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Can we kill the hackathon please? Yes I totally want to get nerd-sniped for some of my precious off time for some trivial reward. NOT

Its a fantastic deal for management if you can find people gullible enough. But a raw deal for the worker bees themselves

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I enjoyed "old fashioned" hackathons, which you had 24h to build or play with some technology or API. It has lost its charm (for me)since it moved to be startup-ish like events that you need to pitch a product instead.

I think it will be considered a "blast from the past" at some point, due to the AI era we are getting into.

retro hackathons will replace retro arcades as gen x retires and millenials are 50+ and have money and kids out of the house. haha.

Is participation in your off time mandatory? If so, the problem is not hackathons. If not, why not just… not participate? The folks who do often enjoy working on the problems, networking, etc., so I’m not sure killing them all together is particularly fair to folks who do get a lot out of them.

The lack of participation is often one of those things that management will quietly hold against you.

The problem in that case is working for a toxic employer, not the hackathon. You need to fix that regardless.

mandatory fun

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