Things Hackers don’t tell you about Hackathons | Hacker News Reader

Things Hackers don’t tell you about Hackathons

blog.mindorks.com

41 pointsvjs353 comments

We all love participating in Hackathons.

Erm... That's not true.

There are two sorts of developers who don't like hackathons. There are the go-to-work-and-write-code-and-then-do-other-stuff-in-the-evening sort of developers who are the overwhelming majority of the sort of devs you meet in business. For most developers writing code is nothing more than a job. Those people see a hackathon as work, and they don't like it. That's great for those people; they get code done and go home.

The second sort of developer who doesn't love a hackathon (and I'm in this group) is the sort of person who enjoys the process of writing a great piece software rather than just concentrating on the fun bits of solving a problem and getting something on a screen. I see a hackathon as literally all the worst things about software development compressed in to a single event - practically no planning, very little testing, zero documentation, no sleep, bad food, not seeing your non-dev friends, and not stepping away from the keyboard for any substantial time. I've worked on real world actual paid projects like that and it's awful. I definitely don't want to do it for fun when someone isn't even paying me for it.

I love seeing the result of other people's hackathons, and I'm glad that people who attend them enjoy them, but seriously, if you think all developers love a hackathon you really need to expand the group of developers you hang out with.

The not getting paid really irks me. I have plenty of my own projects I could do for free, why on earth would I do work for a company for no money, when they will profit from it?

Yes, the exploitation inherent in these events is the biggest turnoff to me. I value my time and expertise too much to give it away for free.

I've always felt the same. It seems like the least interesting parts of programming: just throwing together a bunch of libraries to get something working.

The biggest issue I have with Hackathon culture is when it starts to plague the hiring processes or daily job activities and now we are all supposed to take part on them, by wannabe cool companies, just to get hired.

This. I've seen hackatons being increasingly mentioned during the hiring process in the last few months.

Seeing 40-something adults talking about free beer and hackatons while walking on a floor full of nerf-bullets is beyond comical. I literally couldn't believe it if someone told me this ten years ago.

I miss working in finance.

I don't mind hacking something together and not getting paid, but what bothers me is that hackathons are very rarely about what actually gets made - now that many have thousands of dollars worth of prizes, it actually behooves hackers to put a lot of effort into presentations rather than development, and if you don't win a prize you feel like you've wasted your weekend.

I've found civic hackathons like Random Hacks of Kindness (http://www.rhokaustralia.org/) to be a lot more fun though.

You left out a third group: C (or "systems" or "embedded") programmers. What am I going to do in a weekend that will be fun to show off? "We made a minimal binary IPC protocol over named pipes that is 2.5% faster than typical examples for a few certain types of data, on certain architectures, sometimes." Wooo!

I would go to that hackathon.

You can do some pretty awesome things in Rust over a weekend and it counts as systems programming. Also, your quote sounds fun - it's just a matter of presenting it in a cool way ;)

"...but for some specific inputs it literally sets the device on fire."

That would be something fun to show.

I believe that developers who don't take breaks are not utilizing their full potential. When I lift weights, I take breaks in between. Muscles need rest. So does the brain.

The amount of time I do a physical activity or a non-programming activity contributes to my rest and personal happiness, which makes me program better.

Let me throw in another sort: introverts. I like coding alone, not in pairs, and most definitely not in some big group event.

My way of participating to hackathons is to go around helping groups. I also dislike big group events (and to a lesser degree coding in group), but I like helping others.

I would take both. Even the word Hackathon rubs me in the wrong way. I never describe myself as a hacker though.

I understand that some aspects of a Hackathon might be fun, but nowadays my time is simply more valuable than that. Spending time with my loved ones, taking care of myself, putting in a few hours on a pet project that I don't plan to throw away in a few days, and even going to an event for some proper networking feels a much better use of my time than a Hackathon.

Many hackatons are organized around the host company's business goals. They are either organized for recruiting purposes or to get cheap labor (sometimes both)

I love coding and do code a lot in my own time. But I'm not gonna work for free for some company or government (it's your solutions to their problems) just because they market an event as a hackaton.

There might be better events out there but this is my experience.

Word! Work for free day and night for a whole weekend and give out the IP for the meager pay of some buffet lunch and maybe a tshirt. Are programmers that cheap?

> hey are either organized for recruiting purposes or to get cheap labor (sometimes both)

yeah, i'd argue that in many cases the original meaning of the term "hack" has been co-opted by capitalism

these days i mentally find/replace "hack" with "work", for amusing but arguably far more accurate results: e.g. do i want to go along to a 24-hour workathon for the possibility to win prizes or whatever? nope.

Yeah, that is why i don't attend. There is always a motive from a company behind it.. If i just wanna screw around with code it's better to do that from home, with friends, or on lan's imho.

Is cheap labour really a consideration? Are companies seriously basing products off code written at hackathons?

They don't base products off them but it is useful as quick prototyping / hacking together some minimalistic MVPs. Outside of hackaton they would have to actually pay developers to do this sort of prototyping / hacking work but they can get it for free in hackatons.

It's obviously not a major thing but it still irks me, especially when hackatons are over the weekend when you would normally charge double of normal rate for overtime if it was a part of normal work and you agreed to do it for some reason (meeting deadline etc).

The some of the shit that goes to prod man.

I'm in the second group. No interest in doing a hackathon. Also I really like the thinking part and take my time when I can. My work is maybe 15% coding and a lot of other things. I do code for fun at home.

Also I'm kind of a solitary person.

This 100 times. I have raised eyebrows before by declining to participate in a company hackaton or by saying I don't go to hackatons during a job interview.

Somehow saying that is a red flag although I gave them rational reasons:

- I have my own open source projects I would like to contribute to in my free time outside of work

- I am definitely not coming to a co-working space over the weekend (so losing my two days off when I could spend it with friends or doing my hobbies or just relaxing after week of work), work for free and eat unhealthy pizza and soda drinks so even my health suffers

Some companies will be shocked to hear this opinion.

> I see a hackathon as literally all the worst things about software development compressed in to a single event - practically no planning, very little testing, zero documentation

On the bright side, sometimes this is exactly what's needed. I've seen a hackathon which produced, among other things, a simple technology demo that wasn't meant to see any serious use, but if the company were to develop it normally it would have taken a week or two of planning, bikeshedding and review.

Some people just need alcohol to get over their ideals getting in the way, apparently ;)

Hackathons are a professional embarrassment.

Developers get all excited about coding overnight, but in reality they're being taken advantage of - what other industry do we see this in? You don't ask a lawyer to stay up all night eating pizza and churn out a bunch of legal documents. Why? Because they'd tell you where to go.

"Non-technical" people see a neat demo coming out of a 24 hour hackathon and wonder why it takes their company's developers 6 months and 300k to build an app for them. The expectations this sets (that developers work for free, all night, without any quality or discipline) are not acceptable.

> You don't ask a lawyer to stay up all night eating pizza and churn out a bunch of legal documents. Why? Because they'd tell you where to go.

That's precisely incorrect.

The lawyer will charge you a hefty hourly rate for overnight work (couple hundred per hour) while developers will get free pizza and beer / soda drinks. So it's exploitation in this way. I wonder how many companies would do hackatons if they have to pay their devs overtime rates for their participation.

> I wonder how many companies would do hackatons if they have to pay their devs overtime rates for their participation

yeah but they get paid for it

> They are amazing fun events where tech geeks come together to create something useful.

No. (Emphasis mine)

The one hackathon I've been to, the emphasis was way too heavily on not only making something "useful" but something that could be turned into a business. It wasn't advertised this way, and my group went in just wanting to have a bit of fun, making something quirky in a hurry.

We ended up scrambling for ideas, then when we finally found an idea or two that we kind of liked, we were talked out of it by the industry-rep mentors that were supposed to be helping us. One even took our idea, and twisted it into a really weird financial solution for a totally different problem to what we were thinking about. After spending about 5 hrs trying to make it work, and struggling with the basics of the concept, we just gave up and walked away.

Best part of the whole thing was the free RasPi 3 that I got because one of my group went to one of the talks.

I've won every hackathon i've ever entered (around 10 now).

I enter them to win money or prizes, and as such take a cynical view of them which helped to find a formula to present at them. Being confident wins over technical talent in most of the ones that offer prizes.

Simply you need to show or tell the audience an example of you using X piece of software, pretend to be frustrated and then dramatically pause, and then start selling your version of it. Make them be sure they've had this problem before, even if they haven't.

Where are you guys going for all these hackathons where real devs show up and can code? The ones I attended in Sydney are 90% marketing/sales/designers desperate for a dev and they spend all the time faffing about.

Try https://hackmit.org/ ;)

Hey mate, I'd love to know what languages you deal with?

Mostly Python and learning React which strangely gave me a taste for functional programming so might try something like Scala next. You?

Same situation in Melbourne. Heck even the proper hackathons are selling out now.

If you actually want to build something meaniful it's probably better to do so from the comfort of your home with proper rest and breaks.

Weird. Every hackathon I've been to has tried to inform first time hackers of these things.

HackMIT FAQ (every year): https://hackmit.org/#faq

Numerous HackBeanpot posts:

http://blog.hackbeanpot.com/simple-advice-for-first-time-hac...

http://blog.hackbeanpot.com/check-yourself-before-you-wreck-...

(Disclosure: I helped organize HackBeanpot 2017)

There is nothing weird in catchy title in a blogspam article. Not even sure how this got to the frontpage.

I hate those business oriented hackathons where 90% is about the pitch. I tend to prefer ones where actual coding gets done.

Seriously. A solid powerpoint presentation is all you need to win in those ones.

I've been to a few demos at the end of hackathons (absolutely refuse to take part in one myself) and have only ever seen one somewhat useful project come through. And it was quite obvious that the team had done a fair bit of pre-hackathon prep...

Last company I worked started pushing these in a big way. Free pizza and goodies so I code all night, unpaid, at our work offices... who on Earth does this kind of thing appeal to?!

It would appeal to me...or to be exact, it would have appealed to a two decades younger revision of me. No more.

The hackathon in this context seems to be an extension of the good old "lan party", but with programming instead of games.

I build developer tools, and so hackathons are a useful way to evaluate various assumptions about the toolchain: http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/msgflo-noflo-in-hackathons/

That said, I hate the "build a fake startup during a weekend" concept that pretty much all hackathons here in Berlin follow. And since the judges are typically 100% non-technical, the best powerpoints win, without consideration of what actually got done.

Also, in Sydney, quite a few of these make you sign away the rights to the end result in exchange for the prize. (Free publicity and you can work on it further for funding as a contractor). Imagine if you actually had a good idea and you came to one to colaborate and ended up losing your rights to your own idea.

Been decades since I've been to one. I came up with an elegant solution. But the stress was enormous. Not the work, but doing the work in the face of a very noisy and distracting environment.

So, no, not for me. On the other hand, the equivalent work when I can go off and think on my own, and come back and collaborate when I have an idea to vet? And collaborate in the true group activities involved? Sure.

I think Hackathons, however small, provide useful feedback for estimating your "fluency" in a specific technology. Self-assessment gets a reality check.

The comments are more useful than the article (which doesn't really address the topic)

replace hack with work and you're closer to representing what a workathon is.

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