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I hate Hackathons

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Re: I hate Hackathons

#31

Post by blue039 »

Hackathons are generally an excuse to get more work for less pay. No different than pagerduty or any number of other scams the technocracy has devised to drive wages down. People would be happy to do them if they'd get paid.

However, there's another problem. No one wants to work on "regular everyday" stuff for even a 9-5 M-F hackathon. I and many other people just call this "doing our job".

Sometimes there are fringe benefits where a company may allow engineers to actually work on something they enjoy. Maybe it's a new language, or a prototype, or anything. The key is it doesn't have to be related to company work. Unfortunately, as it has been my experience several times now, this benefit is the first to go and replaced instead with tyrannical PMs and sales people cracking the whip over the engineers to get a "fun hackathon project" done.

None of this would happen but software engineers do not identify themselves as laborers being exploited. Software engineers are, honestly, some of the smartest and absolute braindead people I've ever met. I can think of no other industry where someone could be convinced to do literally 5-figure level free work in exchange for 3 pizzas and a 6 pack.

Re: I hate Hackathons

#32

Post by brunojppb »

pocketarc wrote: post #26
brunojppb wrote: post #21

This kind of hackathons outlined by the OP indeed sounds like trouble. In the current company I work at, we have every 6 weeks, 2 full days to hack on whatever we want. Zero expectations. This has been really cool because: - it’s during normal working hours. 9 to 5. No weekends or all nighters. - you are entitled to cancel all your meetings - you can work on product-related ideas or experiment with a new language. It…

Does it have to be work related? Also, do you end up showing off whatever you did during that time, or is it really a "do whatever" day where you could just do nothing?

It needs to be something that helps you to level-up somehow. But it does not force you into specifics, so it’s up to you to choose.

At the end of the second day, there is usually a little show-off session where folks that got something interesting at the end and want to share, they can. But you are not forced to.

It’s still normal working hours, so you are expected to do something.

Re: I hate Hackathons

#33

Post by blue039 »

brunojppb wrote: post #21

This kind of hackathons outlined by the OP indeed sounds like trouble. In the current company I work at, we have every 6 weeks, 2 full days to hack on whatever we want. Zero expectations. This has been really cool because: - it’s during normal working hours. 9 to 5. No weekends or all nighters. - you are entitled to cancel all your meetings - you can work on product-related ideas or experiment with a new language. It…

Enjoy it while it lasts. It sounds pessimistic of me to say but once the company catches wind of you enjoying yourself it'll be taken away. They'll realize after some careful spreadsheet analysis that participation in this hackathon is an all time high. You know it's because you guys can do what you want. They don't. They just see the distilled numbers. So, the C-levels will order everyone to instead work on a work-related project with a mandatory demo (for "fun" time constraints!) and everyone will be miserable. Participation will drop, and then it will become a routine where they get all the engineers to do a song and dance once a year for them. That's all "demos" are, anyway. Of course that'll be sold as "giving the engineers an opportunity to improve their speaking skills for conferences" or some trite bullshit typical of sub-zero IQ C-levels.

I dont participate in any kind of hackathon or after work in-office "fun" event because they almost always turn into extra work hours. If you want to hang out you can find me at the bar.

Re: I hate Hackathons

#34

Post by jmcomets »

barbariangrunge wrote: post #2

I’m tired of hating. Let’s all be chill and like something

To add some praise on this topic, I like (in no particular order): - having dedicated no-meeting days to work on stuff I'm paid to build - being able to talk vision with my PMs (and be listened) - having a budget for software maintenance and developer QoL - not having to do all the software testing on my own - run live experiments with users to test out new ideas

Re: I hate Hackathons

#35

Post by The_Colonel »

ajmurmann wrote: post #28
The_Colonel wrote: post #18

I work in a company which does hackatons without any goals. You can do something cool on the product, or you can attend some course or if you really want, you can keep working on features (there's no pressure to do so). It's essentially just 4 weeks in a year when you're free to choose your work. There are also some small prizes which for me do nothing, but for somebody might bring extra motivation. I think it's grea…

While it's great that it's working out, it does feel like a smell about our ability as an industry to prioritize. I feel similarly about "bug bashes".

I get what you're saying. Hackatons shouldn't be time when technical debt is being paid, and fortunately in my organizations it's not the case. We do get enough time to refactor etc. but it's still kind of hassle to go through that process of defining the task, bringing this up, putting it on the product backlog, discussing it and only then doing it.

Hackaton inverts this and gets rid of all the process - do whatever you want without talking to anybody and only if it works out, we can discuss it, merge it etc.

Re: I hate Hackathons

#36

Post by jesseryoung »

I tried to organize a corporate hackathon at one point in my career. My initial idea was to make it freeform. However after talking to people who wanted to participate, I found that nobody really had any ideas and just wanted to join and hack on somebody else's idea.

My (possibly incorrect) take away - people with great ideas will build them themselves without a hackathon.

I still love the idea of hackathons, I just don't know the right way to organize them.

Re: I hate Hackathons

#37

Post by [deleted] »

brunojppb wrote: post #21

This kind of hackathons outlined by the OP indeed sounds like trouble. In the current company I work at, we have every 6 weeks, 2 full days to hack on whatever we want. Zero expectations. This has been really cool because: - it’s during normal working hours. 9 to 5. No weekends or all nighters. - you are entitled to cancel all your meetings - you can work on product-related ideas or experiment with a new language. It…

[deleted]

Re: I hate Hackathons

#38

Post by asddubs »

armchairhacker wrote: post #11

IME with hackathons, they are kind of like a hibachi grill. The first and second hackathon was really exciting, then it wore down as I realized most of the products were fancy ML / crypto presentations without much substance, the "competition" was broken (because those ML / crypto projects always won even vs some genuinely original and creative ideas), and you can't really build something interesting in a couple days…

I have to say, I was a bit disappointed how quickly you abandoned the grill analogy, I was ready for more comparisons

Re: I hate Hackathons

#39

Post by Minor49er »

chefandy wrote: post #4

Also see "game jams."

I did a couple of game jams when I was a teen. They were incredibly humbling experiences that showed me the value of planning and communication, especially for a project with a tight deadline

Re: I hate Hackathons

#40

Post by nagonago »

hit8run wrote: post #20

Was this article written with AI? Felt a bit like at least assisted. Don’t know why when reading it triggered the assumption.

It's hard to tell, but I wouldn't be surprised, given "I've created an extension to overcome ChatGPT's limitations. Do check it out." at the top.

I asked ChatGPT which parts were most likely AI assisted:

> The parts that were most likely written with help from ChatGPT are the definitions of the three types of hackathons, the explanation of the hidden agendas in external corporate hackathons, and the description of the negative consequences of hackathons for management and developers. The language and tone in these sections are more neutral and informative, compared to the more opinionated and critical tone used in the rest of the article. This suggests that the writer may have asked ChatGPT for definitions and explanations, but expressed their own opinions and experiences in the rest of the article.

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