companies wanting to promote their platforms among developers. If the focus or requirement is to use those platforms, you need to think hard about whether they're worth your effort.

* You will be subjected to pitches of varying lengths. I've witnessed "one day hackathons" which were half a day of preamble. So your hacking efforts may be minimal.

* Wifi access is critical and if the organisers haven't got their act together, you would have been more productive at home.

* You can learn a technology at a hackathon or you can build something cool. You will be disappointed if you expect to do both at the same event.

* If you're trying to start a business at a weekend, coding is probably not the way to do it. So if you're going to a pure coding hackathon with the aim of starting a business, you will probably be disappointed. (Startup Weekend etc make more sense for that.)

------
akkartik
I wish we had more hackathons. Working intensely together is the best way for
both sides to gauge each other. I consider myself a crusty old codger, and I'm
tired of shotgun hirings where you are expected to work together like
gangbusters after just an interview together.

------
wfrick
A lot of bitterness on behalf of the author against, essentially, people who
don't have kids and choose to spend more of their time coding. Sure we don't
want to drive people over the edge by encouraging everyone everywhere to work
all the time, but this post makes it seem like anyone who makes different life
choices than the author (not having a family) is somehow just getting
swindled.

~~~
ryancarson
I wasn't damning all hackathons. I coded through the night many times before I
had a family.

I simply said "Think twice. They’re probably just trying to cash in on your
youth and optimism."

------
alecco
Another related issue are the startup accelerators claiming to be based on the
Y Combinator model. Full of MBAs and no hackers in sight. They only offer
office space, marketing advice, template spreadsheets, and a very tiny bit of
money (none of it for paying workers).

------
jefflinwood
I disagree with this - I've been to several hackathons/API hack days, and like
anything I guess you could be exploited, but I don't really see it.

What's nice is not only did I get to focus on building one thing straight out
from start to finish in the alloted time, but it's mine - I get to
commercialize it, market it, etc.

I definitely wasn't exploited - for all three of the ones where I've won a
prize, I was the driving force/sole developer/whatever, so there wasn't some
evil "business guy" getting me to work for free :) For Startup Weekend, I
pitched, no one wanted to build what I wanted to build, so I joined another
team. No big deal.

One of the best ones I went to was simply a "you hack all night on your own
thing, no distractions, we're just keeping the lights on and ordering pizza."
I think it might have cost $10 for the space.

------
hanswesterbeek
Agree with Ryan. And besides, what good can possibly come from say 48 hours of
caffeine-fueled chasing of shiny dangling objects. That's not how you make
software

~~~
jarofgreen
That's not how you make finished, polished, robust software, it's true.

Is it how you try out an idea, play with something new, experiment with a
really rough prototype and get instant feedback? Yes.

------
believeUme
The problem for me is not so much the hackathon, but the commodified
entrepreneur in general. The whole ecosystem of accelerators, incubators, and
mansions generate innovation culture not innovation. Kind of like going to
jazz school. A total oxymoron.

------
mekarpeles
Sometimes it's not about opportunism. I live in a 4 bedroom hacker house with
11 entrepreneurs/programmers. It's cramped, we have bunk beds and sleeping
bags. I've personally never been happier.

Despite many of us being (second time) founders of companies, contractors, or
having jobs, we hack together several times a week, work 14+ hour days
(including weekends), manage CodeSF events monthly, find time to attend
hackathons together, and learn + share knowledge together at our local
hackerspace, Noisebridge.

Yes, there are opportunists in the world who want to make a quick buck.

There are also a lot of people who are genuinely enthused (obsessed) with
computer science and who devote their lives to knowledge... Who learn how to
implement JK flip flops on a breadboard, build languages entirely from lambda
calculus, and study convex optimization in their free time. More importantly,
they do so because they love hacking, not because they love being a hacker
(though I admit hacker culture and community is something I value).

At this stage in my life, getting married and having a family would rob me of
my youth more-so than any weekend hackathon -- but I'm sure this mindset will
change sooner or later.

There are plenty of great hacker meetups and hackathons (Super Happy Dev House
SHDH, for instance) and SF hackerspaces (Noisebridge, Hacker Dojo) which
provide non-opportunistic methods for furthering your hacker-foo.

Ryan, I am not sure how many hackathons you've attended or possibly even
hosted at "Treehouse Mansion", but it seems like you, especially, would
understand the importance of hacker meetups and how to host one effectively.
It's also possible you hire great engineers and not hackers, which is fine
too.

Here is the _real_ problem: More people want to be hackers than are hackers.
Many people only want the stigmas that comes along with being a 'hacker', a
term whose meaning has been diluted and whose definition perpetually
misrepresented and obfuscated by media.

In San Francisco, for instance, the terms entrepreneur and hacker have been
squished uncomfortably close for my liking, partly as a result of media like
Hacker News (who I'd argue contributes to the conflation of the term 'hacker'
by catering primarily to a general technical startup audience).

I enjoy hacker news, admire Paul Graham and the rest of YC, and believe that
anyone can launch a successful startup, with enough hard work and dedication.
One problem is, great hackers are not always great entrepreneurs. Great
entrepreneurs understand where there's demand for a hack, where many hackers
simply want to work on the most exciting and technically challenging problems.
Sometimes these two overlap beautifully (I think Stripe is a good example).

The bottom line is, movies like, "Social Network", and media like TechCrunch
have spotlighted mergers and acquisitions, high valuations, and a party life
style as hacker/entrepreneurial culture. From my experience, this has impacted
hackathons in that judges favor high impact web 2.0 viable products over
"righteous hacks".

~~~
eli_gottlieb
_There are also a lot of people who are genuinely enthused (obsessed) with
computer science and who devote their lives to knowledge... Who learn how to
implement JK flip flops on a breadboard, build languages entirely from lambda
calculus, and study convex optimization in their free time. More importantly,
they do so because they love hacking, not because they love being a hacker
(though I admit hacker culture and community is something I value)._

Somehow I don't think graduate students are in on this Valley subculture
stuff.

~~~
mekarpeles
I appreciate your perspective. I can only speak from personal experience. I am
a PhD dropout passionate about entrepreneurship and computer science (I must
admit I gravitate more to hacker culture than valley subculture).

I think graduate school is actually a pretty good selector since many people
attend graduate school because they are passionate about academia. I think
Stanford is a good example of a source where graduate students have gone on to
lead successful ventures in the valley.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
I think we've accidentally conflated two things here.

Graduate school is certainly a good selector for invention: PhD school is _all
about_ research, and therefore invention, by definition. These folks in
academia and in certain companies did found the hacker culture.

However, that hacker culture has now become strongly dissociated from Silicon
Valley "hacker culture", which has by now become more about "innovation" and
entrepreneurship than about actually building new, awesome stuff.

EDIT: It appears we're violently agreeing.

------
venturebros
Isn't pushing perks like 4-day work week,etc you do at your company the same
thing you are talking about regarding trying to cash in on someones youth and
optimism?

~~~
ryancarson
Theoretically, the people that benefit the most from 4-day weeks are Dads and
Mom as they can spend 50% more time with their kids.

------
EnderMB
A friend of mine used to work as a lawyer, and many of them used to get
involved in mock trials, where they could test themselves on a complicated
case and see how the other half does things.

Although this isn't much different and an argument against this post I do
agree with Ryan Carson in that a lot of developers are judged on things they
do outside of work, as if not going to hackathons or working on open-source
projects makes you a worse coder than someone who does.

I work on my own projects from time to time, but I know many developers who
treat it as a 9-6 job and a good number of them are far better than me. Carson
is right in that there are a LOT of opportunists out there who are more than
happy to take advantage of developers. I know people in my own area that use
hackathons as a way to promote their own company, and while they're not
"selling" this code they're definitely using it as a way to promote their
business.

Should developers care? Probably not, but given the attitude towards
developers in general more of them would do good to be more cynical.

------
Flimm
I just went to my first hackathon this weekend, and I quite enjoyed it. Doing
a week-end project is much more fun in groups, and there is a final
presentation to enjoy and aim for. For this particular hackathon, we had
sponsors who offered us free food and five prizes of 2000 pounds each.
Considering they were only twenty teams, that's really not bad.

------
pbiggar
Normally, the majority of comments disagree with the OP. That's the nature of
commenting. But in this case, the disagreement is almost complete: I see only
one comment slightly in agreement.

I have no idea where this post came from. I can only assume ryancarson is
going to different hackathons and hacker houses than everyone else.

------
why-el
I have never been to a hackathon, but I do find the conditions of some of them
a little strange. Why not provide normal work (call them fun if you want)
hours for participants, say 8 hours distributed over three to four days? If
your concern is people using the spare hours to work more on their products,
well then great, make that part of the rules. In this case they will get three
8 hours shifts with all the support you can provide as an organizer, and the
rest of the day they are on their own (StackOverflowing, real life
feedback..). I can't help but notice that one of the reasons the author is
complaining can be traced back to this let's-code-all-night type of deal. If
only they can make that optional.

~~~
drumdance
Reality intrudes. If you have a day job, or even if you're a student, it's
hard to allocate 3-4 days to something that is not either paying the bills or
contributing to your studies.

------
EternalFury
I think the point was: Do whatever makes you happy any way you want it, but
don't project any particular model as the best or only way to reach the
ultimate goal.

I can write great code alone, in my man cave, with a glass of wine or a bottle
of beer. It works for me. Coding in more public places also works for me.
Coding in the backyard is great as well. Doing pair programming with a friend
is also awesome.

But, I would never impose these various ways to code as being better or worse
than any other.

Because Facebook got so rich so fast, there is definitely a crowd of people
out there, who believe in silver bullets and who now claim that a hacker that
won't join hackathons can't be good. That's nonsense.

------
pud
I've never been to a hackathon but as a coder it sounds fun to me.

Not everything's about the money.

~~~
ryancarson
Philip, you were at the Chirp Hackathon. Bam! :)

~~~
itmag
Congrats at your comment id! Maybe you'll get a prize from pg :)

~~~
ryancarson
Ha ha - didn't notice. Well spotted :)

------
namank
Its a way for up and coming devs to get known; else we are left at at mercy of
YOUR contact network which may not know about us.

Its also expedient in terms of time we have to invest pursuing that position.

------
jaredsohn
One role of hackathons that I haven't seen mentioned here is they provide a
way for developers and API makers to interact. For developers, it can helps
them learn about different APIs in person by interacting with technical people
from the offering companies. For companies with APIs, it helps them get
developer mindshare, first-hand experience with how developers use their APIs,
and offers the possibilities of having demos they can show future customers.

------
rmason
I don't think you can tar and feather all hackathons. Some of the events I
support are where groups unite to help charities or civic hacking that
supports communities.

~~~
ryancarson
Building things for charities is an entirely different thing. I should've
clarified that in the article. I'm referring to for-profit ventures

------
sparknlaunch12
>> _"I have a Computer Science degree, but it’s been five years since I’ve
written a line of commercial code, so now I employ very talented Developers to
build product."_

Where did you find these talented developers? Was it a hackathon?

While there may be some opportunists out there looking to exploit young
coders, the vast majority are seeking to legitimately employ bright young/old
talent. Well at least I thought so?

Has anyone had experiences of being exploited? Please share.

~~~
ryancarson
I found our Chief Product Officer by tweeting. Then he's recruited our entire
Product Team through friend's recommendations.

------
rodly
I'm surprised this article is on the front page of HN. If developers are not X
but are Y, then surely all of these schemes to employ and get developers with
X tactics will soon disappear for lack of efficacy.

------
exim
Hackathons are good demonstration of some underlying reasons why non-software
engineers hesitate to call us engineers as well :)

Would you live in a house built during a "civil-engineerathon"?

~~~
kragen
You must not be from the US, because apparently you haven't heard of Habitat
for Humanity, which builds houses in buildathons, or the Amish, who do the
same thing when they build their houses and barns. (Surely you've heard of a
"barn-raising"?) Maybe you should watch this video:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0ph0rA-A9U>

And you must not know much about construction, either, because there are
regular contests where teams compete to see who can build houses fastest,
which are well-known among people who work in construction. Unfortunately I'm
not one of them, so I don't remember what they're called.

------
tzaman
You have a point, but doing it every once in a while doesn't hurt (I do it
once or twice per year), since it's a great way to meet new people (and
opportunities)

~~~
ryancarson
I still would steer clear of things like TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathons and the
like. They're just a way for media orgs to get page views and generate buzz.

Yes, a couple folks at those kind of events get a lot of press and attention,
but everyone else just wastes their time.

~~~
tzaman
You are right - I'm not that familiar with the US scene, being from Slovenia
(EU). My last _hackaton_ was Copenhagen Startup Weekend, which I think is a
similar event, since I "had" to code A LOT :) The good thing the emphasis was
not on media/buzz, but connecting people (I guess that's why it was at Nokia
HQ in Denmark :).

------
wamatt
" Developers aren’t monkeys in a cage who can’t wait to do the next
“hackathon”. They’ve got families, bills to pay and every other pressure that
normal people do. " - Ryan Carson

Really? So most hackers that go to these things have families?

------
rabidsnail
I think it's time to dust off the word "carpetbagger".

------
sneak
s/^I\'m tired of/Fuck/g;

------
jsavimbi
People are comfortable when others in their class assume the chronology of
traditional employment. In the office, nine to five Monday through Friday,
drinks after work on Thirsty Thursday, see you on Monday again. That's called
career stagnation and threatens no one, hence it's widely accepted.

The way out of stagnation is to develop methodologies and processes that take
advantage of the inherent weaknesses of the stagnated. Rooming a bunch of guys
together or maxing out on Red Bull isn't the answer. Finding smart, dedicated
and talented people to work with and avoiding the bozos is.

------
commonersense
Hmmm. How is this different from an incubator? Maybe the similarities are more
interesting than the differences.

