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I work at salesforce but I am not a spokesperson for salesforce nor do I have any authority to speak for the company. What I write here, I write as a member of
by gwf 13y ago
I work at salesforce but I am not a spokesperson for salesforce nor do I have any authority to speak for the company. What I write here, I write as a member of HNN only.
I did not have any part in the hackathon process, but I had and still do have quite a bit of visibility on how the process was run. I can assure you that an enormous amount of effort went into the judging and that it was entirely unbiased. There were literally dozens of the most senior executives and engineers within the company that worked on the earlier judging rounds behind the scenes. I actually declined to be part of that process because it was too much of a commitment for me to make. I know, for example, that the next-to-final round judges were up until the early AM reviewing the submissions and that each judge looked at on the order of 20 different submissions per rounds.
Sadly, whenever something like $1M is on the line, there is always going to be someone that is unhappy with the outcome. People will speculate and make claims that are outright false. But please keep an open mind as you read more about this event. There will soon be some official communication on this topic from salesforce. I suspect that the more actual facts you learn about the process, the more reasonable it will seem.
- willchilcutt 13y agoAre you saying that the dozens of people claiming that no one tested their apps are all lying? Like others have said previously, Salesforce must have forgotten about analytics.
- gwf 13y agoI am saying that there is a misunderstanding. The earliest rounds of judging looked at the videos of the apps that contestants produced as well as a code review as a sanity check. This was done most likely so that each app could be viewed in the best possible light as well as to help the judges scale to the number of entries. So, no, the people complaining are not lying but they and anyone else would be incorrect to conclude that their app was not evaluated. Every app was evaluated. All by videos. Some by code review. And a few through every reasonable means.
- teraflop 13y agoWhat about the people who checked the analytics on their videos and determined that they hadn't been viewed?
- gwf 13y agoI honestly haven't seen a single complaint like that. Can you point me to one? FWIW, I am pretty sure that each entry was reviewed at least twice.
- shuzchen 13y agoThis hn comment links to a few places where people complained: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6779036 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6779036 The link that specifically shows people complaining that nobody viewed their app or looked at their video is this: http://salesforce1million.challengepost.com/forum_topics/2644 http://salesforce1million.challengepost.com/forum_topics/264...
- gwf 13y agoYour first link doesn't contain a single complaint claiming that people's videos were not viewed. It does, however, link to the second link, and the other two links it contains make no references to this sort of complaint. The second link has exactly one person clearly stating that they've received zero launches and zero video plays. There is a second person that states "Yeah, same here. We had a workflow setup to send us notifications if any new used the app and received none." Notice that he/she doesn't mention video plays. So, in total, we have exactly one person that says that they've received zero launches and zero video plays. If I've unfairly characterized the data behind your links, please let me know. But that's all that I can find. In trying to find out if they have a valid complaint, I've discovered that the person behind that complaint is responsible for a significant portion of all of the discussions and complaints at the challenge site. One thing is clear: their submission is in the same area as the winning entry. In their shoes, I might be disappointed for that reason alone. But for the sake of transparency, here are the two entries: The winning entry (which is admittedly being evaluated to see if they conformed to all rules): http://salesforce1million.challengepost.com/submissions/18552-healthcare-love The entry for the person or group that claimed that their video was never viewed: http://vimeo.com/79921465 In any case, I encourage you to look at the two videos and tell me if you think there was an injustice with the rank ordering.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- eridius 13y agoWhat about the allegations that the winning team demoed their app weeks before the hackathon even started?
- gwf 13y agoI honestly can't speak to the specific allegations because I am not in a position to know the facts one way or another. But I can tell you three things for certain. First, salesforce is taking this very seriously and there is an ongoing discussion at the highest ranks to evaluate the complaints. Literally, the entire executive team is watching this. Second, there were close to a hundred people that were internally part of the judging process. Each of these judges looked at a dozen or two entries. I could see little opportunity or motivation for collusion. Finally, salesforce is one of the most self-critical companies that I've ever been a part of when it comes to evaluating ourselves in terms of trust and integrity. Nearly every internal communication begins and ends with a statement around how trust is our most important value. And while some our doubting our credibility in this moment, there's a reason why so many large and small companies trust us to hold their data; it's because we never compromise on any issue of integrity and if we make a mistake we investigate it and own up to it.
- colabi 13y ago2 of the five finalists now require disqualification. people are looking into the other 3. how thorough could that process really have been?