Hackathons done wrong | Hacker News Reader

Hackathons done wrong

bitboxer.de

44 pointswhereismypw13 comments

Nowadays hackathons are really not hackathon. You might have a vision of hackers coming together building things for the sake of building things. No, nowadays hackathon has been corrupted by VC to see what ideas to invest in.

I've gone through one where the winner was a team with a nice powerpoint presentation but with very little function built, while other teams much further along lost out, against the stated evaluation criteria of building software for the competition. Of course the judges were all VC looking for ideas. They should have called it an idea fest instead.

Hackathons are a waste of time for developers and hackers. You are better off doing a project with friends for fun, and see what stick afterward.

I agree with some of what this said. But disagree with quite a bit. Great point on the prize, having massive prizes leads to a startup demo day rather than a good hackathon.

Paypal does offer a $100k to the winning team at the end of their “hackathon season”, but does a good job of combatting startup demo day by having a theme like their current one, making an app for social good and checking to see all work was done during the event.

Disagree on sleeping rules. If you want to sleep, go for it. But to have rules that I have to sleep because you’re tired is ridiculous. We aren’t kids. Funny enough Paypal has sleeping rooms for those who want to sleep and they encourage it. When I competed at HackMIT they gave out an inflatable bed, penn apps gave out blankets and pillows. So many different hackathons help out with both energy drinks or sleeping its almost crazy that you want formal rules setup for this. Sorry but Id rather attend hackathons that are open and let hackers choose what they want to do.

Lots of college hackathons have lightning talks. They are great. Sadly not a big % of the hackers attend. I personally like to create and learn while doing. When I have questions i go to the mentors which is nice.

I generally agree with the op, but there is are few things unmentioned.

Not everyone lives in the US, meaning not everyone knows that you can simply build a product, get money for it, and have it grow. I learned this at a Hackathon. I attended a mini seedcamp because of a Hackathon, and they made sure none of the attendee judges would steal anything.

Yes, there are bad VCs, but for example in Germany, you grow up learning that you will never do well unless you get your degree in the university and then go work for Airbus, Intel, you name it. In fact most of my co-students went that exact path and they were utterly surprised when I told them I wasn't a student worker anywhere, but an experienced engineer helping startups grow their companies.

Long story short, Hackathons can be empowering. They can get you great jobs, startups, co-founders, etc. And yes 48 hours of coding is not good. But you never code 48 hours. It won't even be close to 48 hours, and chances are even if you have something nice at the end of it you might have to ditch it and rewrite from scratch.

Not dismissing any of the points, merely amending. He's right on almost every regard imho.

I think there's a giant difference between a spec competition of the type that you describe, where architects are invited to create proposals for a company headquarters, and a hackathon of the type that PayPal's BattleHack is.

Generally speaking, most hackathons now don't try to make intellectual property claims on entrants' work. I'm sure some still do, but that's just a bad idea for everyone involved, and I do agree with you that those should be avoided. Whether or not VC's are interested in the pitches is really up to the teams involved - they're certainly not obligated to take VC's money.

24 hour hackathons are completely different from spec-work - you're in a room with other developers, the scope of the work is limited to just 24 hours, and the best use of them is simply to stretch your legs as a developer.

To go back to the writer's ideal hackathon, BattleHack has multiple companies involved, along with PayPal, although PayPal is the main sponsor. You can sleep or not sleep at BattleHack - I slept during both BattleHack Austin and the BattleHack world finals when I attended last year. Every hackathon I've ever been to has been relatively friendly when it comes to helping others, even with prizes on the line.

You can have hackathons without big prizes (for instance, most civic hackathons), or even without coding competitions/pitches (for instance, Hacker Olympics).

Disclaimer: I won BattleHack Austin last year, went to the BattleHack world finals to compete there, and won several vendor prizes at each. I've also competed and mentored in many other hackathons.

http://www.nospec.com/about

The designers have been fighting this battle for years. It is time for the rest of us to join in.

Not all hackathons are nearly as bad as this mentions. I've found that CodeDay (http://CodeDay.org) as well as the hackathons part of Major League Hacks (http://mlh.io) have adhered to most of what the ideal hackathon constitutes as per this article.

The author has a problem with events called "hackathons" that are not congruous to his definition of a hackathon. These hackathons have too much competition, they are too intense, and he just generally doesn't like the atmosphere. Yet some people enjoy them. You know what? I wouldn't attend the events I didn't like myself. I would attend some other events or perhaps help people organize them. Maybe he will do it.

Well, I don't get this:

"A hackathon where everyone wanders around the tables and you talk with lots of people about the stuff they are doing is way way more productive for everyone."

If everyone wanders around the tables, then no-one will get anything done. That is not productive at all.

>> "If everyone wanders around the tables, then no-one will get anything done. That is not productive at all."

Your taking his comment to the extreme. I know what he means, he means a Hackathon were people can converse and come up with ideas together is a better Hackathon than say one that forces close-knit groups to ignore everyone else in a bid to 'win' the competition.

Newsflash- VCs dont usually invest in hackathon companies, yes, they get invited all the time, they get to judge, sometimes angels/incubators might give you an invite, or an interview with a VC as a prize (the most bullshit prize) the cash prices (whatever amount they are are much better than VC money or VC time or etc....) If a VC is there, they're just filling time and seats and meeting some future people, but rarely companies. And I say this as a top 20 finalist on a 400 team nationwide weekend hackathon. VCs don't invest in hackathon companies, the offered prizes as VC money come with many, many caveats. Some angels maybe invest but its doubtful. Though yeah, agreed, it is all about the APIs, baby.

I had a great time at BattleHack. It was the most well run hackathon I've ever been too by a wide margin. There were other companies there who had their own APIs. A lot of them encourage this 24/7 mentality, it doesn't mean you have to. People can be responsible for themselves too. I don't do 24/7 anymore, I leave. Nobody stops you. The competitiveness of it, it would be nice to have some that are just purely for show/sharing/collaboration. But I don't mind some being competitive as well.

I would recommend you check out http://hackdaymanifesto.org which I and other hackday organisers wrote a little while back.

I enjoyed my time at SF Battlehack. I started working on an app there that will be interesting. :)

Hackathons are where I get inspired. I talked to many people at Salesforce hackathon last year too. That one had a million at stake.

Hacker Olympics at Twiliocon last year were simply epic. That battle was brutal until last second.

I usually sleep a few hours. It leads to better code.

I had a decent experience at a recent hackathon. I sat down started coding, fell asleep about 0400, woke up, pointed at things like I had a clue what was going on. Sure the code was not anything to brag about, for me it was the socialization. Being able to talk development with others; hell I even learned a couple of things.

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