This is great advice. As a person that is normally labelled as a job hopper (6 in the past 5 years) I finally settled down and got into tech by attending hackathons and helped ship apps (mostly android) it has given me the opportunity to work for a YC company and I am very happy here. It's just ironic that startups have been the most stable positions rather than corporate or bigger tech companies.

Hackathons are relativity cheap (time wise) investments, but make you stand out from the crowd.