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Ask HN: The rising “Hackathon Hackers” culture

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Re: Ask HN: The rising “Hackathon Hackers” culture

#11

Post by ChuckMcM »

This isn't a "new" thing, there are those who create with technology, and there are those who exploit technology for gain. The original dot.com "boom" was the influx of people who really didn't care at all about what having the "Internet" meant if they all they needed was a good pitch and could get millions by convincing people that revenue wasn't a big deal, it was all about foot print. Those folks really offended the folks who were serious about the technology (or the art if you will) and they nearly all went broke or left in 2000/2001. The other crowd are the folks who use technology to take advantage of others, they rank from actual criminals stealing money out of banks, to the nominally legal adtech startups with "negative" patterns. This group doesn't care about technology either, except as a vector to get to "someone's" money and transfer it to make it "their" money.

This spectrum though is everywhere, from professional sports, to programming, to finance, to dog training.

But from your example, " ... this ... from a guy who has never engineered anything." pretty much defines the term 'poser' people who try to talk the talk and act like people who they see getting a lot of "coolness" or "celebrity" without actually understanding where that coolness or celebrity comes from. There are a lot of them, they are mostly harmless, identify them and move on. If they are trying to recruit you to come work for them, work somewhere else, you will be happy you did :-)

Re: Ask HN: The rising “Hackathon Hackers” culture

#12

Post by parfe »

1. Get a PAID internship

2. Get a part time job

3. Graduate

4. Get a full time job

5. Do things for fun that don't involve computers.

The fact I happen to interact with X framework in Y language, running on Z environment has zero relevence in my life. I more quickly ignore people talking about Ruby/Python/Javascript running Rails/Django/Node than the homeless person trying to wash my windshield.

You get too involved in tech communities and you forget what the real world looks like. I've literally met better people while delivering HIV test kits than while dealing with HPC systems. Find good people rather than defaulting to people like you who make money.

Re: Ask HN: The rising “Hackathon Hackers” culture

#13

Post by jhsu42 »

saul_goodman wrote: post #9

A hackathon at a school is going to exist to further the adjenda of the school which is fine, but not anything related to "hacker ethos". A hackathon at an actual hackerspace however will be much closer to what you are after. Some other folks brought up Startup Weekends. We have them in my town and I've never seen them get anything off the ground. Some of the organizers tried to cozy up to our hackerspace which is fi…

Hosted a Startup Weekend, can confirm.

A ton of it is muddled in politics and branding. I have yet to see many "big, scalable" companies come out of the ones that have been hosted.

Getting developers is tough, and being the only developer on the organizing team selling the event to other developers when they had free, more legit hackathons made it an insane choice.

I will say that events that Code for America have hosted have been nice. They seem as far as I can tell trying to change something a little more real than the "Uber for X".

Re: Ask HN: The rising “Hackathon Hackers” culture

#14

Post by adrusi »

angersock wrote: post #2

Do what we did: host a "technical" hackathon. Make it clear that it is just a couple of days to dick around with new technology, try your hand at some artsy stuff, or just do something goofy. Make prizes optional (or just goofy), and give everyone a chance to present their work. Last hackathon I attended at a university (last month, I think) was pretty lame, except for like one sound-transmission hack. I think that s…

Oh, I was at that hackathon. The hack that transfered data between phones using sound was cool for sure, but there were some other cool ones.

The first place won because they created a custom piece of hardware, but really it was just a couple of parts bought at radioshack and a simple arduino controller. Hardware wins big at hackathons.

The second place was a typical hackathon CRUD app.

The third place was a Minecraft bukkit plugin that allowed gambling bitcoin in a minigame. It was at least a novel idea, and it did directly interact with the blockchain (as opposed to using some kind of SaaS API), so there's some technical merit as well.

I think there was one other interesting one in the top ten, and a couple others that weren't selected for prizes.

Part of the problem is that when you make a more interesting hack, it's harder to judge whether or not you'll be able to finish it within 24-36 hours. So you end up with too ambitious a project that you fail to complete, or with too simple a project, that while novel, fails to impress.

Hackathon judges need to start favoring half-baked interesting hacks over polished "Uber for X" apps if we want to see more variety.

Re: Ask HN: The rising “Hackathon Hackers” culture

#16

Post by karangoeluw »

I was a very active member of the HH community and part of the team that hosted DubHacks (http://dubhacks.co)). Personally, I've attended over 15 hackathons in the last two years, but recently stopped because I share some of your concerns.

1. After going to a few hackathons, most of my side projects had very "hacky" code - not something I liked and definitely something that goes against the basic SE practices.

2. Most hackathons don't challenge participants to innovate, but just to "make something cool". I have seen a few truly innovative projects being made in only a weekend at hackathons that did not get enough attention let alone a prize just because they weren't cool enough.

3. There have been numerous hackathons where winning teams made something so stupid, it filled me with rage (eg: http://hackgt2014.challengepost.com/submissions)

4. The Facebook group has essentially become a circlejerk - it had a lot of value when there were 5. Too much focus has been on horizontal growth and not vertical - how many students can we get, how much sponsorship, how much food, how many Medium posts. A lot of of deep thought is missed out.

But at the end of the day, I think hackathons have their own place in helping schools become more progressive and to give students exposure that's left out of the classroom. I also think the best hackathons are the ones that motivate new comers to try something new and to give life to their ideas with resources and mentorship. The focus of hackathons, IMO, should be on learning and networking rather than winning. It'd be nice to have a very personalized hackathon experience now for a change.

Re: Ask HN: The rising “Hackathon Hackers” culture

#17

Post by 10098 »

This is simply this generation's "1337 haxx0rz".

Back when I was in school, Matrix was popular, and the term "hacker" had very different connotations.

People would call themselves "cyberpunk", "1337", they would install linux because it was a status symbol in that culture and it was trendy to hate on microsoft. Overall, the "haxx0rz"/skiddies/whatever were just as insufferable as today's "genius 10x entrepreneur 23-year-old CTO"-s.

In the end, it was a net benefit. The more talented of them actually became software engineers, IT or security specialists. Maybe a similar thing will happen with the current generation.

Re: Ask HN: The rising “Hackathon Hackers” culture

#18

Post by slashedzero »

The "Hackathon" part in "Hackathon Hackers" is totally relative. Your "hackathon" depends completely on the people judging it. Being judged by a bunch of suits with no connection to the technical world? Prepare for Uber for Facebook Cats. However, if you go to a hackathon where the judges are intimately familiar with the technology at hand, you'll get more praise for technical hacks.

In mainstream culture, the latter gets far less press, but the rewards of those hackathons in terms of networking are priceless.

Re: Ask HN: The rising “Hackathon Hackers” culture

#20

Post by GolfyMcG »

We hired a dev that's very much like you described. We "knew" he was smart because he did well in some Hackathons. Had built some cool projects on his flashy portfolio. Went to the same university we want to, which is a top university in the world. Had good grades at said University. etc.

He had all the markings of being a fantastic intern for us.

About half way through his internship we had to fire him. He lacked the attention span for a long term, rigorous software development project. We later hired someone whom we evaluated very differently and it has been incredible. He's doing a fantastic job. Constantly questions our opinions about software and pushes the boundaries of our depth of understanding.

To add to this, we knew the fired intern went on to another startup to keep doing whatever it is he thinks he's doing. The founders of that company ended up telling us the same exact problems were happening with them. Don't worry about these "hackers" and what they're doing. They'll all end up getting a reality check at some point. If they frustrate you, then just remember that the best revenge is living well.

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