[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Hackathons feel fake now - anyone else notic...
___________________________________________________________________
Ask HN: Hackathons feel fake now - anyone else noticing this?
Been going to a bunch of hackathons in SF lately and honestly,
everything feels fake. There are like 20 sponsors handing out
credits for their tools that all do the same thing. Half the time,
they can't even explain what they're for. They're just hoping
someone uses them so they can count it as adoption. Everyone jams
these into projects to check a box, and what gets built is mostly
BS with zero innovation. Was it always like this and I'm noticing
it now, or has something changed?
Author : sepidy
Score : 40 points
Date : 2025-05-04 20:55 UTC (2 hours ago)
| MehrdadKhnzd wrote:
| Feel the same
| jimty wrote:
| Yeah, hackathons were always shit. They're an apparatus for
| getting essentially free labor out of unsuspecting and gullible
| nerds.
| codr7 wrote:
| Could never wrap my head around the idea.
|
| They're often framed by employers as perks: Look, we're giving
| you the chance to come and work overtime for free, isn't that
| great?
| parpfish wrote:
| I've never heard of a company encouraging their employees to
| participate in a hackathon that they sponsored. Are you
| thinking of internal "hack week" periods where employees get
| a chance to build something "for fun" at work?
| codr7 wrote:
| Lucky you, I've experienced several variations on that
| theme in my own career.
|
| Often sold as team building and way to level up in
| competence/skill, with an undertone of proving your loyalty
| to the company.
| cortesoft wrote:
| I only think this is true if the hackathon is around projects
| that are part of or similar to the normal work. In those
| cases, they should be during work hours and treated as work.
|
| My company 15 years ago or so did a hackathon with arduinos,
| where they provided a bunch of arduinos and hardware and
| food, but the projects we made were completely unrelated to
| work and served no practical purpose. My team made a Simon
| says game.
|
| It was just for fun, there was no benefit for the company. I
| think those are fine.
| sshine wrote:
| It's not free, you get pizzas!
|
| A recent boss mandated that people come on weekends.
| Everyone's contract said you have to, except mine. I pointed
| out to the boss that even though he can ask people to work on
| weekends, there are laws that prevent how much (you need more
| and longer breaks, and you can't do it every weekend.)
|
| He got cold feet and cancelled the event. But he forgot to
| tell people. The most junior developer had spent 2+ hours on
| the commute.
|
| These are not real hackathons.
|
| They're corporate knockoffs.
| krrishd wrote:
| I mostly agree with the premise, but to point out something kinda
| funny: these complaints are basically identical to the ones I
| remember from a time I personally remember as the "heyday" of
| hackathons (early/mid 2010s).
|
| I think:
|
| - they've had this degree of fakeness for almost the entirety of
| their existence (as long as they've needed "sponsorship" / been
| 6+ figure events)
|
| - at its best, there also was a scene/subculture _surrounding_
| hackathons that did care about building genuinely "cool" /
| "impressive" things, had an earnest interest in actually starting
| something longer term (there are some really successful founders
| that "incubated" in the hackathon scene). these folks frequented
| hackathons, and eventually moved on as the scene saturated with
| careerism / they "grew up" professionally
| hkon wrote:
| For a very short timespan they felt organic. But very quickly
| became something where companies could get value for free or very
| low cost.
| Mbwagava wrote:
| An easy way to avoid this is not going to corporate-sponsored
| hackathons.
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| Based on my experience, Hackathons are meant as networking events
| where you might put together some simple prototype. Usually
| people oversell whatever it is that they built, and they're using
| existing skills to rebuild some small part of a larger thing
| which they've already studied extensively outside of the event.
|
| If a company is a big sponsor and they're offering an extra prize
| for using their tool then people will figure out a way to jam it
| into their project, but it's rarely the optimal choice. I think
| it has always been like this.
|
| But if you really want to build something and there's a sponsor
| at the event you should ask them for lots of free credits or for
| some contact info in order to establish a longer-term
| sponsorship.
| mianos wrote:
| The few I saw had terms of participation that gave the organisers
| IP first rights to everything and anything done during them and
| every IP release was at their discretion. Even the naive soon got
| wind of that.
| hbsbsbsndk wrote:
| I organized some grassroots hackathon events 10+ years ago.
| Turnout was mostly students and die-hard geeks who wanted
| something to do on the weekend. Even in this small pond we had a
| local startup sponsor and try to shoe-horn their service into it.
|
| When I attended bigger events with bigger sponsors it felt like
| 90% marketing to pitch your idea. The actual technical side was
| never that impressive or interesting.
|
| One community that kicks ass at this are InfoSec people, I've
| done a lot of terrific volunteer-run CTFs.
| sherdil2022 wrote:
| Fame, money are fickle but many people seem to go to great
| lengths to get them. Hackathons give those 2 and these people
| game the system to get them.
|
| I joined a few corp hackathons before - only to realize the team
| had been coding even before the hackathon started - rather than
| hacking during the hackathon period!
| rr808 wrote:
| The company I work for has hackathons. Come up with a good idea
| and spend a lot of time (after hours) on the project. In the old
| days that was called a job and you got paid.
| yakshaving_jgt wrote:
| Towards the beginning of my career, my boss asked me to go with
| him to a [partially] NASA-sponsored hackathon. Being more junior,
| I wasn't really in a position to say no and not surrender my
| Saturday (or so I thought at the time). He didn't really do any
| programming at the Hackathon. I did some pointless space-themed
| web UI work. It didn't result in anything worth talking about.
|
| He used this event as a PR opportunity and went on the local
| radio to say we had done a project for NASA.
|
| I'm still embarrassed about that.
| constrictpastel wrote:
| Not for nothing but... What event DOESN'T feel fake these days?
| SXSW? Burning Man? DEFCON? It's all corporate and lame. I look
| around and all I see is lameness. Grifters everywhere.
| jerryseff wrote:
| Even in college they always seemed like a waste of time. Cool to
| meet new people, but to "build" something and win was always a
| fools errand.
|
| This was further enforced when I drove up to attend Hack the
| North at U Waterloo with a few friends from Boston. One of the
| contestants stayed up so late he tore a muscle in his eye and now
| has a permanent deformity / disability.
|
| As an adult I'd simply never even show up to such an event, if my
| employer wants to pay me overtime sure - but I'd still say no.
|
| Build cool things, get normal amounts of sleep. It's not about
| the clout its about improving as an engineer.
| avalys wrote:
| These have felt fake to me since college, so, for 20 years or so?
|
| They're so far from the environment where I'm most productive and
| creative that I've always considered them to be performative
| nonsense at best.
| cortesoft wrote:
| I feel like hackathons are super polarizing. Some people love
| them, some people hate them. I don't get the appeal, either,
| but I have friends who love them.
| quuxplusone wrote:
| Recently on HN: "The Gang Has A Mid-Life Crisis"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43860696
|
| Hackathons are fun and productive when what you need to do/learn
| -- something you haven't already done/learned -- can be
| done/learned in a weekend. Once you graduate, there's a lot fewer
| of those things lying around. Quote:
|
| > We need look no further than the "hackathon," that sad
| facsimile of the days when we were all learning the basics so
| fast that the world could be ours with just a day or two of
| focused effort. Hype up an exciting atmosphere, assemble some
| folks with so few attachments in life that they have time to
| spend all weekend at a hackathon, and this ritual will summon up
| the old gods. The hackathon is the proof that people believe this
| can work, and it is the proof that it doesn't.
| nine_k wrote:
| In my experience, hackathons in larger companies are valves
| that sometimes release the pressure of things that people
| wanted to do, had been planning to do and thinking through for
| months before the hackathon was even scheduled, and finally are
| allowed to implement. These are binge-programming days/nights
| when the engineers finally don't need to work on tickets, and
| don't have to follow the due processes.
|
| Corollary: if your company promises to have a hackathon one
| day, it's best to get prepared and have a bunch of good ideas
| well ahead of time.
| kanavs wrote:
| My company does a lot of hackathons and we support a decent
| number of hackathons in quantum computing throughout the world.
| And I have had the same sentiment in the quantum computing space
| as well and thinking through the reason for it, my sense is that
| 24-48 hours is not enough time to build something meaningful.
| This is not to say that absolutely cannot be done, but the
| chances of something cool being made are generally low. My guess
| is that this idea might hold in general, anything that can be
| built really quickly tends not to be too impressive and all
| impressive things tend to take longer. I have gotten to a point
| where, if I see something impressive, I have this nagging
| feeling, Was this completed here? or were you working on this for
| a decent amount of time and just took this opportunity to
| showcase it?
| nkrisc wrote:
| I've seen some cool hackathons run internally at some companies
| I've worked for. It was during work hours (paid) and managers set
| time aside for people who wanted to participate. Often it was
| something like, "we have all this data, what could we use it
| for?" and teams would often come up with some pretty cool
| projects based on the data.
|
| At the end there was a big presentation that anyone in the
| company could attend and each team would present what they came
| up with.
|
| Some of them eventually became products directly, or at least set
| the groundwork for future products.
|
| So in a sense it was basically just "work", but it was driven by
| the individual contributors and not a top-down directive.
| dalemhurley wrote:
| I'm not really sure they ever made much sense. Going back 15-20
| years ago, they were always poorly executed and was not for the
| devs.
|
| The only exception was one I went to put on by Atlassian a long
| time ago which was a hardcore geek-vs-geek live coding night with
| lots of drinking and real prizes. This was before they went
| public and didn't care about offending.
| binarymax wrote:
| The best hackathons are community driven, like the annual Ludum
| Dare or the advent of code. If you're going to a highrise office
| building for a hackathon then yeah, it's going to be overly
| commercial.
| throwaway13337 wrote:
| Game jams are less fake and quite numerous.
|
| The reason is simply because there is very little money in indie
| video games. But still a ton of passion. If you want authentic
| nerd dev time, it's still there.
|
| Just don't expect it to be catered.
| tekla wrote:
| Over 20 years too late on this observation
| aziaziazi wrote:
| Hack the hackathon. My follow-at-your-own-risk pro tip: Find a
| team not too much into wining and
|
| - connect with others. They're primarily networking events and
| are still good for that.
|
| - Don't bother checking the sponsors boxes too much. Have fun
| trying technical/product ideas that interest your for any
| _personal_ reason. Should fit with your team project obviously.
| If not, keep it for next time and instead:
|
| - peer with others. Peering with a person you don't know is an
| incredible social and technical experience, whatever your level
| difference.
|
| - sleep at night. You want to be rested to have a good and useful
| time.
|
| - don't bother too much wining. The podium looks fancy but won't
| make much a difference as soon as the doors close. It doesn't
| really make a difference for networking, bootstrapping the resume
| line or having fun. But:
|
| - aim for a MVP or at least something that run and you can show.
| It's not fun to tight the last knobs afterwards. Something
| (anything) functional will make you and your team proud, will
| assist the resume line and will be fun and memberberries for the
| future.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-05-04 23:00 UTC)