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> Likewise, students say hackathons are an ideal way to test-drive the experience of working at a start-up before committing to a job. I don't really understan

by birken 12y ago

> Likewise, students say hackathons are an ideal way to test-drive the experience of working at a start-up before committing to a job. I don't really understand this. Working at a startup is not about sleeping 2 hours a night and/or churning out a new products in 36 hours. It is about committing to an idea for years and continuing to persevere when everything goes wrong and things look horrible (which is inevitable). I'm not saying hackathons are bad, they seem fun. But in terms of recruiting, I'd much rather work with somebody who spend 1 year working on the same idea, rather than somebody who has done 20 hackathons on all sorts of different stuff.

theyCallMeSwift 12y ago
One thing that the author missed, but might shed some light on your point, is that many of the top student hackers in this movement actually do specialize in a single tool or technique across many events. Great example: Shariq Hashme (the first person mentioned in the article) has a long, successful track record of making amazing Oculus Rift and constructed hardware hacks. So while the projects themselves might be different, the students do often demonstrate that commitment to mastery that you're looking for.
rjvir 12y ago
Please suggest a better alternative to simulate the culture and mentality of a startup, for a typical 18 year old who is not a part of the world of tech.
- untog 12y ago
  Getting together with friends in your spare time to make a web site/app?
  - TimFogarty 12y ago
    Hackathons are a pretty good way of starting something like this for a college student (though obviously not the only way). I know several groups people who met at hackathons then went on to start a larger project together (often not the same project they did at the hackathon). That's one of the nice thing about college hackathons - you get to meet other students who like to build stuff in their spare time.
- birken 12y ago
  This isn't necessarily an alternative, but a good compliment would be finding an open source project you like and make a few different contributions to it. You'll learn a bunch of skills that are entirely independent of things you'd learn at a hackathon, but are very useful: - How to read other people's code - How to write code that wont be immediately thrown away (a problem generally at school) - How to interface with project maintainers and get your changes accepted into the project
- wpietri 12y ago
  Ship something and iterate. The thing that makes me crazy about hackathons is that they reinforce the school mentality of "I am going to do a thing for a small amount of time, get some approval, and then ignore it forever." For people doing anything real, it's poisonous. I would much rather see people commit to a semester of weekly demos with the understanding that they were supposed to ship to real users by week 4 at the latest. Then the goals would all be about improvement. More users, better service, more polished product. That's the essence of startup life. If people really want to do a weekend thing, I'd much prefer something like Lean Startup Machine, an event I occasionally mentor at. There the weekend isn't about building, it's about iteratively testing customer and product hypotheses. It basically ignores the tech side of tech startups and is mainly about customer development. I think that's a great choice for novices to understand startup mentality because it teaches you that a) you know nothing until you have proof from your customers, b) your notions about your business are probably wrong, and that c) the best way to deal with that is to find out as soon as possible so you can get better notions.
clay_to_n 12y ago
This is valid, but in the college CS world, doing hackathons is a very good predictor that you're also building your own stuff outside of them. It also shows you're experienced enough to not be afraid. The best part of hackathons is going from 0 - X on some new technology, in a much faster way than if you had picked it up on your own, in the evenings. You know you're going to learn for a good 36 hours and try to build a real thing with it, so you won't give up after the first tutorial. Not every hackathon hacker uses a technology that's new to them, but a large amount do.

by birken 12y ago

theyCallMeSwift 12y ago

One thing that the author missed, but might shed some light on your point, is that many of the top student hackers in this movement actually do specialize in a single tool or technique across many events. Great example: Shariq Hashme (the first person mentioned in the article) has a long, successful track record of making amazing Oculus Rift and constructed hardware hacks. So while the projects themselves might be different, the students do often demonstrate that commitment to mastery that you're looking for.

rjvir 12y ago

Please suggest a better alternative to simulate the culture and mentality of a startup, for a typical 18 year old who is not a part of the world of tech.

untog 12y ago
Getting together with friends in your spare time to make a web site/app?
- TimFogarty 12y ago
  Hackathons are a pretty good way of starting something like this for a college student (though obviously not the only way). I know several groups people who met at hackathons then went on to start a larger project together (often not the same project they did at the hackathon). That's one of the nice thing about college hackathons - you get to meet other students who like to build stuff in their spare time.
birken 12y ago
This isn't necessarily an alternative, but a good compliment would be finding an open source project you like and make a few different contributions to it. You'll learn a bunch of skills that are entirely independent of things you'd learn at a hackathon, but are very useful: - How to read other people's code - How to write code that wont be immediately thrown away (a problem generally at school) - How to interface with project maintainers and get your changes accepted into the project
wpietri 12y ago
Ship something and iterate. The thing that makes me crazy about hackathons is that they reinforce the school mentality of "I am going to do a thing for a small amount of time, get some approval, and then ignore it forever." For people doing anything real, it's poisonous. I would much rather see people commit to a semester of weekly demos with the understanding that they were supposed to ship to real users by week 4 at the latest. Then the goals would all be about improvement. More users, better service, more polished product. That's the essence of startup life. If people really want to do a weekend thing, I'd much prefer something like Lean Startup Machine, an event I occasionally mentor at. There the weekend isn't about building, it's about iteratively testing customer and product hypotheses. It basically ignores the tech side of tech startups and is mainly about customer development. I think that's a great choice for novices to understand startup mentality because it teaches you that a) you know nothing until you have proof from your customers, b) your notions about your business are probably wrong, and that c) the best way to deal with that is to find out as soon as possible so you can get better notions.

clay_to_n 12y ago

This is valid, but in the college CS world, doing hackathons is a very good predictor that you're also building your own stuff outside of them. It also shows you're experienced enough to not be afraid. The best part of hackathons is going from 0 - X on some new technology, in a much faster way than if you had picked it up on your own, in the evenings. You know you're going to learn for a good 36 hours and try to build a real thing with it, so you won't give up after the first tutorial. Not every hackathon hacker uses a technology that's new to them, but a large amount do.