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

81–90 of 143 posts

Re: Hackathon Be Gone

#81

Post by mightybyte »

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

[2] (http://www.meetup.com/Boston-Haskell/events/223607923/)

Re: Hackathon Be Gone

#82

Post by alexashka »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #79
alexashka wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree with you - I just mean something else by ambitious projects. Take politics for instance - can anyone under 30 accomplish anything ambitious in politics? Probably not. The brilliant minds who've contributed to math/science I imagine oftentimes had great teachers along the way. Not always. The ambitious projects I have in mind go beyond solving a previously unsolved math problem - I am thinking of some…

Okay we're mostly agreeing here just one point > Take politics for instance - can anyone under 30 accomplish anything ambitious in politics? Probably not. Maybe? It's hard to say considering we have laws preventing the young from getting into politics. President / Vice President have to be 35, 30 to be a senator and 25 for the house of representatives. Most states also have age restrictions for many other political o…

It's nice to agree sometimes :)

I'd say moreso than the laws, is just the hierarchies entrenched in every sphere of life are the real mechanisms preventing any real change.

On one hand, stability is good, but at what cost, right?

Something as small as the apple app store - everyone knows it's bad, nothing has been done about it for years.

If Apple tomorrow, came to HackerNews and said hey, we know the app store sucks, we are going to hire a 20 person team of stars to re-build it. We will give you full autonomy, high paycheques, lots of publicity and a full year to do it.

Wouldn't that be an overwhelmingly positive move? Even if a year later, the team failed to deliver, at the very least it'd generate a ton of enthusiasm and new ideas.

This is a small example of big companies not willing to do anything outside the stale old box, even when there is absolutely no downside. It's those old, bored farts earning a paycheque that are the problem every time.

Apple has the money, just not the wisdom to go outside the box every now and again. Politics is 1000x worse I imagine.

Re: Hackathon Be Gone

#83

Post by [deleted] »

turkishrevenge wrote: post #69
mdxn wrote: post #53

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…

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.

[deleted]

Re: Hackathon Be Gone

#84

Post by kamens »

jbarham wrote: post #70
kamens wrote: post #57

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 ). One of my favorite weeks ever, particularly because we encourage "hacks"…

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…

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.

Re: Hackathon Be Gone

#85

Post by phamilton »

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.

Re: Hackathon Be Gone

#86

Post by alt_rox_haxer »

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.

Re: Hackathon Be Gone

#87

Post by fengwick3 »

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.

Re: Hackathon Be Gone

#88

Post by kdkooo »

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.

Re: Hackathon Be Gone

#89

Post by jbarham »

kamens wrote: post #84
jbarham wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 decis…

https://www.khanacademy.org/about/the-team tells me "nothing" about the demographics of Khan Academy employees?

> We do not require that anybody stays at our hackathon until 11:45, but we do require that people get sleep.

Parents of young children don't need to be told by their employers to get sleep.

Re: Hackathon Be Gone

#90

Post by gaius »

alt_rox_haxer wrote: post #86

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.

The article says the wrong things are rewarded, we also don't need people thinking that slick presentation beats real work.
Post reply on HN