Hackathon hustlers who make a living from corporate coding contests

I usually go to get in the zone with some new technologies around like minded people, and not really about the theme of the hackathon itself. A lot of hackathons have tons of tertiary prizes and networking opportunities.

Unlike other places with a tech scene, Silicon Valley has an industry that caters to unskilled and wannabe programmers that aren't currently into programming at all. Hackathons, Meetups and the coding schools are at the center of that. So you shouldn't expect actual deep technology discussions at those particular things, you will be underwhelmed.

Along the same lines, there were a few local meetups where people were going to plan some ideas for innovative uses for public data sets, and what kind of data we should try and get released from the city & county. The whole thing ended up getting de-railed by non-tech "thought leader in a turtleneck" consultant types giving their personal pitches to market their brand, and nothing solid came out of that. Those who were interested in building something formed a separate group and went their own way.

At the risk of sounding like a delicate snowflake, I would really enjoy more "tech events for people who really want to get their hands dirty".

My pet peeve was always make the event more about "the hacker experience" and less about "the best PPT wins".

Things we did:

* PPT-free event: a team must show something working.

* Startup teams trying to pitch an already working product were kicked out.

* Each team must name one PR member, mentors and other staff should not interrupt anyone except this PR guy.

* Ingenuity and implementation completeness were the main criteria (the least mockups the better).

* Zero tolerance for antisocial behavior.

We strive a lot do make sure "the best hack" wins.

Most of the teams came with something pre-made and tried to fit it to the theme of the event. And one team was pitching their startup. Of course all of them were good at pitching, but implementation-wise they were ahead of "hackers" too even not touching their keyboards...

A lot of small local game jams fall closer to the second category there. I think you are right that financial stakes affects the attitude of the hackathon.

We didn't win. Obviously, I'm biased, but I think our product was more promising both in terms of realistic use of the technology, and in terms of the possibility of going to market quickly. But our demo wasn't as shiny, we were from a remote office so people didn't really know who we were, and neither of us were particularly charismatic presenters.

Presentation matters. This has been impressed on us repeatedly; the joke is now that whoever manages to snag the UI/UX person first for their team is going to win.

1. A team winning a few very significant awards (including second place) for pitching an app that allows you to take picture of your food bowl and tell you the nutritional content breakdown. Of course no demo was provided, and the guys fessed up that they "didn't know anything about machine learning until two days ago, but learned everything needed to make it work in that time period." No one questioned authenticity or whether it was actually a possible thing to make.

2. Another group of 10 people who ONLY made a powerpoint talking about some app that mixed traveling and tinder. When asked by judges whether they had something besides powerpoint, they said that they "are not coders, but idea-people", and that it took 10 of them to make that powerpoint.

I get the same feeling often when reading papers. It feels like the abstract and first few paragraphs hold great promise and then you get down to what the authors really did and it's like "are you kidding?" So often there is a big hype/substance mismatch.

But is there really another way?

However, it goes deeper than that as not even all developers (myself included) are always as good at evaluating technical merit as we think we are - particularly if the solution involves a lot of math.

We thought hard about an actually useful finance app on this very limited smart watch, discarding any accounting or similar beacause input using three buttons is too cumbersome if you have a mobile phone in your pocket a few inches away.

We ended up creating a watch app that showed you the route to the next ATM on a map, along with a description of the route. Technically pretty challenging since we had to generate map tiles on a remote server and load them onto the watch. Also, each image had to be sent in two chunks since the transfer buffer was smaller than the screen...

Another group just assumed the Pebble had a camera, color display and a microphone and had no demo, just a power point presentation. They ended up as winners...

So they judge it off an idea. Does the idea sound cool?

"Build it and they will come" is a Hollywood myth.

They're a direct descendant of that ecosystem, which is designed --at least in part-- to take advantage of youngster's naivete. How many times has SV told us that ideas don't matter, that you need to hustle? These hackathons find those willing to put in the most work for little gain, besides "industry stature".

That said, on an individual level, I quite enjoy the scene.

From dictionary.com and merriam-webster.com:

Hack

verb: - to write computer programs for enjoyment

noun: - a usually creative solution to a computer hardware or programming problem or limitation - a piece of code that modifies a computer program in a skillful or clever way

The goal was to code for fun. Then corporations got involved and the goal became to code for a job. Now that money is involved, a goal is to code for money.

See: bitcoin

"well GEE, thanks..."

Of course, attendance is mandatory if you like having your job, and complaining about it makes you look like a bad sport. :|

We were behind on our launch which was a month away so these hackathons kept happening every week.

:)

I've participated in 8 or so Startup Weekends, a few as a regular attendee, a few as a mentor, and a few as a community organizer. So, I'm speaking from a position of some experience but admittedly, only within the events I experienced in the mid-Atlantic area.

I've always viewed Startup Weekend as different from a hackathon. IMO, hackathons should be more like what you're describing, developers getting together and hacking on stuff, a fairly technical focus. Whereas I view Startup Weekend as more an entrepreneur networking event. Yes, you're ostensibly there to create a startup in a weekend, but the real point is to meet people outside of your normal circles, other people who have that ambition to create something.

At least, that's how I've always pitched it to developers I encouraged to attend. If you want to have a good weekend, put some effort into picking a good team. The startup idea honestly doesn't matter so much, because it's kind of absurd to think you'll build anything real in a weekend. The startup idea will almost certainly be abandoned after the weekend. So, what really matters is finding a team of people who seem like they'd be fun to work with, people you might enjoy spending an entire weekend with, people you might want to maintain a connection with after the weekend.

I also think Startup Weekend is a bit more up front about the focus being the business idea and the pitch, not actually executing on the tech during the weekend. Of course, it can be disheartening when a completely unfeasible idea wins, but that really comes down to the judges. I've often been frustrated by the judging. For example, at one event, one judge was an expert in FinTech; so some decent ideas in that space were shot down as unfeasible, which was probably true. But some equally unfeasible machine learning ideas won, simply because none of the judges had the expertise to evaluate them.

All of that said, there are definitely diminishing returns. After you've attended one or two Startup Weekends, you've probably expanded your circle plenty – and if not, then attending a third probably won't change that. I attended so many, because I found the energy of the event to be invigorating. It felt good to be around so many people who were putting energy into creating something new – yes, often something silly/bad/unfeasible, but they were trying to do something different.

It's similar to how I feel about software conferences. It's good to attend 1 per year, because it's invigorating to be around so many developers who are passionate about technology and the craft of writing software. But as you attend more, there are rapidly diminishing returns. There are only so many ideas you can explore, only so much you can take away. In years I've attended multiple, I often find myself wishing I had just stayed home and spent the 2-4 days doing some other learning activity, e.g., pick an open source tool I use regularly, really dig into it, and try to contribute back.