The single biggest indicator of the quality of a hackathon is who is organizing it. I've seen countless events where the people putting on the event are doing it for selfish or greedy reasons, and 9 times out of 10 those events look like the 3 kinds the author is describing [1].

That said, there are tons of _good_ hackathons out there that actually do have the developers interests in mind. Specifically, I'd point to all the amazing things that are happening in the student space [2].

Bottom Line: Figure out who's organizing an event and use that as gauge to determine if it's worth your time.

[1] http://theycallmeswift.com/2013/10/25/dont-throw-that-hackat... [2] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/12/education/edlife/the-hacka...