9 ms·

Hackathon Be Gone

268 points by nharada 11y ago

rhizome 11y ago
I'm sure good work comes out of these, but I think it would probably happen anyway. I really don't understand why people are going to these things still.
- EdHominem 11y ago
  The ones I go to are free and don't ask for ownership of the product, only pictures and screenshots where applicable to advertise the event. It's like working in a hackspace for a night (which I often do when on the road) combined with a friendly competition. I'd avoid a for-profit hackathon like the plague.
rememberlenny 11y ago
I've been organizing Hackathons for the past few years. They have been incredibly successful in a number of ways. The group that organizes them has recognized a few powerful factors: - The organizers are diverse and have a wide array of skills I didnt start the group that I have collaborated with, but I immediately tried to contribute to the best of my ability. We have people who are good at promoting, thinking about diversity, good a logistics, organizing speakers, etc. - Intentionally diverse groups in gender/skill/background We spend time to open applications, then manually select the participants who are accepted. From there, we keep a high touch relationship with 100-150 people, so that they are excited even before attending. - Pre-crafted/well-rounded teams Based on applications, we make pre-crafted teams that have balanced skill sets. We make these teams based on our understanding of the participants, and their own experiences. - (most importantly) NO PRIZES We make our events based on the valued gained from meeting and working with people who are fundamentally interesting. We build the concept of the event based around getting cool people together to work on cool problems. For the past two years, we have welcomed well over 600+ people in 4 different cities. - Partner with awesome organizations with strong brand names We spend significant amount of time to raise sponsorship. We make a point to involve cool organizations in the space, so that the event attracts high quality participants. Even if a great organization that we like cant sponsor money, we try to involve them as a partner in someway, so we can involve their staff. This has always paid off. --------------------------- Reference: - http://hackingjournalism.com/mobile/ http://hackingjournalism.com/mobile/ (Based on mobile journalism at MIT in Cambridge) - http://hackingjournalism.com/video/ http://hackingjournalism.com/video/ (Based on video production at Conde Nast in New York) - http://hackingjournalism.com/ http://hackingjournalism.com/ (Based on data science at Washington Post in DC) - http://codexhackathon.com http://codexhackathon.com (Based on book publishing at SF and Boston) - http://audiohackation.com http://audiohackation.com (Based on podcasting with ThisAmericanLife in New York)
- marssaxman 11y ago
  I'm curious: how do you market these events? I have literally never in my life encountered a hackathon directly and only know they exist because people talk about them; they are a purely theoretical construct in my world. Through what channels do people discover your events?
  - wgman 11y ago
    https://mlh.io/seasons/s2016/events https://mlh.io/seasons/s2016/events Is very popular for promotion.
    - marssaxman 11y ago
      Are hackathons just a university thing, then...?
      - rememberlenny 11y ago
        No. Not at all. The average age for our hackathons was closer to 35 than 20.
        marssaxman 11y ago
        Where do you advertise them? How do people find them?
        rememberlenny 11y ago
        We used journo-tech communities like Hacks/Hackers, college boards, company mailing lists (ie. the post design group), or directly in touch with influencers (ie. NYTimes technical evangelist).
        marssaxman 11y ago
        I ask because I feel like I keep up pretty well with tech news, reading multiple news aggregators every day - and yet I am clearly not connected to whatever information channels people are using to promote hackathons, since I never hear about them. I have no idea whether I'd want to participate in them even if I did hear about them, but it makes me aware that there must be some avenues for tech news communication that I am totally missing out on.
TACIXAT 11y ago
I stopped playing CTFs because the crunch time was too much. Burning a weekend reverse engineering and programming is fun, but then I lose the weekend. I'd like to see some casual CTFs / hackathons. Extended timeline, a few weeks to a month, fine if people with jobs play for fun.
- CiPHPerCoder 11y ago
  Something like MicroCorruption of CryptoPals, then? (I haven't tried Star Fighter yet, but I imagine it's similar too.)
  - TACIXAT 11y ago
    Thanks. MicroCorruption is on my to do list. CTF style can be fun because of the collaboration and the variety of categories.
hoodoof 11y ago
The only "thon" I am willing to hack is my own.
ansy 11y ago
Your commercial and competitive hackathons are already covered well by TopCoder and similar competitive programming competitions. There are commercial challenges which generally build against some kind of proprietary API. Then there are competitive Single Round Matches (SRM) which are purely data structure and algorithm based. Grandstanding and networking sound like b-school entrepreneurship competitions. Who can make the best slide deck. Plenty of companies got funding with nothing more than a few presentation slides and some good talk so I agree it's a potentially valuable thing. It just doesn't reward technical prowess so why feature it at all? Hackathons are a blend of all of this and it doesn't really do any of them well. My main complaint about hackathons is that they are a poorer recruiting tool than most people want to believe. Corporate sponsors think they'll be able to spot top talent easier. And some participants think hackathons improve their chances of getting hired. In my brief experience, the success rate is very low on both sides. At best, I think a hackathon is a fun, creative, and social collegiate experience for the participants and another avenue for companies to market their brands to impressionable young minds.
hoodoof 11y ago
I takes me the better part of six months to build something worthwhile. I know I'm a slow programmer but it's still hard to see that anything but trivialities can be built in a weekend.
- nxzero 11y ago
  Point is to get something done, force you to make choice, have a deadline, etc. -- not something else, like production ready code.
  - alexashka 11y ago
    The older you get - the less patience you have for tight deadlines and 'forcing yourself to make a choice'. That's just having more energy than you know what to do with. The tragedy is young people have lots of energy and are scatterbrained and old people are sometimes wise but too tired. The future is having older wise folk write out proposals to ambitious projects, and have young people fill in the necessary parts. Too bad it's just not 'sexy', ambitious projects are long, boring and require upsetting other people who are old, boring and don't want to listen. Modernizing the medicine field is one simple example of such an ambitious problem.
    - stan_rogers 11y ago
      "It's amazing how much 'mature wisdom' resembles being too tired." - Robert A. Heinlein
    - jqm 11y ago
      "The future is having older wise folk write out proposals to ambitious projects, and have young people fill in the necessary parts." That's generally the past and present as well. With some notable exceptions I think that's how the world has pretty much worked through most of human history.
    - reitanqild 11y ago
      > The older you get - the less patience you have for tight deadlines and 'forcing yourself to make a choice'. Me, I past 30 a few years ago and I (often) find it useful to give myself deadlines and force myself to get things done. Things/words that have helped me: * Pomodoro technique / time boxing * Get it working, get it right, get it fast * Cult of Done That said, yes, I am also skeptic to the kind of "hackaton culture" that is being mentioned here.
jmspring 11y ago
I've never been a fan of "hackathons" for long term projects going back a number of years. That said, the group I am part of, we regularly engage in focused "hackfests", where there is a clear goal, people work together, and a lot gets done in 3-5 days. Is it always complete, no, but for solving spot problems, short term deep dives can be great. Generalizing that, as hacktahons try to, there will be some interesting successes, but that won't be the norm.
escherize 11y ago
Going to corperate sponsored hackathons and hacking on your own side project is the way I've really enjoyed myself at a few hackathons. I don't really want to learn $COMPANY's API, so I just hack on whatever and enjoy the atmosphere.
fgandiya 11y ago
Personally, the main reason I go to these hackathons is just to expose myself to a bigger network and places with stronger CS communities than the one at my really small liberal arts college just to see what I'm missing out on (which is a lot).It seems like a necessary evil and it has worked in a way since I've finally been able to get an internship interview from it. Otherwise, I agree with his points. Not sleeping for 24+ hours really takes its toll, especially if you need to drive back to where you came from. Food is mostly junk, but this one other hackathon I went to had really well-made food, so there's that. They have been unrewarded since I always lose steam before I get to make an MVP and they do seem to be very commercialized and they're really trying to get groundbreaking stuff from us within a weekend, like the last hackathon had very specific prizes relating to using certain company's API as well has performing "health innovations". I also like Brian's suggestions to provide more specific hackathons so that I know exactly what to expect from them. These events take up a huge portion of my weekends theI should be using on school, so it seems like a good idea to pick those which seem most useful at the time.
p_eter_p 11y ago
The worst is company hackathons. I will always remember the look on my boss's face when I told him I was quite happy to participate in the (mandatory) 24 hour hackathon, as long as he paid me for my time outside of normal business hours. Turns out it wasn't so mandatory.
alexashka 11y ago
Hackathons are a fundamentally unsustainable, bad idea that can only thrive on young people having more energy than they know what to do with. I imagine they'll continue to drag along, like most conferences, like most people, who just don't know what else to do, so they do something that someone else said was a good idea and isn't intimidating.
caseysoftware 11y ago
In Austin, we started running an event called "Finish Up Weekend" or FU Weekend - http://fuweekend.com/ http://fuweekend.com/ ;) We have some simple rules: * you can't start anything new; * you have to celebrate something being done - usually with a round of applause; * there are no prizes - only the satisfaction of being done. While there is plenty of coding, we've had designers finish their portfolios, screenwriters finish pilots, an artist finish his display, and even saw a sewing project completed. And to top it off, we charge a nominal $20 for the weekend - with 4 meals, a great deal - and sell out every time. We're putting together a howto doc to franchise the idea.. just need to finish it. ;)
- caseysoftware 11y ago
  Btw, if you're interested in hosting one, drop me a note. My contact info is in my profile.
- maxxxxx 11y ago
  Great idea!
- gboudrias 11y ago
  That sounds amazing! I went to Austin once for a tech conference and the vibe was really amazing. I could really use something like this, though I feel like 20$ of your food is a lot better than 20$ of our food (I'm in Montreal).
  - graeme 11y ago
    Another vote for Montreal. This event sounds like a great idea. (Already spoke with the organizers about this in another thread. I think they need someone who's organized an event of similar scale. That's not me, but I'm very willing to help out anyone who can take a lead role)
- grep-cat 11y ago
  That sounds really cool! I tried to sign up but it looks like the form is broken. Is there a way I can sign up to be notified when the next FU Weekend is announced?
im_down_w_otp 11y ago
I really dislike the corporate hackathon format. It can be great fun as an informal community gathering of developers to work on random pet projects, but the reality of the corporate hackathon trends toward being company sponsored and promoted technical debt creation. It often seems like the corporate hackathon is the clearest distillation of the "business" people not understanding how to create a mature, healthy culture and continuous process around engineering autonomy, ownership, and innovation. Instead relying on campy caricatures of basement dwelling Mtn. Dew & pizza fueled "hackers".
- YZF 11y ago
  I'm with you. Where I work Hackathons happen because someone in management has heard it's a cool thing to do. Practically nothing that happens in those ever is shipped and nothing is learnt from the experience. It's just a way of wasting people's time and appearing to be cool. When I was younger I used to work through the night with friends on stuff we wanted to do. It was fun and social. There was no commercial motivation or value. We just had a lot of time on our hands being geeks with no social life and we enjoyed building things. In a corporate setting this is maybe similar to Google's 20% time which as far as I hear isn't really working any more either. The closest thing to this in my day job world is people taking some time to just do whatever they want to do without giving a damn what management thinks. If you can do a little of that in your workplace then you're basically getting the "true" hackathon effect ...
nkozyra 11y ago
Anti-hackathon has been in full swing for a few years now, but I think it makes sense to recognize that for some people it has social - and some times professional - benefit. It's neither inherently good nor bad, it's a chance to create with some new individuals over a short time period. Yes, it gets co-opted by corporate marketing, yes you eat pizza for a day or so. But these are minor issues if you find other benefit like learning of new processes, tools, technologies, etc. More than anything, it just seems inherently "uncool" at this point, a proverbial pet rock for developers. Which is a shame, there is value there if you're willing to separate the concept from the aesthetic that surrounds the events themselves.
stevebmark 11y ago
This seems like a strange critique because hackathons are so opt-in. Yes there are often problems but no one I know goes expecting to win any prizes. Who cares about the prize? If you're going to try to win something, don't go. There are people who earn their income gaming hackathons with big prizes, and you won't compete with them.
apatters 11y ago
How about a hackathon sponsored by an open source project? Where everyone spends the allotted time contributing some improvement to that project. Seems like fun, something I would participate in, and the sponsor potentially gets a lot of benefit for cheap/free.
- 0xcde4c3db 11y ago
  OpenBSD hackathons have been held at least once per year for ~17 years [1]. [1] http://www.openbsd.org/hackathons.html http://www.openbsd.org/hackathons.html
  - nayden 11y ago
    Should also add that they are a very different type of events than the ones outlined in this post. Competition is replaced by collaboration. Prizes by internal reward. Junk food by beer drinking.
sbierwagen 11y ago
In addition to all the provided stimulants, hackers are encouraged to work through the night. Sure there may be reminders that you should sleep when tired, but why a 24- hour event instead of a 12-hour one then? Shut off the power and wifi from 10 PM to 6 AM.
- ajdlinux 11y ago
  The one hackathon event that I regularly participate in (GovHack) generally closes down between 11pm and 7am or thereabouts.
DGCA 11y ago
At my previous company, we had a hackathon where the theme was, more or less, bringing the company more together through technology. ~12 of us made 3 separate teams, came up with ideas, and worked like 12 hours on a Saturday hoping to be declared the winner. When all was said and done, the judges—all non technical—took about 30 minutes to decide that it was a 3-way tie. If you're going to make something a competition, just pick a winner.
- shultays 11y ago
  the judges—all non technical—took about 30 minutes to decide that it was a 3-way tie. in GGJ, we worked pretty much non-stop with like 5 hours sleep a day for two days and they decided not to make judges. hell, the GGJ ended around 5pm and we couldn't even check other project because everything was so rushed.
octref 11y ago
The worst thing I feel about hackathon is that it instills a bad culture of software development into young programmers. People spend a weekend writing crappy code and wiring APIs together, expecting to get money and fame. In the real world, we don't need more crude and fragile apps which leverage most of its work to frameworks. We need more solid, performant, well-designed apps. Sadly, none of these points are priorities at hackathons. We also need more programmers with empathy, perseverance, dedication, and ability to work on large projects without burning themselves out physically and mentally. Hackathon doesn't seem to cultivate these traits either. I hope instead of going to hackathons, more people can try building semester-long, meaningful projects and take time to maintain them, or try contributing to open source software.
- sotojuan 11y ago
  Hackathons cultivate the opposite of "empathy, perseverance, dedication, and ability to work on large projects". They make people hypercompetitive and unwilling to collaborate or help just so they can get their `sponsor_api` mixed with `sponsor_api` app done. I'm making a big generalization but IMO sponsored hackathons cultivate some of the worst aspects of our culture.
  - zwetan 11y ago
    and worst, the sale pitch have more value, than the code written to build the app
  - reitanqild 11y ago
    So, basically you violently agree? ;-)
- lmm 11y ago
  I think this kind of "worse is better" is actually a very valuable thing to learn. These "crude and fragile apps which leverage most of its work to frameworks" provide a lot of value to people, which is ultimately a lot more important than engineering pride.
  - 11y ago
BinaryIdiot 11y ago
I think for Hackathons to be a positive experience it depends one two things. First it has to have an end goal where, even if you don't come in first place, you still leave with something that will be useful. From an incredible learning experience to something that could make you money. Second it shouldn't cost you anything directly except for time. Working extra hours for your own company? That's costing you more than time because it's becoming a requirement ("Look at Johnny over there, he's gone to all our hackathons and now look at him in a more senior position. Do you not want to move ahead?"). For instance I just finished participating in Launch's Hackathon this weekend. Other than the costs I paid for my travel I paid nothing but time (they provided all food, drinks and not all of it was unhealthy) and in the end, even though I didn't win a prize, I left with the start of a really cool product (if I do say so myself) where, realistically, I think I'm about a week from delivering a decent, beta experience. I even created a Twitter account just so I could post my fun experience as I went: @heysimex TL;DR: hackathons that cost money, that don't provide you with SOMETHING useful even if you don't win or that are run by your own company are rarely good experiences (unless you win). Hackathons that cost you nothing but time and you have something at the end of the thing? Awesome. I love it!
zwetan 11y ago
I see hackathon as a scam or how to teach early to young new passionate developers that the "norm" is to work long hours for next to no pay, pizza? yeah good enough. It also vehiculate the idea that code is a just commodity, that anyone can piss some code over few days and build full working apps supposed to impress people. Well, understand those poor company, they are not sure you can be a good slave, so they need to test you over a week-end: does he/she complain for not being paid? not sleeping? being forced to use this API vs another? howdy boy, "slap on the back", here your prize, by the way everything you have produced this week-end is owned by whoever organized the hackathon and they can do whatever they want with it while still not paying you, now go away you need to sleep and you stink. I saw companies organizing hackathon for their own employee, not something open to other developers or involving a public API, no sir, a company week-end event. They did those hackathon to allow their own employee to work on "what they like" or "what they did not have time to work on during working hours", but still have to be related to the company business, in exchange of beers and pizzas .. oh and if you don't show up we'll know you are a lazy bastard not inline with the company direction. So yeah maybe not all hackathon are like that, but most of them has this feel of scam where at the end you want to scream "fuck you pay me".
dheera 11y ago
"There are a lot of teams who bring their existing projects to the party" I wonder if this can be approached with rules, such as: * Provide datasets, interesting hardware, or other things that the participants do not have in advance. Release them only at the start of the hackathon. In the judging criteria, have heavy weighting for how well the teams make use of the provided resources. * Forbid, on honor code, to bring your startup (or any other project you have started before) to the hackathon. * Prohibit, on honor code, use of any code written prior to the hackathon unless said code has been under an open source license for 3 months, advertised and available for the public to download, AND your team does not represent the majority of the contributions to said code. * Define one or more problems to solve, within the scope of the hackathon. Don't release the problems until the start of the hackathon. Require all teams to work on a solution to any of the stated problems.
- potatolicious 11y ago
  You can put the rules in - some of your suggestions are already standard in many hackathons, but I doubt it would make much of a difference. Many hackathons are judged or attended by major investors, so the incentive to cheat is extraordinary. The last hackathon I went to there were several teams that clearly had everything lined up ahead of time and were there to pitch, and I doubt you can get rid of this without getting rid of the investors. More than that, many hackathons pride themselves on being interesting for investors, so they're incentivized to look the other way so that the presentations are as impressive/fundable as possible. I don't think I'll be going to another hackathon for a good long while - the combination of people who seem to have no interest in the spirit of hacking on stuff, and the incredibly toxic culture I saw (getting smashed, pounding back energy drinks, flying drones around annoying people, nerf gun fights through the hallways, it was like a goddamn freshman dorm but sweatier and somehow more childish), makes me completely not interested at all.
  - dheera 11y ago
    Get rid of the investors then. :) Get corporate sponsorship instead to run the hackathon.
unethical_ban 11y ago
Whatever. Company hackathons are bullshit, but if people do it for fun, who cares if it's unhealthy and unsanitary? (supposedly). It's like LAN parties, but programming instead of gaming. I do like the FU Weekend idea, though.
kumarski 11y ago
YC and hackathons break my ketosis. :( The downregulation of dopamine is partly my fault, but damn the food is beyond just visually tempting.
mdxn 11y ago
The hackathon that they mention in the post (Mhacks) put up an application process and enforced a 50/50 gender ratio. In the weeks leading up to the event, I overheard many defeated conversations from fellow CS students over anxiety of getting rejected from this hackathon because they were male. The females didn't share the same anxiety, but it definitely made them feel down that they wouldn't be able to participate with their male friends who were rejected/waitlisted. Overall, the fact that things ended up this way made everyone feel very awkward, guilty, and discouraged. Hopefully its success makes up for the hidden fractures that will be felt by our student body for quite a while after. Mhacks lists the 50/50 gender divide on their site followed by the reasoning: "because it’s about time for a little change in the tech world" Disclosure: I am a CS-Eng student at this university. I did not plan to attend or care about this hackathon.
- hueving 11y ago
  That's the dumbest barrier I've heard in a long time to enter a hackathon. Your gender shouldn't prevent you from getting into an event to get work done, it should be based on the merit of what you want to do. Did anyone ask if their rejection would be reconsidered if they chopped their penis off?
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - collyw 11y ago
    We are sexist in this industry apparently, so the way to solve it is to choose people based on their sex....
- turkishrevenge 11y ago
  Just exploit the identity-political zeitgeist that's overtaken universities lately: claim yourself genderqueer, non-binary presenting as male. With the right incantation, the organizers will fold like a house of cards, lest they suffer the blowback to excluding a "righteous" participant.
  - 11y ago
ChemicalWarfare 11y ago
Was at a couple of "internal" hackatons ran by my employer as a part of the offsite all hands meeting. There was plenty of corporate politics involved with judging, other than that it was time well spent. The angle was to bring new ideas to the table and build an MVP/POC to demo the idea. Overall was a positive experience other than the politics involved. The event was voluntary, took place in the hotel with beer in the hotel bar and nice catered lunches.
kamens 11y ago
At Khan Academy we've been running ours as "Healthy Hackathons" — we kick people out at 11:45pm to get sleep, bring in healthy food, snacks, and activities, and always include our work week as part of the schedule (not just weekends). We actually just held our Monday-Friday Healthy Hack Week last week (http://healthyhackathon.khanacademy.org http://healthyhackathon.khanacademy.org). One of my favorite weeks ever, particularly because we encourage "hacks" of all kinds that don't have to include coding, and the entire company dives in. They've been internal only so far. Maybe some day we'll open it up. After a week of hackathon'ing intensely I'll walk in tomorrow more energized than ever (and eager to figure out how to use some of the team's work in upcoming projects). The commitment to staying healthy while hacking feels like it's paying off for us. Plus it demonstrates our commitment to long-term investment in teammates.
- jbarham 11y ago
  Actually what your so-called "Healthy Hackatons" demonstrates to me is that not a lot of Khan Academy employees are married with kids. I know my wife would be annoyed if I was goofing off at the office until midnight for a week leaving her to feed our kids and put them to bed by herself. But, hey, it's all for the greater good of "disrupting" education! It's ironic that obviously very few Khan Academy employees have children of their own, but that's probably because it's only a few years since they were children themselves...
  - brianshaler 11y ago
    You can express your disagreement with staying past office hours without being condescending. Though, the post only indicated no participants were allowed to work past a time, not that everyone must work until that time.
  - kamens 11y ago
    Not really worth arguing online with somebody who'd make a statement about the demographics of a company they know nothing about -- but for sake of clarifying your demonstrably false claim: we have lots of parents and family folk at KA, at all levels including senior leadership. We do not require that anybody stays at our hackathon until 11:45, but we do require that people get sleep. These decisions -- and the decision to not only host over a weekend -- come from our family-aware mindset.
ww520 11y ago
The point on marketing is spot on. I've seen team won first prize solely based on Powerpoint.
- hueving 11y ago
  They wrote PowerPoint? If so, that's impressive enough to win a hackathon IMO. Lots of people use PowerPoint every day.
matt_wulfeck 11y ago
Is it possible that the value derived from a hackathon depends largely on your age and nothing else? When I was 18 I loved this kind of stuff and would do it for fun, if nothing other to learn and make friends. Now you'd be hard pressed to get me there unless my team was people I know and worked with in the past. And it would be almost irresponsible to see parents there.
hueving 11y ago
The author says this: >If this sounds like advocacy for mediocrity, instead of merit, it is not. Keep in mind the following facts And then follows up with a bunch of excuses about how they are not measuring merit by any means because traditional presentations and different project timelines are to difficult to compare for merit. "it sounds like we don't want reward merit, and that's because we don't have the competence to measure it"
mruniverse 11y ago
I lump company hackatons in with company team building activities. Shallow attempts at making something happen.
warrenmar 11y ago
Selling Out and the Death of Hacker Culture by Rodney Folz https://medium.com/@folz/selling-out-and-the-death-of-hacker-culture-fec1f101b138#.b3o5c9x4c https://medium.com/@folz/selling-out-and-the-death-of-hacker... Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10249887 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10249887
k__ 11y ago
Hackathons are cool, but not those company funded ones.
callmeed 11y ago
>> Salesmanship is rewarded. The rewards are given strictly based on the presentation This is not a bad thing. I've won hackathons partly–but not strictly–because we had a team that could present well in front of judges and an audience. Public speaking, sales, and presenting to others is an important skill in business and entrepreneurship. The author would be wise to convey this to his students. A hacker who can build a product of value AND sell it well is a force to be reckoned with. Sorry, but I love hackathons as long as they're run somewhat well. If I don't like the food, I'll go eat somewhere else. I'm too old these days to work through the night so I usually get a hotel room and get a good sleep. But college students are already used to studying through the night, so I don't see what the big deal is. Beyond the intersection of making <-> presenting (see above), I also love that hackathons force you to work within constraints–most notably time. Its a great way to network–especially if there are corporate sponsors. I've met some great friends at hackathons and I've received job offers from companies I've met. I've even been offered investment in a project. Yeah, people cheat. Yeah, some hackathons are poorly run. The pros still outweigh the cons for me though.
- xyzzy123 11y ago
  Why don't they just call it a talkathon then? :p
- collyw 11y ago
  "Public speaking, sales, and presenting to others is an important skill in business and entrepreneurship." Not so much with writing software. Communicating with others yes, but not necessarily in a public setting.
mightybyte 11y ago
None of the hackathons that I've gone to seemed to have any of these problems. Hac Phi [1] in Philly and Hac Bos [2] in Boston are both fantastic and have been tremendously valuable to my career. Last year Hac Phi started to distance themselves from the more recent connotations of the word "hackathon" and started using the word "exchange" instead. This switch makes me a little sad because I think the portmanteau of "hack" and "marathon" is still very relevant to those events. [1] https://wiki.haskell.org/Hac_%CF%86 https://wiki.haskell.org/Hac_%CF%86 [2] (http://www.meetup.com/Boston-Haskell/events/223607923/ http://www.meetup.com/Boston-Haskell/events/223607923/)
phamilton 11y ago
This highlights a bigger problem over been mulling over. How does one without free nights and weekends (eg, has kids and a family) get the benefits (network, exposure, etc) without being able to participate? That sounds entitled. Let's reverse it. How does a company find individuals who have better things to do than code for free all weekend? This is of course based on the assumption that such individuals are valuable. The only answer I've come up with is coaching little league.
alt_rox_haxer 11y ago
The only thing i disagree with in this article is the whole "Everyone participated, everyone gets a prize" thing. Don't get me wrong, I understand these youngsters poured their heart and soul into these projects, but not everyone can win, and people should know this. It creates the young, entitled generation we have now. We dont need more of that running around.
- gaius 11y ago
  The article says the wrong things are rewarded, we also don't need people thinking that slick presentation beats real work.
  - alt_rox_haxer 11y ago
    "Despite students pouring out their heart and souls, in the end, the majority do not win a prize. I am a staunch supporter of rewarding participation and effort. If this sounds like advocacy for mediocrity, instead of merit, it is not."
fengwick3 11y ago
Well, the motivations to attend hackathons don't seem to be about winning. Many of us students attend hackathons knowing that the chances of winning something is marginal at best, yet we still regularly attend for the singular reason of fun. It's not every day that you can just spend two days of your life, cut off from the rest of the world, working with your buddies on something you all love. Even for professionals, attending hackathons could be a means to break away from the monotony of normal work.
kdkooo 11y ago
Couldn't agree more with so many of the views expressed in this. I felt the same way after participating in the LinkedIn DevelopHer Hackathon last August. I came home and was so physically ill from sleep deprivation, eating nothing but oreos, drinking soda for the caffeine, etc.. that I was out for another 2 days. I don't know if I've ever felt as sick as I did after that hackathon, and it was all elective abuse to my body.
stirner 11y ago
This has certainly been my experience. All the hackathons I've participated in have felt very geared toward corporate shilling, and most of the prizes are for "best use of [company's product]".
timwaagh 11y ago
Where i live i wish we had more of them and that they were more advertised so people are aware of these events. you don't have to go but the one hackathon i went to was a good event. I'd go again. it was small scale, there were few students there mostly people with jobs. half could not code, most were not very good. but it was cool. i impressed a few people with my skills met some interesting international people (who had flown in for this). one of the more memorable experiences of my life. I think the best hackathons are those which mix up the teams. other than that, please bring me more hackathons. people need to spend their free time on something, right? Although I'd not go if i had to be selected for them. the organisers need to be somewhat grateful for the fact people would like to attend and the atmosphere needs to be friendly rather than uber competitive.
pritishc 11y ago
I've always wondered how people with chronic disorders/diseases manage themselves at a hackathon. That 24-hour non-stop insanity has always dissuaded me from attending one. Turns out there are people who see the downsides of one.
nalllar 11y ago
I've participated in three hackathons involving pizza and sleep deprivation, StrathHACK[1] once and Do You Have The GUTS[2] twice. It's a great way to have a fun weekend, get job offers from local sponsors and learn new technologies in an environment where you can ask get help from experienced people. It's not about writing realistic, maintainable code - but that isn't really the aim. On the health side of things: Going to an event and having unhealthy food isn't terrible. It's a short event - having pizza for a day isn't going to kill you, and at these hackathons healthier food (sandwiches, cereal, burritos) was also provided. If you want to sleep, you can, but there's nothing wrong with occasionally working through the night. [1] - https://hack.strathtech.co.uk/ https://hack.strathtech.co.uk/ [2] - http://gutechsoc.com/hackathon http://gutechsoc.com/hackathon

268 points by nharada 11y ago

I'm sure good work comes out of these, but I think it would probably happen anyway. I really don't understand why people are going to these things still.

EdHominem 11y ago
The ones I go to are free and don't ask for ownership of the product, only pictures and screenshots where applicable to advertise the event. It's like working in a hackspace for a night (which I often do when on the road) combined with a friendly competition. I'd avoid a for-profit hackathon like the plague.

rememberlenny 11y ago

I've been organizing Hackathons for the past few years. They have been incredibly successful in a number of ways. The group that organizes them has recognized a few powerful factors: - The organizers are diverse and have a wide array of skills I didnt start the group that I have collaborated with, but I immediately tried to contribute to the best of my ability. We have people who are good at promoting, thinking about diversity, good a logistics, organizing speakers, etc. - Intentionally diverse groups in gender/skill/background We spend time to open applications, then manually select the participants who are accepted. From there, we keep a high touch relationship with 100-150 people, so that they are excited even before attending. - Pre-crafted/well-rounded teams Based on applications, we make pre-crafted teams that have balanced skill sets. We make these teams based on our understanding of the participants, and their own experiences. - (most importantly) NO PRIZES We make our events based on the valued gained from meeting and working with people who are fundamentally interesting. We build the concept of the event based around getting cool people together to work on cool problems. For the past two years, we have welcomed well over 600+ people in 4 different cities. - Partner with awesome organizations with strong brand names We spend significant amount of time to raise sponsorship. We make a point to involve cool organizations in the space, so that the event attracts high quality participants. Even if a great organization that we like cant sponsor money, we try to involve them as a partner in someway, so we can involve their staff. This has always paid off. --------------------------- Reference: - http://hackingjournalism.com/mobile/ http://hackingjournalism.com/mobile/ (Based on mobile journalism at MIT in Cambridge) - http://hackingjournalism.com/video/ http://hackingjournalism.com/video/ (Based on video production at Conde Nast in New York) - http://hackingjournalism.com/ http://hackingjournalism.com/ (Based on data science at Washington Post in DC) - http://codexhackathon.com http://codexhackathon.com (Based on book publishing at SF and Boston) - http://audiohackation.com http://audiohackation.com (Based on podcasting with ThisAmericanLife in New York)

marssaxman 11y ago
I'm curious: how do you market these events? I have literally never in my life encountered a hackathon directly and only know they exist because people talk about them; they are a purely theoretical construct in my world. Through what channels do people discover your events?
- wgman 11y ago
  https://mlh.io/seasons/s2016/events https://mlh.io/seasons/s2016/events Is very popular for promotion.
  - marssaxman 11y ago
    Are hackathons just a university thing, then...?
    - rememberlenny 11y ago
      No. Not at all. The average age for our hackathons was closer to 35 than 20.
      - marssaxman 11y ago
        Where do you advertise them? How do people find them?
        rememberlenny 11y ago
        We used journo-tech communities like Hacks/Hackers, college boards, company mailing lists (ie. the post design group), or directly in touch with influencers (ie. NYTimes technical evangelist).
        marssaxman 11y ago
        I ask because I feel like I keep up pretty well with tech news, reading multiple news aggregators every day - and yet I am clearly not connected to whatever information channels people are using to promote hackathons, since I never hear about them. I have no idea whether I'd want to participate in them even if I did hear about them, but it makes me aware that there must be some avenues for tech news communication that I am totally missing out on.

TACIXAT 11y ago

I stopped playing CTFs because the crunch time was too much. Burning a weekend reverse engineering and programming is fun, but then I lose the weekend. I'd like to see some casual CTFs / hackathons. Extended timeline, a few weeks to a month, fine if people with jobs play for fun.

CiPHPerCoder 11y ago
Something like MicroCorruption of CryptoPals, then? (I haven't tried Star Fighter yet, but I imagine it's similar too.)
- TACIXAT 11y ago
  Thanks. MicroCorruption is on my to do list. CTF style can be fun because of the collaboration and the variety of categories.

hoodoof 11y ago

The only "thon" I am willing to hack is my own.

ansy 11y ago

Your commercial and competitive hackathons are already covered well by TopCoder and similar competitive programming competitions. There are commercial challenges which generally build against some kind of proprietary API. Then there are competitive Single Round Matches (SRM) which are purely data structure and algorithm based. Grandstanding and networking sound like b-school entrepreneurship competitions. Who can make the best slide deck. Plenty of companies got funding with nothing more than a few presentation slides and some good talk so I agree it's a potentially valuable thing. It just doesn't reward technical prowess so why feature it at all? Hackathons are a blend of all of this and it doesn't really do any of them well. My main complaint about hackathons is that they are a poorer recruiting tool than most people want to believe. Corporate sponsors think they'll be able to spot top talent easier. And some participants think hackathons improve their chances of getting hired. In my brief experience, the success rate is very low on both sides. At best, I think a hackathon is a fun, creative, and social collegiate experience for the participants and another avenue for companies to market their brands to impressionable young minds.

hoodoof 11y ago

I takes me the better part of six months to build something worthwhile. I know I'm a slow programmer but it's still hard to see that anything but trivialities can be built in a weekend.

nxzero 11y ago
Point is to get something done, force you to make choice, have a deadline, etc. -- not something else, like production ready code.
- alexashka 11y ago
  The older you get - the less patience you have for tight deadlines and 'forcing yourself to make a choice'. That's just having more energy than you know what to do with. The tragedy is young people have lots of energy and are scatterbrained and old people are sometimes wise but too tired. The future is having older wise folk write out proposals to ambitious projects, and have young people fill in the necessary parts. Too bad it's just not 'sexy', ambitious projects are long, boring and require upsetting other people who are old, boring and don't want to listen. Modernizing the medicine field is one simple example of such an ambitious problem.
  - stan_rogers 11y ago
    "It's amazing how much 'mature wisdom' resembles being too tired." - Robert A. Heinlein
  - jqm 11y ago
    "The future is having older wise folk write out proposals to ambitious projects, and have young people fill in the necessary parts." That's generally the past and present as well. With some notable exceptions I think that's how the world has pretty much worked through most of human history.
  - reitanqild 11y ago
    > The older you get - the less patience you have for tight deadlines and 'forcing yourself to make a choice'. Me, I past 30 a few years ago and I (often) find it useful to give myself deadlines and force myself to get things done. Things/words that have helped me: * Pomodoro technique / time boxing * Get it working, get it right, get it fast * Cult of Done That said, yes, I am also skeptic to the kind of "hackaton culture" that is being mentioned here.

jmspring 11y ago

I've never been a fan of "hackathons" for long term projects going back a number of years. That said, the group I am part of, we regularly engage in focused "hackfests", where there is a clear goal, people work together, and a lot gets done in 3-5 days. Is it always complete, no, but for solving spot problems, short term deep dives can be great. Generalizing that, as hacktahons try to, there will be some interesting successes, but that won't be the norm.

escherize 11y ago

Going to corperate sponsored hackathons and hacking on your own side project is the way I've really enjoyed myself at a few hackathons. I don't really want to learn $COMPANY's API, so I just hack on whatever and enjoy the atmosphere.

fgandiya 11y ago

Personally, the main reason I go to these hackathons is just to expose myself to a bigger network and places with stronger CS communities than the one at my really small liberal arts college just to see what I'm missing out on (which is a lot).It seems like a necessary evil and it has worked in a way since I've finally been able to get an internship interview from it. Otherwise, I agree with his points. Not sleeping for 24+ hours really takes its toll, especially if you need to drive back to where you came from. Food is mostly junk, but this one other hackathon I went to had really well-made food, so there's that. They have been unrewarded since I always lose steam before I get to make an MVP and they do seem to be very commercialized and they're really trying to get groundbreaking stuff from us within a weekend, like the last hackathon had very specific prizes relating to using certain company's API as well has performing "health innovations". I also like Brian's suggestions to provide more specific hackathons so that I know exactly what to expect from them. These events take up a huge portion of my weekends theI should be using on school, so it seems like a good idea to pick those which seem most useful at the time.

p_eter_p 11y ago

The worst is company hackathons. I will always remember the look on my boss's face when I told him I was quite happy to participate in the (mandatory) 24 hour hackathon, as long as he paid me for my time outside of normal business hours. Turns out it wasn't so mandatory.

alexashka 11y ago

Hackathons are a fundamentally unsustainable, bad idea that can only thrive on young people having more energy than they know what to do with. I imagine they'll continue to drag along, like most conferences, like most people, who just don't know what else to do, so they do something that someone else said was a good idea and isn't intimidating.

caseysoftware 11y ago

In Austin, we started running an event called "Finish Up Weekend" or FU Weekend - http://fuweekend.com/ http://fuweekend.com/ ;) We have some simple rules: * you can't start anything new; * you have to celebrate something being done - usually with a round of applause; * there are no prizes - only the satisfaction of being done. While there is plenty of coding, we've had designers finish their portfolios, screenwriters finish pilots, an artist finish his display, and even saw a sewing project completed. And to top it off, we charge a nominal $20 for the weekend - with 4 meals, a great deal - and sell out every time. We're putting together a howto doc to franchise the idea.. just need to finish it. ;)

caseysoftware 11y ago
Btw, if you're interested in hosting one, drop me a note. My contact info is in my profile.
maxxxxx 11y ago
Great idea!
gboudrias 11y ago
That sounds amazing! I went to Austin once for a tech conference and the vibe was really amazing. I could really use something like this, though I feel like 20$ of your food is a lot better than 20$ of our food (I'm in Montreal).
- graeme 11y ago
  Another vote for Montreal. This event sounds like a great idea. (Already spoke with the organizers about this in another thread. I think they need someone who's organized an event of similar scale. That's not me, but I'm very willing to help out anyone who can take a lead role)
grep-cat 11y ago
That sounds really cool! I tried to sign up but it looks like the form is broken. Is there a way I can sign up to be notified when the next FU Weekend is announced?

im_down_w_otp 11y ago

I really dislike the corporate hackathon format. It can be great fun as an informal community gathering of developers to work on random pet projects, but the reality of the corporate hackathon trends toward being company sponsored and promoted technical debt creation. It often seems like the corporate hackathon is the clearest distillation of the "business" people not understanding how to create a mature, healthy culture and continuous process around engineering autonomy, ownership, and innovation. Instead relying on campy caricatures of basement dwelling Mtn. Dew & pizza fueled "hackers".

YZF 11y ago
I'm with you. Where I work Hackathons happen because someone in management has heard it's a cool thing to do. Practically nothing that happens in those ever is shipped and nothing is learnt from the experience. It's just a way of wasting people's time and appearing to be cool. When I was younger I used to work through the night with friends on stuff we wanted to do. It was fun and social. There was no commercial motivation or value. We just had a lot of time on our hands being geeks with no social life and we enjoyed building things. In a corporate setting this is maybe similar to Google's 20% time which as far as I hear isn't really working any more either. The closest thing to this in my day job world is people taking some time to just do whatever they want to do without giving a damn what management thinks. If you can do a little of that in your workplace then you're basically getting the "true" hackathon effect ...

nkozyra 11y ago

Anti-hackathon has been in full swing for a few years now, but I think it makes sense to recognize that for some people it has social - and some times professional - benefit. It's neither inherently good nor bad, it's a chance to create with some new individuals over a short time period. Yes, it gets co-opted by corporate marketing, yes you eat pizza for a day or so. But these are minor issues if you find other benefit like learning of new processes, tools, technologies, etc. More than anything, it just seems inherently "uncool" at this point, a proverbial pet rock for developers. Which is a shame, there is value there if you're willing to separate the concept from the aesthetic that surrounds the events themselves.

stevebmark 11y ago

This seems like a strange critique because hackathons are so opt-in. Yes there are often problems but no one I know goes expecting to win any prizes. Who cares about the prize? If you're going to try to win something, don't go. There are people who earn their income gaming hackathons with big prizes, and you won't compete with them.

apatters 11y ago

How about a hackathon sponsored by an open source project? Where everyone spends the allotted time contributing some improvement to that project. Seems like fun, something I would participate in, and the sponsor potentially gets a lot of benefit for cheap/free.

0xcde4c3db 11y ago
OpenBSD hackathons have been held at least once per year for ~17 years [1]. [1] http://www.openbsd.org/hackathons.html http://www.openbsd.org/hackathons.html
- nayden 11y ago
  Should also add that they are a very different type of events than the ones outlined in this post. Competition is replaced by collaboration. Prizes by internal reward. Junk food by beer drinking.

sbierwagen 11y ago

In addition to all the provided stimulants, hackers are encouraged to work through the night. Sure there may be reminders that you should sleep when tired, but why a 24- hour event instead of a 12-hour one then? Shut off the power and wifi from 10 PM to 6 AM.

ajdlinux 11y ago
The one hackathon event that I regularly participate in (GovHack) generally closes down between 11pm and 7am or thereabouts.

DGCA 11y ago

At my previous company, we had a hackathon where the theme was, more or less, bringing the company more together through technology. ~12 of us made 3 separate teams, came up with ideas, and worked like 12 hours on a Saturday hoping to be declared the winner. When all was said and done, the judges—all non technical—took about 30 minutes to decide that it was a 3-way tie. If you're going to make something a competition, just pick a winner.

shultays 11y ago
the judges—all non technical—took about 30 minutes to decide that it was a 3-way tie. in GGJ, we worked pretty much non-stop with like 5 hours sleep a day for two days and they decided not to make judges. hell, the GGJ ended around 5pm and we couldn't even check other project because everything was so rushed.

octref 11y ago

The worst thing I feel about hackathon is that it instills a bad culture of software development into young programmers. People spend a weekend writing crappy code and wiring APIs together, expecting to get money and fame. In the real world, we don't need more crude and fragile apps which leverage most of its work to frameworks. We need more solid, performant, well-designed apps. Sadly, none of these points are priorities at hackathons. We also need more programmers with empathy, perseverance, dedication, and ability to work on large projects without burning themselves out physically and mentally. Hackathon doesn't seem to cultivate these traits either. I hope instead of going to hackathons, more people can try building semester-long, meaningful projects and take time to maintain them, or try contributing to open source software.

sotojuan 11y ago
Hackathons cultivate the opposite of "empathy, perseverance, dedication, and ability to work on large projects". They make people hypercompetitive and unwilling to collaborate or help just so they can get their `sponsor_api` mixed with `sponsor_api` app done. I'm making a big generalization but IMO sponsored hackathons cultivate some of the worst aspects of our culture.
- zwetan 11y ago
  and worst, the sale pitch have more value, than the code written to build the app
- reitanqild 11y ago
  So, basically you violently agree? ;-)
lmm 11y ago
I think this kind of "worse is better" is actually a very valuable thing to learn. These "crude and fragile apps which leverage most of its work to frameworks" provide a lot of value to people, which is ultimately a lot more important than engineering pride.
- 11y ago

BinaryIdiot 11y ago

I think for Hackathons to be a positive experience it depends one two things. First it has to have an end goal where, even if you don't come in first place, you still leave with something that will be useful. From an incredible learning experience to something that could make you money. Second it shouldn't cost you anything directly except for time. Working extra hours for your own company? That's costing you more than time because it's becoming a requirement ("Look at Johnny over there, he's gone to all our hackathons and now look at him in a more senior position. Do you not want to move ahead?"). For instance I just finished participating in Launch's Hackathon this weekend. Other than the costs I paid for my travel I paid nothing but time (they provided all food, drinks and not all of it was unhealthy) and in the end, even though I didn't win a prize, I left with the start of a really cool product (if I do say so myself) where, realistically, I think I'm about a week from delivering a decent, beta experience. I even created a Twitter account just so I could post my fun experience as I went: @heysimex TL;DR: hackathons that cost money, that don't provide you with SOMETHING useful even if you don't win or that are run by your own company are rarely good experiences (unless you win). Hackathons that cost you nothing but time and you have something at the end of the thing? Awesome. I love it!

zwetan 11y ago

I see hackathon as a scam or how to teach early to young new passionate developers that the "norm" is to work long hours for next to no pay, pizza? yeah good enough. It also vehiculate the idea that code is a just commodity, that anyone can piss some code over few days and build full working apps supposed to impress people. Well, understand those poor company, they are not sure you can be a good slave, so they need to test you over a week-end: does he/she complain for not being paid? not sleeping? being forced to use this API vs another? howdy boy, "slap on the back", here your prize, by the way everything you have produced this week-end is owned by whoever organized the hackathon and they can do whatever they want with it while still not paying you, now go away you need to sleep and you stink. I saw companies organizing hackathon for their own employee, not something open to other developers or involving a public API, no sir, a company week-end event. They did those hackathon to allow their own employee to work on "what they like" or "what they did not have time to work on during working hours", but still have to be related to the company business, in exchange of beers and pizzas .. oh and if you don't show up we'll know you are a lazy bastard not inline with the company direction. So yeah maybe not all hackathon are like that, but most of them has this feel of scam where at the end you want to scream "fuck you pay me".

dheera 11y ago

"There are a lot of teams who bring their existing projects to the party" I wonder if this can be approached with rules, such as: * Provide datasets, interesting hardware, or other things that the participants do not have in advance. Release them only at the start of the hackathon. In the judging criteria, have heavy weighting for how well the teams make use of the provided resources. * Forbid, on honor code, to bring your startup (or any other project you have started before) to the hackathon. * Prohibit, on honor code, use of any code written prior to the hackathon unless said code has been under an open source license for 3 months, advertised and available for the public to download, AND your team does not represent the majority of the contributions to said code. * Define one or more problems to solve, within the scope of the hackathon. Don't release the problems until the start of the hackathon. Require all teams to work on a solution to any of the stated problems.

potatolicious 11y ago
You can put the rules in - some of your suggestions are already standard in many hackathons, but I doubt it would make much of a difference. Many hackathons are judged or attended by major investors, so the incentive to cheat is extraordinary. The last hackathon I went to there were several teams that clearly had everything lined up ahead of time and were there to pitch, and I doubt you can get rid of this without getting rid of the investors. More than that, many hackathons pride themselves on being interesting for investors, so they're incentivized to look the other way so that the presentations are as impressive/fundable as possible. I don't think I'll be going to another hackathon for a good long while - the combination of people who seem to have no interest in the spirit of hacking on stuff, and the incredibly toxic culture I saw (getting smashed, pounding back energy drinks, flying drones around annoying people, nerf gun fights through the hallways, it was like a goddamn freshman dorm but sweatier and somehow more childish), makes me completely not interested at all.
- dheera 11y ago
  Get rid of the investors then. :) Get corporate sponsorship instead to run the hackathon.

unethical_ban 11y ago

Whatever. Company hackathons are bullshit, but if people do it for fun, who cares if it's unhealthy and unsanitary? (supposedly). It's like LAN parties, but programming instead of gaming. I do like the FU Weekend idea, though.

kumarski 11y ago

YC and hackathons break my ketosis. :( The downregulation of dopamine is partly my fault, but damn the food is beyond just visually tempting.

mdxn 11y ago

The hackathon that they mention in the post (Mhacks) put up an application process and enforced a 50/50 gender ratio. In the weeks leading up to the event, I overheard many defeated conversations from fellow CS students over anxiety of getting rejected from this hackathon because they were male. The females didn't share the same anxiety, but it definitely made them feel down that they wouldn't be able to participate with their male friends who were rejected/waitlisted. Overall, the fact that things ended up this way made everyone feel very awkward, guilty, and discouraged. Hopefully its success makes up for the hidden fractures that will be felt by our student body for quite a while after. Mhacks lists the 50/50 gender divide on their site followed by the reasoning: "because it’s about time for a little change in the tech world" Disclosure: I am a CS-Eng student at this university. I did not plan to attend or care about this hackathon.

hueving 11y ago
That's the dumbest barrier I've heard in a long time to enter a hackathon. Your gender shouldn't prevent you from getting into an event to get work done, it should be based on the merit of what you want to do. Did anyone ask if their rejection would be reconsidered if they chopped their penis off?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- collyw 11y ago
  We are sexist in this industry apparently, so the way to solve it is to choose people based on their sex....
turkishrevenge 11y ago
Just exploit the identity-political zeitgeist that's overtaken universities lately: claim yourself genderqueer, non-binary presenting as male. With the right incantation, the organizers will fold like a house of cards, lest they suffer the blowback to excluding a "righteous" participant.
- 11y ago

ChemicalWarfare 11y ago

Was at a couple of "internal" hackatons ran by my employer as a part of the offsite all hands meeting. There was plenty of corporate politics involved with judging, other than that it was time well spent. The angle was to bring new ideas to the table and build an MVP/POC to demo the idea. Overall was a positive experience other than the politics involved. The event was voluntary, took place in the hotel with beer in the hotel bar and nice catered lunches.

kamens 11y ago

At Khan Academy we've been running ours as "Healthy Hackathons" — we kick people out at 11:45pm to get sleep, bring in healthy food, snacks, and activities, and always include our work week as part of the schedule (not just weekends). We actually just held our Monday-Friday Healthy Hack Week last week (http://healthyhackathon.khanacademy.org http://healthyhackathon.khanacademy.org). One of my favorite weeks ever, particularly because we encourage "hacks" of all kinds that don't have to include coding, and the entire company dives in. They've been internal only so far. Maybe some day we'll open it up. After a week of hackathon'ing intensely I'll walk in tomorrow more energized than ever (and eager to figure out how to use some of the team's work in upcoming projects). The commitment to staying healthy while hacking feels like it's paying off for us. Plus it demonstrates our commitment to long-term investment in teammates.

jbarham 11y ago
Actually what your so-called "Healthy Hackatons" demonstrates to me is that not a lot of Khan Academy employees are married with kids. I know my wife would be annoyed if I was goofing off at the office until midnight for a week leaving her to feed our kids and put them to bed by herself. But, hey, it's all for the greater good of "disrupting" education! It's ironic that obviously very few Khan Academy employees have children of their own, but that's probably because it's only a few years since they were children themselves...
- brianshaler 11y ago
  You can express your disagreement with staying past office hours without being condescending. Though, the post only indicated no participants were allowed to work past a time, not that everyone must work until that time.
- kamens 11y ago
  Not really worth arguing online with somebody who'd make a statement about the demographics of a company they know nothing about -- but for sake of clarifying your demonstrably false claim: we have lots of parents and family folk at KA, at all levels including senior leadership. We do not require that anybody stays at our hackathon until 11:45, but we do require that people get sleep. These decisions -- and the decision to not only host over a weekend -- come from our family-aware mindset.

ww520 11y ago

The point on marketing is spot on. I've seen team won first prize solely based on Powerpoint.

hueving 11y ago
They wrote PowerPoint? If so, that's impressive enough to win a hackathon IMO. Lots of people use PowerPoint every day.

matt_wulfeck 11y ago

Is it possible that the value derived from a hackathon depends largely on your age and nothing else? When I was 18 I loved this kind of stuff and would do it for fun, if nothing other to learn and make friends. Now you'd be hard pressed to get me there unless my team was people I know and worked with in the past. And it would be almost irresponsible to see parents there.

hueving 11y ago

The author says this: >If this sounds like advocacy for mediocrity, instead of merit, it is not. Keep in mind the following facts And then follows up with a bunch of excuses about how they are not measuring merit by any means because traditional presentations and different project timelines are to difficult to compare for merit. "it sounds like we don't want reward merit, and that's because we don't have the competence to measure it"

mruniverse 11y ago

I lump company hackatons in with company team building activities. Shallow attempts at making something happen.

warrenmar 11y ago

Selling Out and the Death of Hacker Culture by Rodney Folz https://medium.com/@folz/selling-out-and-the-death-of-hacker-culture-fec1f101b138#.b3o5c9x4c https://medium.com/@folz/selling-out-and-the-death-of-hacker... Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10249887 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10249887

k__ 11y ago

Hackathons are cool, but not those company funded ones.

callmeed 11y ago

>> Salesmanship is rewarded. The rewards are given strictly based on the presentation This is not a bad thing. I've won hackathons partly–but not strictly–because we had a team that could present well in front of judges and an audience. Public speaking, sales, and presenting to others is an important skill in business and entrepreneurship. The author would be wise to convey this to his students. A hacker who can build a product of value AND sell it well is a force to be reckoned with. Sorry, but I love hackathons as long as they're run somewhat well. If I don't like the food, I'll go eat somewhere else. I'm too old these days to work through the night so I usually get a hotel room and get a good sleep. But college students are already used to studying through the night, so I don't see what the big deal is. Beyond the intersection of making <-> presenting (see above), I also love that hackathons force you to work within constraints–most notably time. Its a great way to network–especially if there are corporate sponsors. I've met some great friends at hackathons and I've received job offers from companies I've met. I've even been offered investment in a project. Yeah, people cheat. Yeah, some hackathons are poorly run. The pros still outweigh the cons for me though.

xyzzy123 11y ago
Why don't they just call it a talkathon then? :p
collyw 11y ago
"Public speaking, sales, and presenting to others is an important skill in business and entrepreneurship." Not so much with writing software. Communicating with others yes, but not necessarily in a public setting.

mightybyte 11y ago

None of the hackathons that I've gone to seemed to have any of these problems. Hac Phi [1] in Philly and Hac Bos [2] in Boston are both fantastic and have been tremendously valuable to my career. Last year Hac Phi started to distance themselves from the more recent connotations of the word "hackathon" and started using the word "exchange" instead. This switch makes me a little sad because I think the portmanteau of "hack" and "marathon" is still very relevant to those events. [1] https://wiki.haskell.org/Hac_%CF%86 https://wiki.haskell.org/Hac_%CF%86 [2] (http://www.meetup.com/Boston-Haskell/events/223607923/ http://www.meetup.com/Boston-Haskell/events/223607923/)

phamilton 11y ago

This highlights a bigger problem over been mulling over. How does one without free nights and weekends (eg, has kids and a family) get the benefits (network, exposure, etc) without being able to participate? That sounds entitled. Let's reverse it. How does a company find individuals who have better things to do than code for free all weekend? This is of course based on the assumption that such individuals are valuable. The only answer I've come up with is coaching little league.

alt_rox_haxer 11y ago

The only thing i disagree with in this article is the whole "Everyone participated, everyone gets a prize" thing. Don't get me wrong, I understand these youngsters poured their heart and soul into these projects, but not everyone can win, and people should know this. It creates the young, entitled generation we have now. We dont need more of that running around.

gaius 11y ago
The article says the wrong things are rewarded, we also don't need people thinking that slick presentation beats real work.
- alt_rox_haxer 11y ago
  "Despite students pouring out their heart and souls, in the end, the majority do not win a prize. I am a staunch supporter of rewarding participation and effort. If this sounds like advocacy for mediocrity, instead of merit, it is not."

fengwick3 11y ago

Well, the motivations to attend hackathons don't seem to be about winning. Many of us students attend hackathons knowing that the chances of winning something is marginal at best, yet we still regularly attend for the singular reason of fun. It's not every day that you can just spend two days of your life, cut off from the rest of the world, working with your buddies on something you all love. Even for professionals, attending hackathons could be a means to break away from the monotony of normal work.

kdkooo 11y ago

Couldn't agree more with so many of the views expressed in this. I felt the same way after participating in the LinkedIn DevelopHer Hackathon last August. I came home and was so physically ill from sleep deprivation, eating nothing but oreos, drinking soda for the caffeine, etc.. that I was out for another 2 days. I don't know if I've ever felt as sick as I did after that hackathon, and it was all elective abuse to my body.

stirner 11y ago

This has certainly been my experience. All the hackathons I've participated in have felt very geared toward corporate shilling, and most of the prizes are for "best use of [company's product]".

timwaagh 11y ago

Where i live i wish we had more of them and that they were more advertised so people are aware of these events. you don't have to go but the one hackathon i went to was a good event. I'd go again. it was small scale, there were few students there mostly people with jobs. half could not code, most were not very good. but it was cool. i impressed a few people with my skills met some interesting international people (who had flown in for this). one of the more memorable experiences of my life. I think the best hackathons are those which mix up the teams. other than that, please bring me more hackathons. people need to spend their free time on something, right? Although I'd not go if i had to be selected for them. the organisers need to be somewhat grateful for the fact people would like to attend and the atmosphere needs to be friendly rather than uber competitive.

pritishc 11y ago

I've always wondered how people with chronic disorders/diseases manage themselves at a hackathon. That 24-hour non-stop insanity has always dissuaded me from attending one. Turns out there are people who see the downsides of one.

nalllar 11y ago

I've participated in three hackathons involving pizza and sleep deprivation, StrathHACK[1] once and Do You Have The GUTS[2] twice. It's a great way to have a fun weekend, get job offers from local sponsors and learn new technologies in an environment where you can ask get help from experienced people. It's not about writing realistic, maintainable code - but that isn't really the aim. On the health side of things: Going to an event and having unhealthy food isn't terrible. It's a short event - having pizza for a day isn't going to kill you, and at these hackathons healthier food (sandwiches, cereal, burritos) was also provided. If you want to sleep, you can, but there's nothing wrong with occasionally working through the night. [1] - https://hack.strathtech.co.uk/ https://hack.strathtech.co.uk/ [2] - http://gutechsoc.com/hackathon http://gutechsoc.com/hackathon