I totally see your point and understand that it's good to break away from work every now and then to work on a fun project idea. The problem I have with these hackathons though is that I feel companies get to promote the culture of working late hours and staying up to build an app. I know this is only 2-3 days most of the time but it often feels like companies treating developers as if we are machines and benchmarking us based on what we can produce and come up with in a short time. I know that not all hackathons are the same and it may be that I should try different ones first.