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Comment by kamens | Hacker News Reader

At Khan Academy we've been running ours as "Healthy Hackathons" — we kick people out at 11:45pm to get sleep, bring in healthy food, snacks, and activities, and always include our work week as part of the schedule (not just weekends).

We actually just held our Monday-Friday Healthy Hack Week last week (http://healthyhackathon.khanacademy.org). One of my favorite weeks ever, particularly because we encourage "hacks" of all kinds that don't have to include coding, and the entire company dives in.

They've been internal only so far. Maybe some day we'll open it up.

After a week of hackathon'ing intensely I'll walk in tomorrow more energized than ever (and eager to figure out how to use some of the team's work in upcoming projects). The commitment to staying healthy while hacking feels like it's paying off for us.

Plus it demonstrates our commitment to long-term investment in teammates.

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Actually what your so-called "Healthy Hackatons" demonstrates to me is that not a lot of Khan Academy employees are married with kids. I know my wife would be annoyed if I was goofing off at the office until midnight for a week leaving her to feed our kids and put them to bed by herself. But, hey, it's all for the greater good of "disrupting" education!

It's ironic that obviously very few Khan Academy employees have children of their own, but that's probably because it's only a few years since they were children themselves...

Not really worth arguing online with somebody who'd make a statement about the demographics of a company they know nothing about -- but for sake of clarifying your demonstrably false claim: we have lots of parents and family folk at KA, at all levels including senior leadership.

We do not require that anybody stays at our hackathon until 11:45, but we do require that people get sleep. These decisions -- and the decision to not only host over a weekend -- come from our family-aware mindset.

Can't make statements about things we don't know about, so we gotta go by what we read. It feels like this debate may set expectations and shapes culture about things like hackathons everywhere, so maybe this touches a sensitive spot for many.

So I read that your employees actually do have family (which makes the thing about staying late worse), that you don't "require" that people stay until midnight (as if that was a thing you could require), and patronizingly insist that people get sleep.

Maybe I just didn't read that correctly, language barrier and all that but... I don't know, these extra hours, are those paid overtime or is that a further erosion of the 40 hour work week?

> So I read that your employees actually do have family (which makes the thing about staying late worse)

I think you're being overly negative.

Nobody is forcing anyone to go to these things. If you have other stuff to do, fine. If, like some people, you actually enjoy it, you can go. Maybe you even have an understanding husband/wife who understands that once in a while you might be out as late as 11:45pm

Maybe if you don't go you'll be fired to make way for someone more passionate?

This is just it. The goal posts are always being moved. Hiring is a farce at this point, and I get sick of these recruiters / employers pontificating about this "passion" nonsense.

I agree that we shouldn't always be so quick to judge, but my sibling posters have a point. How about the company throws this "hackathon" during company time? That would demonstrate commitment towards whatever the event is supposed to achieve.

That's exactly what we did. We committed an entire week of company time to our hackathon. People can stay late if they so choose.

Many did not and made amazing things thanks to the commitment by KA to use company time.

Ah, that is cool, I would love to work at a place like that. And I am 100% sure you unleash a lot of creativity and ideas this way.

https://www.khanacademy.org/about/the-team tells me "nothing" about the demographics of Khan Academy employees?

> We do not require that anybody stays at our hackathon until 11:45, but we do require that people get sleep.

Parents of young children don't need to be told by their employers to get sleep.

You can express your disagreement with staying past office hours without being condescending. Though, the post only indicated no participants were allowed to work past a time, not that everyone must work until that time.

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