I’m tired of hating. Let’s all be chill and like something
I'm tired of criticisms on tone in place of discussions on substance.
I hate Hackathons
41–50 of 70 posts
Re: I hate Hackathons
#42I 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…
That might be a good sign. All the tech debt paid down and opportunities to play with your idea in normal work time, so nothing left for the hackathon.
Like similar to not having anything to say in 1-1s might be a sign of good communication in realtime.
Re: I hate Hackathons
#43IME 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…
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Re: I hate Hackathons
#44IME 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've also experienced that.
It would be better if the presentations at the end had to be based on the things developed during the hackathon. -- It does not have to be anything groundbreaking, and it can be a shoestring "hacked together" concept/implementation. For example, I developed basic integration between our product and another, and their team worked on displaying/incorporating that integration.
Re: I hate Hackathons
#45I must say, I have encountered free-form hackathons (category 3) at companies with no ideas provided by management, and no expectations. It happened at a team-building event at some nearby lake, only half of the people who were there even participated, and that was fine. People made games, stupid hacks, only one team came up with some cool tool that we kept around and used internally.
> It happened at a team-building event at some nearby lake Given the choice of 1) Being shipped off to a nice location where managers will demonstrate their authority by requiring you to perform suspiciously work-like fake recreation with other employees or 2) Actual time off I am pretty sure which one I'd pick, most of the time at least.
What if 1 is paid and 2 is unpaid?
Re: I hate Hackathons
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It happened at a team-building event at some nearby lake Given the choice of 1) Being shipped off to a nice location where managers will demonstrate their authority by requiring you to perform suspiciously work-like fake recreation with other employees or 2) Actual time off I am pretty sure which one I'd pick, most of the time at least.
What if 1 is paid and 2 is unpaid?
"Here at Craptech we are all about team building. We love to treat our employees to lavish company retreats - after which we'll go back into crunch mode for the rest of the year."
Paid is better, but tbh I'd probably take unpaid time off in many cases. I'd actually prefer to work half time as long as it worked financially.
Re: I hate Hackathons
#47Hackathons 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…
Programmers need to stop working for free and stop aiding the normalization of free work.
No other profession works for free. On the rare occasions they do, they expect and receive massive social status boosts.
Re: I hate Hackathons
#48I’m tired of hating. Let’s all be chill and like something
I'm worried about the author. Who forced them?
Re: I hate Hackathons
#49When I was much younger, I loved Hackathons. I never won anything substantial but it was usually (i) the best designed app in a Hackathon or (ii) idea that can spawn a product/startup/company.
The best part, I made life-long friends. Well, a good friend, then a hackathon friend became my neighbor (he has his own company now). He knows how to "hack" a hackathon and every time I see him, he won either the first or the second.
I was so much into hackathons that I bought a hot domain during the 2008-crash recovery (2010-11-ish) and was running tiny hackathons. I ended up selling the domain for a not-so-bad enough sum.
Recently I was the "external judge" for a company hackathon and the common theme of the comment from the participant were "you are different." I love that.
Anyone running a hackathon and want me to judge, I'm here (online or in Bangalore, India). I can speak design, tech, and business in the same breath. ;-)