Corporate Hackathons: The Fine Line Between Engaging and Exploiting | Hacker News Reader

Corporate Hackathons: The Fine Line Between Engaging and Exploiting

jamiemsmyth.blogspot.com

77 pointsjf24 comments

Jamie Smyth makes some very good points in his economic analysis. Having to pay your own airfare to New York to do a presentation, and then 30 teams building solutions, 29 that would not be paid for. That certainly is a good deal for Campbell, and it sounds like whatever solution they buy for the $25,000 prototype plus $25,000 on completion of the full system with all the changes they request would have cost them a lot more had they hired a design firm to attempt something of this nature, especially in that they get to keep the best of 30 working designs.

Despite all this, much more fascinating than Jamie's post was the following exchange between Campell's brand marketer Sam Niburg and Campell's Global Head of Digital Adam Kmiec.

https://twitter.com/adamkmiec/status/292833747701731328

Regarding Mr Smyth, Kmiec says "Don't sweat it. I shared my opinion about him & his company to every colleague I have client-side and agency-side."

So rather than respond to the very reasonable questions and issues Mr Smyth has brought up, Kmiec publicly brags about having launched a personal vendetta to destroy him and his company.

It's a fascinating exchange between a senior executive and someone tasked with presenting a positive image of the company's brand reputation.

Usually these sorts of open and candid comments between insiders are only seen in private emails. It's refreshing to see inner workings like this out in the open.

Just wow. That is amazingly clueless use of social media.

If I had read just Smyth's well-written post, I wouldn't have anything against Campbell per se. They organized a lame hackathon, but a lot of companies do that, and Smyth's post was about this corporate hackathon culture, it just happened to use Campbell's hackathon as an example.

But after reading that Twitter exchange, I now think they really are clueless assholes.

Yeah, it kind of clashes with the careful Disney like feel good image Campbell has developed and doesn't really indicate a lot of public relations awareness, whether it was private or public.

Here's how I would have handled it if I was in charge of that thing. I'd have read that essay and thought, wow, OK, this does look like an attempt to get a lot of free engineering work and publicity. Then I'd either ignore it and hope it blows away if I had no authority, or if I did, talk to the other executives and point out that the particular issue of not paying travel and accommodations to New York is really not fair at all to the individual hackers and designers (since this is open to individuals and not design firms with a sales team and funding). I'd then publicly thank him for his insightful feedback, insist it was simply overlooked, and announce that OF COURSE Campbells is going to be paying airfare and accommodations to the 30 people that are selected to give presentations, and a family member if they like.

What I would definitely NOT do is pull out my rolodex and "contact every colleague I have client-side and agency-side" (this must be hundreds if not thousands of people) to inform them that a very mean and awful hacker has found my hackathon has some flaws with it in that I'm not paying people for the expenses necessary to comply with my demands, and so will they join in my pile on against him, the stupid annoying hacker, and his filthy company that has DARED, DARED I say to criticize the Almighty Campbells Soup company, which has been around need I remind him longer than he has even been alive the little piss ant!

Because that would be a really very stupid thing to do instead of just offer to pay the accommodations and airfare for these people who are doing free work for my company, and come out all roses having mastered such a minor PR challenge which has such an obvious solution to it.

It's not like Campbells isn't a Fortune 500 company (it is) who drops tens of millions on a Chunky Super Bowl XLVI Sweepstakes without blinking an eye at the cost. Their advertising and software development costs should not be subsidized by hackers. Given that most hackers are under IP contracts that prohibit them from entering something like this in their free time, most of the people legally able to enter are going to be hackers going through a spell of unemployment. Expecting them to do extensive free design work and fly out to meet clients for something that isn't even going to be all that much pay in the end if they do win the contract isn't a reasonable expectation. I expect though that a fair number of people will enter despite this. They might get better quality material though if they are at least willing to pay actual expenses of the finalists.

>What I would definitely NOT do is pull out my rolodex and "contact every colleague I have client-side and agency-side" (this must be hundreds if not thousands of people)

meh. In almost certain likelihood the guy didn't do that. It would make him look childish to his contacts and would waste a bunch of his time. Why do all that work when he can get the same effects (scaring the guy and telling him to fuck off) just writing a tweet?

Much more effective. Though it does tell me never to do business with Campbell.

(For the historical record, during the ~9 hours between bendoit's comment and mine now, this Twitter post was apparently deleted.)

Thanks for mentioning saurik. Probably a good move for him.

Would you have a copy of the tweet exchange?

It's strange that hackathons have become so high-stakes, just from the practical point that it's extremely easy to cheat and extremely hard to detect cheating. I don't want to be the "let's go back to the days when the winner got a t-shirt" guy, but it's getting ridiculous. I heard a story last week about a very substantial prize being won by a team who iterated on a previous hackathon's result without mentioning so.

It might work in the short term, but I can see talented developers getting turned off by the whole thing and not showing up at all, when it becomes clear they have no chance of winning if they stick to the rules and start from scratch. A better alternative, if someone wants to put out prizes like that, could be to announce the competition with a deadline, say 4 weeks out, and then host optional hacker spaces for the final weekend.

I'm not sure that I understand all of the negativity around this. If Campbells had called this a contest instead of a hackathon, would it change your opinion on the details of the event? They seem to be pretty open about their intent and what happens if you win and/or make it to the finals.

Some positive things to keep in mind:

* submitting an idea costs you nothing except for your time to write up an idea

* the winner will receive $25,000 for a 3-week build prototype, NOT a market ready application

* there are no posted rules on the level of completeness required for your prototype. Can you win with a slide deck that shows how you use their API to execute your idea? maybe.)

* presenting your idea in the finals does not require you to travel to NY, they clearly state that you can video conference in for the event.

* if you do win you are then offered, not obligated to take, an additional $25k contract to complete it (likely not worth it)

For all of the folks that don't win, it's not an entire loss either:

* a well written idea is all that is needed to enter the contest, not much lost if you aren't selected as a finalist.

* if you make it to the finals, your only cost is 3 weeks of your time for a 1:30 chance of winning $25k or less for winning the $10k as a runner up.

* if you make it to the finals you walk away with something tangible to tack onto your resume. "Made it as a finalist in a nationally recognized brand's competition for my idea" sounds pretty good.

The "1:30 chance of winning $25k" means you work at around $1k per month as self managed develloper (in the US). It's just cheap.

It can be a goood deals for CS students that have some 3 weeks mandatory project to do for school.

Where do you get the $1k/month from?

Finalists are granted access to the API on Feb 11, 2013 and are required to submit their entries by March 1, 2013. Assuming that they also notify you as a finalist on Feb 11 and not before, that gives you 3 weeks to build and submit your prototype.

$25k / 3 weeks == $8,333.34 USD per week. That's a pretty good payout for anyone in my opinion.

Also, assuming that you're not spending 40 hours a week at this for all 3 weeks (120 hours). A working prototype can be made in 10-15 hours. Also the amount of time you spend on it is up to you.

So 1:30 shot at $50K, for a 15 hour investment? Up to you to decide.

Is any actual software developer even considering entering? I mean a developer that has a full time day job developing software. I do sw development by day, so by night any sw project would have to be very very interesting for me to consider participating. Otherwise I would rather spend time on my own sw projects or interests. The soup hackathon is just a 'Please use our api for something since we can't think of any useful thing ourselves' so I doubt it would peak the interest of anyone who gets a salary doing sw develoment. So who is left? Well as far as I can see, the unemployed sw developer looking for a job and trying to spruse up his resume and make some money, and the independent freelance/self employed developer who pushes out an endless supply of small apps anyway. For those developers such a hackathon is just another opportunity and better than nothing I guess, even though you are most likely just working for free.

So think of it like this...

You have a day job. But you're on the look out for something to spend a bit of time on in your spare time.

You have a chance to spend a few hours putting together a prototype of something and winning $50,000 for your efforts. Even runners up could get $10,000. It doesn't require a full-time commitment to do. So the risk/reward ratio (a few hours vs $50K) is there for you to do this.

Let's say you have a clever idea and spend 10 hours during your spare time putting a prototype together.

Is 10 hours of your time worth a decent shot at $10K or $50K? That's $5,000 an hour or $1,000 an hour. And assume you are up against 10-15 other clever people, so rank your odds of that accordingly.

That's the question. Only you can answer.

Most of all, it's just not an interesting way to spend your time, and it's not even a "hack", and therefore not even deserving of that title. If you want to play with technology at a "hackathon", hack on something interesting, not just the usual web 9.0 "plug this API into that platform and claim to be a disruptive innovator."

I imagine some of my clients could have been in a similar situation to Campbell's: they want a site or mobile app for marketing purposes or whatever. Since it's not crucial for their business, they don't know what they want. Yeah, maybe they have a marketing department, even a digital/social media division. But that can only produce so many ideas, and there's too much internal feedback to guarantee that ideas for, e.g. a mobile app, would be effective or innovative. So maybe they decide to hire a design firm with experience designing innovative mobile apps. In most relationships, the process would only alleviate those problems slightly: they would get more ideas, from outside their own offices, but only a few which the firm considers "best" and they would be subject to the firm's biases anyhow. A 'hackathon' like this is clearly a much cleverer option for a corporation: they get many ideas from diverse sources, they get to choose which ones to prototype—and they get 30 prototypes! And then they pay up. This isn't really about hackathons, it's about efficient economics. "Exploiting" is in the original post's title, but it's really no different from the normal exploitation inherent in every economic interaction.

As a consultant, I am used to a certain level of inefficiency—paying me even as I brainstorm, for example—which hides the exploitation of my labor. I am upset about hackathons like this because they reveal the exploitation and how it is tipped in Campbell's favor.

In a somewhat different vein, being on a college campus, there are similar exploitative relationships, in a sense, at the hackathons I go to. hack@uchicago just had a really awesome hackathon. I was coding, and had an excellent time, but I didn't compete. I know a few other people didn't compete for the prizes either, but were still building cool stuff. We had three main sponsors: UChicago's Physical Science Collegiate Division, UChicago IT Services, and Inventables. All three were engaging in rational economic transactions, beyond charity, much like Campbell's, but nobody's pissed off about it because the economics aren't obvious and the exploitation is many levels of indirection away: nobody directly got a product out of it. The PSCD, however, got some marketing and something to put on their website which will help get them more grants, researchers, whatever. IT Services regularly hires students. I would be willing to bet that the folks from Inventables approached multiple hackathon participants with an eye toward hiring, and I bet the winner straight up got a job offer (which he deserves, for the record, if you're reading this Paul). Meanwhile, I got free food and an excuse to work on a weekend project. I'm not upset because I don't feel exploited by that exchange. I think everybody got what they wanted out of the hackathon.

tl;dr: The economics make perfect sense for Campbell's, not for developers. Chances are any time somebody sponsors a hackathon, it's also an economic exchange, but this one is exploitative (or, if you're a Marxist, this one makes the inherent exploitation of every economic interaction more obvious).

"But for approximately 93% of the fortunate developers that “won” the chance to write code against the Campbell’s soup API (!), they get… nothing." "If you want to go it alone, just pay $25 to Google (or $99 to Apple) and start writing and selling apps."

I don't think app developers have the best odds either: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/18/business/as-boom-lures-app... http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2404012,00.asp

Having a working app on the Play Store is good for developers. Even if the app doesn't get a lot of downloads, they can at least show the app to prospective employers.

For the Campbell Hackathon, developer has nothing to show since API access is revoked at the end.

Good thoughts but generally I'd consider (1) who owns the IP for the winning idea or product and even those that don't win? If a company is sponsoring a hackathon with hopes of attracting disruptive ideas but owns the IP, there must be other upside - maybe significant monetary prizes or marketing exposure - to make it worth your weekend's time. (2) And the grave reality that most larger companies cannot execute the winning app without internal support, necessary team resources and budget...which may require lots of change.

I agree with the article, but if we say that Cambell is unethical then where do we draw the line in general? Eg. Is Kaggle unethical and exploitation as well ? Like the Cambell hackathon, in Kaggle competitions you work for free and only a limited number of people actually get paid for their work. Even if Kaggle promotes that everyone's work actually helps (indirectly) to pin down a good solution, not everyone is getting paid.

This has been on my mind recently as I have been invited to "Barclay's Social Enterprise Weekend": http://barclayssewnorth.eventbrite.co.uk/

Two things kind of leave me undecided:

1) Narrow brief: Here they are very narrow and specific about what areas would be suitable and it is clearly very closely aligned with their own interests. (However a blog post from one of the companies on the judging panel gives a more open ended brief: http://import.io/barclays-social-enterprise-hackathon-2013/)

2) Outcome: There aren't any "prizes". I suppose this is social enterprise, so you could consider a monetary (or similar) prize as slightly against "the spirit", but really I was kind of expecting more of an incentive from a huge multinational bank?

Anyone else seen this or otherwise have any thoughts on this event?

The Barclays one is not exactly the same thing, but it doesn't appeal to me.

You have to pay £25 to donate 3 full days of your work time (likely more in terms of work days given 16 hr days not 8 are the norm at hackathons - so this is 6 work days of work.)

A big difference is the application is for charity rather than, as with Campbells, being something that directly and obviously benefits the business and would normally be something they would have to pay for.

Barclays does say "Each team will have access to at least one follow up meeting with technology experts that have been involved in the design, development or marketing of Barclays mobile applications." It's not clear what this means, perhaps this is to get a brainstorming session with some of Barclays developers, or perhaps Barclays might develop the "charity app" further themselves.

When I have a 3 day weekend there are a lot of things I would rather do than pay £25 for the privilege of doing 6 days of work without compensation beyond a sleeping bag rental and a few pizzas, donuts and sodas.

I can understand the motivations of those who do choose to participate...as a creative outlet, as a way to cement or learn new skills, to meet new people, and yes - it's incentivized. I appreciate his point but see no problem myself lol.

I think Jamie Smyth should get over himself. I understand his point about it not being particularly fair to the developers, but guess what? It's a free market and if developers choose to spend their time working for free for Campbells then that is their business. All of his self-righteous posturing about developers "having the most sought-after skills in America" comes off as very oddly paternal. We're all adults and we can all make our own decisions about how we choose to spend our time. Nobody tricked or forced those developers to work for free.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com