Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hackathon Be Gone

brianchang.info

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 143 posts

Re: Hackathon Be Gone

#41

Post by zwetan »

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".

Re: Hackathon Be Gone

#42

Post by dheera »

"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.

Re: Hackathon Be Gone

#43

Post by potatolicious »

dheera wrote: post #42

"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 brin…

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.

Re: Hackathon Be Gone

#44

Post by peruvian »

octref wrote: post #36

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 prior…

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.

Re: Hackathon Be Gone

#45

Post by grep-cat »

caseysoftware wrote: post #21

In Austin, we started running an event called "Finish Up Weekend" or FU Weekend - 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 ar…

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?

Re: Hackathon Be Gone

#46

Post by nayden »

0xcde4c3db wrote: post #37
apatters wrote: post #33

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.

OpenBSD hackathons have been held at least once per year for ~17 years [1]. [1] http://www.openbsd.org/hackathons.html

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.

Re: Hackathon Be Gone

#47

Post by unethical_ban »

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.

Re: Hackathon Be Gone

#48

Post by zwetan »

peruvian wrote: post #44
octref wrote: post #36

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 prior…

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.

and worst,

the sale pitch have more value, than the code written to build the app

Re: Hackathon Be Gone

#49

Post by reitanqild »

peruvian wrote: post #44
octref wrote: post #36

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 prior…

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.

So, basically you violently agree? ;-)

Re: Hackathon Be Gone

#50

Post by wilshiredetroit »

caseysoftware wrote: post #21

In Austin, we started running an event called "Finish Up Weekend" or FU Weekend - 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 ar…

I love this Idea! We need one in SoCal
Post reply on HN