6 ms·

Yep, "hackathon" got co-opted into "free labor" the moment business types sniffed it out. Hackers caught on, left, and now "hackathon" means "business types hyp

Yep, "hackathon" got co-opted into "free labor" the moment business types sniffed it out. Hackers caught on, left, and now "hackathon" means "business types hyping each other over demo sketches" -- which is fine, but not my cup of tea, and about as far as it is possible to be from the original spirit of hacking.

kcb 5y ago
I had this exact experience. We had a successful hackathon led by the engineering team where we just built cool things that somewhat aligned with the business. The "Innovation" team decided we were pushing into their turf and took it over. Then it was decided that requiring actual development wasn't inclusive enough. The next "hackathon" was just a parade of PowerPoint presentations.
- spicybright 5y ago
  Gross... In this situation, did you have to sign away rights to participate? If you don't sign anything I'd imagine you retain rights to whatever you build, no?
  - jjoonathan 5y ago
    I think the winning strat here is "run."
jghn 5y ago
This happened at a place I worked. There was an internal hackathon where people built things. It was well received and expanded to all employees. The problem was, developers were about 10% of the population there. It became an idea-a-thon, which chased the developers away even more.
ravenstine 5y ago
Though I know what you mean, I also kind of saw it as a rite of passage. At some point in your career some guy selling merch under his jacket will come to you with a "great idea" where you will do all the work and he'll be the "idea guy". It does suck though that hackathons may have devolved into being just that. I haven't been to a hackathon since 2015 and if they've become either dominated by idea-guys or about only making nice looking frontends then that's kind of sad. EDIT: Oh, I guess I forgot a hackathon I went to in 2017, if you could even call it that. I arrived thinking that we'd be, you know, making actual apps. It turned out I may have been the only person in the entire venue doing actual work. Everyone on my team dicked around the whole time. We were one of 2 teams that actually had something that worked. All the other teams had fake as f*k "prototypes" in programs like Figma and no actually working code. The other team that had working code was just making a Twilio API call. The winner and all the others got attention because their apps looked good. My app might have been ugly but it successfully implemented nonstandard behavior (something you can't just rip off Stack Overflow) and even had authentication. Now I remember why I haven't been back to a hackathon since.

kcb 5y ago

I had this exact experience. We had a successful hackathon led by the engineering team where we just built cool things that somewhat aligned with the business. The "Innovation" team decided we were pushing into their turf and took it over. Then it was decided that requiring actual development wasn't inclusive enough. The next "hackathon" was just a parade of PowerPoint presentations.

spicybright 5y ago
Gross... In this situation, did you have to sign away rights to participate? If you don't sign anything I'd imagine you retain rights to whatever you build, no?
- jjoonathan 5y ago
  I think the winning strat here is "run."

jghn 5y ago

This happened at a place I worked. There was an internal hackathon where people built things. It was well received and expanded to all employees. The problem was, developers were about 10% of the population there. It became an idea-a-thon, which chased the developers away even more.

ravenstine 5y ago

Though I know what you mean, I also kind of saw it as a rite of passage. At some point in your career some guy selling merch under his jacket will come to you with a "great idea" where you will do all the work and he'll be the "idea guy". It does suck though that hackathons may have devolved into being just that. I haven't been to a hackathon since 2015 and if they've become either dominated by idea-guys or about only making nice looking frontends then that's kind of sad. EDIT: Oh, I guess I forgot a hackathon I went to in 2017, if you could even call it that. I arrived thinking that we'd be, you know, making actual apps. It turned out I may have been the only person in the entire venue doing actual work. Everyone on my team dicked around the whole time. We were one of 2 teams that actually had something that worked. All the other teams had fake as f*k "prototypes" in programs like Figma and no actually working code. The other team that had working code was just making a Twilio API call. The winner and all the others got attention because their apps looked good. My app might have been ugly but it successfully implemented nonstandard behavior (something you can't just rip off Stack Overflow) and even had authentication. Now I remember why I haven't been back to a hackathon since.