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Hackathons are bad for you

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Re: Hackathons are bad for you

#121

Post by gamblor956 »

michaelochurch wrote: post #81
crusso wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doctors can read medical journals and call it "working time" Where did you get that idea? I grew up in a family of doctors. If they aren't seeing patients, they aren't billing. They go to school an unthinkably long number of years and then they're put into a sleep depravation nightmare called "interning" for years before they get to have a career that normally includes "on call time" where they're woken up at all hou…

Perhaps I shouldn't have picked medicine as an example. The principle of professionalism is sound, but many of the traditional professions have departed from it. Law has outright imploded, while medicine has seen very long hours on account of the doctor shortage. If they aren't seeing patients, they aren't billing. Right, but 2000 hours per year wasn't traditionally the requirement. That may have changed. The profess…

For example, before the legal profession went to hell, 1200 billable hours was the requirement. Remaining time was for networking, keeping current, attending conferences, etc. If you billed 1500 hours, you were a rock star and guaranteed to make partner. Enough money was made in the billed hours to pay for the off-meter stuff.

I don't know who told you this, but this is inaccurate. 1600 was the normal billable hour standard prior to the legal boom among large law firms; 1500 was the standard among smaller law firms. Government lawyers were expected to spend 1800 hours or more on legal tasks (36 hours/week accounting for 2 weeks vacation). 1200 was only ever the requirement for partners, since their time by necessity include a lot of unbillable time spent with clients or potential clients.

Enough money was made in the billed hours to pay for the off-meter stuff

Lawyers used to bill their clients for everything, including the paper drafts were printed on. When the state bar associations and clients clamped down on these practices in the late 1990s, billing rates started going up, and kept going up when firms realized that clients were willing to pay.

Re: Hackathons are bad for you

#122

Post by esrauch »

minimize_me wrote: post #85
TeMPOraL wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get hit by a car. Or fall from the stairs. Also, air outside is unhealthy in big cities. And then there're the UV rays.

This line of logic could be used as a justification for doing anything. "Meth is bad for you? So is going outside, cos pollution or something."

The logic does not prove that something is worth doing, it proves that the one particular argument for something being not worth doing is invalid. "This can lead to hypothetical bad result x" isn't a valid argument by itself, meth is only bad because the badness is sufficiently bad enough, not simply because it is not the healthiest possible choice.

It is a fallacy to assume that if a particular argument is wrong that the opposite of its conclusions must be true. You can easily think everything the blog post says is incorrect and also think hackathons are bad.

Re: Hackathons are bad for you

#123

Post by dougsq »

michaelochurch wrote: post #74

The real crime is that programmers have so little time for the exploratory work that the career requires that they have to do all of that off-hours. Doctors can read medical journals and call it "working time". Most programmers have feces thrown at them if they're caught learning on the job. This is just something we have to suffer until we develop a stronger tribal identity and demand the conditions of a profession…

"The real crime is that programmers have so little time for the exploratory work that the career requires that they have to do all of that off-hours." You want to get paid for improving your craft? Your professional development is up to you. If you are passionate about your choice of a profession, then money shouldn't matter. You will do what ever it takes to learn, experiment and grow your skills because it is what you want. At work we do what we have to to get things done. If we are contributing to our personal experience on work time, are we not taking away from the task at hand if the exploration does not further that task? Hopefully, you can someday work for a company that encourages and facilitates personal development woot!. Hackathons are all about getting together and sharing ideas and pushing the envelope. Or should be in any case. The venue, the timing, the subject matter, all contribute or detract from the experience. But most of all it is the mix of people that make the difference, and the experience itself. Some of my best experiences have been late nights in a "skunk-works" project, building something we weren't sure could be built, and sure enough we did it! It didn't feel like work it felt like an adventure! I hope you get to experience something like that in the future. Don't confuse work and making yourself better. Think about changing the Hackathons for the better -- you get out what you put in.

Re: Hackathons are bad for you

#124

Post by notthetup »

jaredsohn wrote: post #9
i386 wrote: post #7

Link is dead. Anyone got this in their cache?

Article text (there were also about three images): Hackathons are bad for you. I love developer communities. I love the spirit, the comradery and energy. But in the last couple of years or so, Hackthons have spread through the community like a plague. There are Hackathons around technologies, ideologies and everything in between. And I feel there is an urgent need to eradicate them. Here is my main beef with Hackatho…

OP Here. Apologies for not being able to keep the link up. Should be up now. :)

Re: Hackathons are bad for you

#125

Post by eli_gottlieb »

pjungwir wrote: post #104
qdot76367 wrote: post #36

The best piece of advice that no one ever seems to give about hackathons: -- Hackathons may or may not be for you. Try it once. Don't stay the whole time if you don't want. If they aren't for you, don't go again. If they are, great, have an awesome time. -- For some reason, they're touted as this end-all be-all social event that if you don't go to YOU ARE MISSING OUT AND YOU WILL NEVER RECOVER. As many people posted…

This is sane advice. I've attended two hackathons. The first was for Open Government projects, and it was well-organized and low-pressure. I didn't pull an all-nighter, but I doubt anyone did. I attended the whole thing and really enjoyed myself. The other was a much bigger affair with at least as many biz folk and designers as programmers. I was pitched on all kinds of half-baked ambitious ideas. It seemed like a bi…

That sounds pretty nice. What's the overall tech scene like in Portland?

Re: Hackathons are bad for you

#126

Post by jrockway »

crusso wrote: post #101
jrockway wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try drinking a few "Venti" glasses of water instead of coffee. You'll find yourself in the bathroom just as often.

Not true. I have gone off coffee and caffeine a couple of times over the last 6 or 7 years. When I drink a few cups of coffee, I'm up to the bathroom a half dozen times a day. When I switch to a water bottle, I only have to go maybe once per day (during work hours). The difference is stark and the amount of liquid is not the issue.

So your body magically produces extra liquid when you drink coffee?

Re: Hackathons are bad for you

#127

Post by crusso »

jrockway wrote: post #126
crusso wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not true. I have gone off coffee and caffeine a couple of times over the last 6 or 7 years. When I drink a few cups of coffee, I'm up to the bathroom a half dozen times a day. When I switch to a water bottle, I only have to go maybe once per day (during work hours). The difference is stark and the amount of liquid is not the issue.

So your body magically produces extra liquid when you drink coffee?

Is immature snarkiness really needed when someone is talking about a real physical effect carefully observed over years?

Caffeine gives me an urgency to urinate. Having that first urination in the morning after drinking coffee is just like the effect many people describe after drinking the beer. See "Breaking the seal".

Googling the subject shows confirmation from health and medical web sites. Here's one from the Mayo Clinic: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/urinary-incontinence/DS0040...

Re: Hackathons are bad for you

#128

Post by mh- »

jrockway wrote: post #126
crusso wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not true. I have gone off coffee and caffeine a couple of times over the last 6 or 7 years. When I drink a few cups of coffee, I'm up to the bathroom a half dozen times a day. When I switch to a water bottle, I only have to go maybe once per day (during work hours). The difference is stark and the amount of liquid is not the issue.

So your body magically produces extra liquid when you drink coffee?

I believe he was referring to the [frequency of the] sensation to void his bladder, not the resulting volume.
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