Comment by anateus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by anateus | Hacker News Reader

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While some sort of tokens provided to some exceptional teams might be fun I'm sad to see the Hackathon-As-Competition idea promulgated. The origins of the term are about a collaborative event where the marathon-style combined creates a sense of cohesion or at the very least fun that encourages some sort of shared problem solving. Not everyone has to be working towards a single unified goal, but the usefulness of this style of event is for certain classes of collaborative work where the fever pitch allows the combination of innovative ideas with laying down a lot of code.

As soon as you turn it competitive, you lose the benefits of this type of event, beyond those you'd get from just a con with a "best in show". While ostensibly you create what you present at the hackathon, teams with greater pre-made components get a significant advantage. To counter that you then have to lay down rules and that just brings the tone of the event down. My criticism is specifically about the usefulness of competition in hackathons, rather than about competing teams in other kinds of events.

It doesn't seem like the competition aspect is as emphasized here as in many other hackathons, which is great. I hope the prizes remain an ancillary bonus rather than the focus.

As soon as you turn it competitive, you lose the benefits of this type of event ....

Strongly disagree with this meme.

There's a long, wonderful tradition of competitive hacking and nerdery: soap box derbies, spelling bees, egg drop competitions, balsa wood bridge building contests, and trivia bowls, to name a few. Since when did competition stop any of these from being fun ways to learn new things, show off your skills, and make friends?

>Since when did competition stop any of these from being fun ways to learn new things, show off your skills, and make friends?

When they became fun ways to get [prize].

The prize has to be inconsequential to maintain the atmosphere the grandparent refers to. "Hacker bragging rights" is a good prize because it is hard to hack; it incentivizes the right things (pleasing the community).

I've long preferred having hackathon prizes that are in the spirit of hacking (think Arduinos, drones, various sensors).

They're fun because people might not normally buy them, but would be a great prize to say that you won at a hackathon.

A YC interview as a prize would be way too valuable to have a just-for-fun competition for.

Why do you lose the benefits as soon as it becomes competitive? Sports are competitive but people still play sports because they love them.

I imagine most attendees will be there for the same reason though the prizes are a great plus.

Inter-team collaboration drops in a competitive environment. One of the nice things about hackathons is that you can get feedback and ideas from other teams in those environments. If you're actively competing (and for something as scarce as a YC interview spot), then the incentive to help someone else out decreases.

I totally agree with this, competitive environments increase stress and decrease collaboration.

This is not a iron-clad rule—just look at FIRST Robotics, which has managed to maintain a very strong sense of inter-team collaboration even in a competitive environment. Just because something isn't often done doesn't mean it can't be: the rules just need to be right.

As someone who took part in FRC this year and last year, I'd agree that the inter-team collaboration is definitely very strong. We got a lot of help during competition (and occasionally helped others too).

But part of that might be because during qualifying rounds, you are on teams of 3, which change every game. So by the end of qualifying rounds, you play with (and against) most of the teams there, so it makes sense to help the other teams (since you will probably play a game allied with them sometime).

The other reason is that the culture of FIRST emphasizes those ideals, and so they're maintained that way too. One of the core values is Gracious Professionalism, and it really is emphasized everywhere.

I'm not sure which factor is the most important (I suspect it's the second one), so I'm just thinking out loud, but I thought I'd get some more information out there. But I think the rotating teams gives strategic value to helping other teams, which also increasing collaboration.

It depends on the kind of hackathon you want. I agree that having prizes makes everything more competitive and serious, but it probably also increases the overall quality of participants. A new developer with maybe a couple weeks experience probably wouldn't bother with this hackathon but would try their hand at a hackathon that doesn't feel as competitive. Do you want the hackathon to attract a wide variety of people or do you want to target top quality engineers?

There's no right answer, it's up the organizers. YC has chosen to attract quality, which makes sense given their business goals. An organization that teaches people to code should focus on being inclusive and avoid the competitive nature of valuable prizes.

To use your sport metaphor, professional sports are very competitive and attract amazing talent. But you or I would never show up to compete in a pro-sports game. We might join the game in the neighborhood park though.

I agree. I've been feeling like we've lost a lot of the pure fun of hacking and hackathons where the prize is substantial or gets you in with a VC orients the thing more toward business and away from just being a fun time hacking on cool stuff.

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