the trick, dear worker-news-ers, is to mentally find and replace "hack" with "work". and lo: "workathon"!
you too can participate in the workathon, with the chance to perhaps win payment for your work!
Hackathons are not a good way to bring the best out of engineers
21–28 of 28 posts
Re: Hackathons are not a good way to bring the best out of engineers
#22Unpopular opinion? Nah. It's fairly well known that they're problematic at best, in that they epitomize the practices of an industry obsessed with exploiting younger workers, crunch time, and gender imbalance.
they are also problematic in that they discriminate against people who don't have a bunch of time and energy to spend on something that isnt guaranteed to have a payoff.
e.g. people who are struggling to make ends meet and need actual work that pays cash, or people who have a bunch of responsibility with very little time (family to look after)
that said, such people are also disadvantaged in the workforce generally as they may lack the free time and money to be able to pursue opportunities for better jobs to help bootstrap into better circumstances, so it ain't something hackathon specific.
Re: Hackathons are not a good way to bring the best out of engineers
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'l bite - how do Hackathons "epitomize gender imbalance"? Anyone can go to a Hackathon and compete.
From my experience, I see that usually hackathon events have more male attendees than female. I am sure there might be hackathons where that's not the case but I don't think it would be very inviting for any female to go to an event that's full of the opposite gender. Just imagine if you were one of 5 males in an event of 100 attendees and the rest were females. I think you would be a bit uncomfortable/out of place e…
That is one of the the general theory to explain why the work force becomes more gender segregated when people has more freedom to choose. Why would someone choose to feel out of place if they have the option to choose a line of work where they can be part of a majority rather than minority.
And thus we get a work force in places like Sweden where 85% of both men and women choose to work at places which is classified as severely gender segregated. Gender imbalance is the norm.
Re: Hackathons are not a good way to bring the best out of engineers
#24Our team has essential engineer who has great potential [to become very rich person and do very creative and interesting things] and he is wasting his time and pushing on customer schedules because of his participation in stupid hackathons. I think for some in some ways it's an effort to compensate for lack of self-esteem and prove yourself that you're worthy of praise and rewards.
Sounds like an opportunity to help him get those things at work and mutually benefit the engineer and the team -- or, since he's already "essential," to acknowledge that he's doing his job and not judge him for failing to give 100% of himself to the company.
Re: Hackathons are not a good way to bring the best out of engineers
#25People tend to compete in hackathons not for the prizes/job. They do it because you can spend a small amount of time producing something tangible which you can understand and be proud of. They are rewarding, intellectually stimulating, and fun. In game design circles the equivalent of a hackathon is called a game jam. They are almost universal and are seen as an excellent opportunity to both try out ideas and sociali…
I see your point of view and respect it. I think hackathons may not be everyone and my original thought was I felt companies using hackathons as a way to benchmark developers (as if we are machines) based on their output. I could be wrong but that's just how I feel about it. Lastly, if I were to organize a hackathon. I think the the first I would do would be making it at least a week long instead of 2-3 days. In addi…
Yes, we have also been leaning towards running our sites for only "office hours" of 9-5, sometimes closer to 9-10 to allow for people who wake up outside of "human hours".
The downside of week-long events is that you exclude people who have to go to work or have other commitments, but might be able to make time over a weekend.
Re: Hackathons are not a good way to bring the best out of engineers
#26To be clear, I am not against the idea of collaborating with like-minded individuals to come up with a creative application idea however the side effects that come from these hackathon events is what I have a problem with.
Then... don't participate?
Re: Hackathons are not a good way to bring the best out of engineers
#27People tend to compete in hackathons not for the prizes/job. They do it because you can spend a small amount of time producing something tangible which you can understand and be proud of. They are rewarding, intellectually stimulating, and fun. In game design circles the equivalent of a hackathon is called a game jam. They are almost universal and are seen as an excellent opportunity to both try out ideas and sociali…
I see your point of view and respect it. I think hackathons may not be everyone and my original thought was I felt companies using hackathons as a way to benchmark developers (as if we are machines) based on their output. I could be wrong but that's just how I feel about it. Lastly, if I were to organize a hackathon. I think the the first I would do would be making it at least a week long instead of 2-3 days. In addi…
You’re correct in that there are some companies out there using hacksathons to benchmark and also steal IP (I’ve seen some where the participants are required to sign a document saying said company owned all intellectual property produced during the hacathon - hidden in small print)
It’s disgusting behaviour because a hackathon is supposed to be about freedom of ideas, intellectual stimulation and humour and fun - and these companies are just purely exploiting it. They should be named and shamed.
I would add that any halfway decent manager understands that while a developer can sprint, it is by definition an exhausting short term gain, and this is an unsustainable medium and long term strategy : and if your manager doesn’t understand something so basic about people management, it’s time to look for a new job
Re: Hackathons are not a good way to bring the best out of engineers
#28All the Hackathons I see are sponsored by some corporation trying to exploit devs for some free work/ideas related to their business/api. The only exception are Game Jams. If hackathons were like Game Jams where you could use any tech you wanted but had to compete on a vague theme I’d be interested. The thing is that’s never the case. Private spaces cost money, prizes cost money, any sponsors are going to want a retu…
I participated in HackI/O, Ohio State's hackathon. It was an incredible experience. Even with corporate sponsors, the competition was open and reasonable.