Ask HN: Hackathons feel fake now
50 comments
·May 4, 2025quuxplusone
Recently on HN: "The Gang Has A Mid-Life Crisis"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43860696
Hackathons are fun and productive when what you need to do/learn — something you haven't already done/learned — can be done/learned in a weekend. Once you graduate, there's a lot fewer of those things lying around. Quote:
> We need look no further than the "hackathon," that sad facsimile of the days when we were all learning the basics so fast that the world could be ours with just a day or two of focused effort. Hype up an exciting atmosphere, assemble some folks with so few attachments in life that they have time to spend all weekend at a hackathon, and this ritual will summon up the old gods. The hackathon is the proof that people believe this can work, and it is the proof that it doesn't.
nine_k
In my experience, hackathons in larger companies are valves that sometimes release the pressure of things that people wanted to do, had been planning to do and thinking through for months before the hackathon was even scheduled, and finally are allowed to implement. These are binge-programming days/nights when the engineers finally don't need to work on tickets, and don't have to follow the due processes.
Corollary: if your company promises to have a hackathon one day, it's best to get prepared and have a bunch of good ideas well ahead of time.
cobertos
Game jams (similar to hackathons) are great for applying what you already know but with a new group of people. They're much harder if you _dont_ know what your doing (contrary to what you suggest).
I've found that the group really makes the experience, and find them less fun for the tech and more fun for learning about the people through the work and a team project without the constraints of a corporation.
And generally, it's not just people who aren't tied up in this that will participate, but people who will make time to do something exciting and form an interesting connection.
ffsm8
I think that's because games are an art and highly creative. You're crafting an experience, usually a combination of story and gameplay.
Regular software projects can also be creative, but almost all software is pure CRUD at the heart.
The next issue is the required time for the MVP. For a game, you can validate the base game loop quiet quickly. It's a lot harder to validate wherever regular software is actually viable, because you usually need to basically finish it entirely before the UX can really be validated if a mock-up doesn't suffice
krrishd
I mostly agree with the premise, but to point out something kinda funny: these complaints are basically identical to the ones I remember from a time I personally remember as the "heyday" of hackathons (early/mid 2010s).
I think:
- they've had this degree of fakeness for almost the entirety of their existence (as long as they've needed "sponsorship" / been 6+ figure events)
- at its best, there also was a scene/subculture _surrounding_ hackathons that did care about building genuinely "cool" / "impressive" things, had an earnest interest in actually starting something longer term (there are some really successful founders that "incubated" in the hackathon scene). these folks frequented hackathons, and eventually moved on as the scene saturated with careerism / they "grew up" professionally
hbsbsbsndk
I organized some grassroots hackathon events 10+ years ago. Turnout was mostly students and die-hard geeks who wanted something to do on the weekend. Even in this small pond we had a local startup sponsor and try to shoe-horn their service into it.
When I attended bigger events with bigger sponsors it felt like 90% marketing to pitch your idea. The actual technical side was never that impressive or interesting.
One community that kicks ass at this are InfoSec people, I've done a lot of terrific volunteer-run CTFs.
d0ublespeak
Yeah CTFs are definitely a big part of our culture in security. We’re blessed with unending material in the form of vulnerabilities and mis configurations :)
I will say (as someone that runs, organises and builds CTFs) organising meaningful CTFs is becoming slightly challenging though, a lot of challenges are highly treaded ground where one very mature team just comes along and clears the table.
That and generative AI can solve a lot of CTF problems with enough prodding if it’s at all derivative.
sjtgraham
There is nothing wrong with a sponsor if it affords cash to spend on food and refreshments for attendees. I believe there are right and wrong ways to sponsor these events. You have to keep in mind developers are one of the most marketing skeptical audiences extant, but it’s possible for it to be done well.
TheAceOfHearts
Based on my experience, Hackathons are meant as networking events where you might put together some simple prototype. Usually people oversell whatever it is that they built, and they're using existing skills to rebuild some small part of a larger thing which they've already studied extensively outside of the event.
If a company is a big sponsor and they're offering an extra prize for using their tool then people will figure out a way to jam it into their project, but it's rarely the optimal choice. I think it has always been like this.
But if you really want to build something and there's a sponsor at the event you should ask them for lots of free credits or for some contact info in order to establish a longer-term sponsorship.
kevinsync
When I was salaried, I never participated in company-sponsored hackathons and actively resisted attending any conferences or anything of the sort. Even back in late 00's / early 2010's it all felt like sponsorship hell, and my point of reference for the activities was nigh-impossible to recreate..
When I was a teenager in the mid-90's, I would go to a monthly Boy Scouts Explorer Post group hosted/sponsored by CompuServe (at their headquarters). My brother and I were a couple years younger than some of the "cool hacker" dudes (it was almost all dudes), like this guy Travis who had already had multiple Dade Murphy-esque run-ins with the feds and would give little talks on why it's not worth it and was honestly really supported by the alpha-nerd adults (not pejorative) who worked for CompuServe who ran the thing and were trying to keep us all from life-changing mischief (while still encouraging safer mischief).
Other attendees would give presentations on MODs (FastTracker / Impulse Tracker), or show off software they wrote (or found) that was cool, that kind of thing, and the only sponsor was CompuServe itself (which gave us all free dialup accounts).
I remember one time we set up a booth at the fairgrounds, like inside of one of those giant, long open-air pavilion buildings that normally would have horse/animal stalls, with a row of computers to demo either their brand new service "WOW!" [0] or maybe it was WorldsAway [1] to the general public. I had no idea what I was doing lol, but it sure did feel important!
Anyways, my rose-tinted vision of what a hackathon should be is some amalgamation of trading rainbow books at Cyberdelia mixed with those monthly CompuServe meetings where elders guided the young through the labyrinth of technology mixed with like a LAN party where instead of games, people get together, code, push boundaries, exchange ideas, and make something cool. Or something.
Not a brutal, forced interaction with your coworkers that wastes time, produces jack shit, and is sponsored by SliceLine Pizza lol
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6BQzd2km58
[1] https://www.pcworld.com/article/424450/this-old-tech-remembe...
Grosvenor
How do I upvote you multiple times.
"hackathons" were lame once they got a name. They became lame because it wasn't exploring what interested you, pushing frontiers but had a define goal that wasn't yours. You have to fit into someone else's plan for the "hackathon", and what the outcomes would be.
How on earth is there anything "hackerish" if you're diligently fitting into someone else's plan? Lame.
aziaziazi
Hack the hackathon. My follow-at-your-own-risk pro tip: Find a team not too much into wining and
- connect with others. They’re primarily networking events and are still good for that.
- Don’t bother checking the sponsors boxes too much. Have fun trying technical/product ideas that interest your for any _personal_ reason. Should fit with your team project obviously. If not, keep it for next time and instead:
- peer with others. Peering with a person you don’t know is an incredible social and technical experience, whatever your level difference.
- sleep at night. You want to be rested to have a good and useful time.
- don’t bother too much wining. The podium looks fancy but won’t make much a difference as soon as the doors close. It doesn’t really make a difference for networking, bootstrapping the resume line or having fun. But:
- aim for a MVP or at least something that run and you can show. It’s not fun to tight the last knobs afterwards. Something (anything) functional will make you and your team proud, will assist the resume line and will be fun and memberberries for the future.
dalemhurley
I’m not really sure they ever made much sense. Going back 15-20 years ago, they were always poorly executed and was not for the devs.
The only exception was one I went to put on by Atlassian a long time ago which was a hardcore geek-vs-geek live coding night with lots of drinking and real prizes. This was before they went public and didn’t care about offending.
sepidy
That Atlassian thing sounds so cool
rr808
The company I work for has hackathons. Come up with a good idea and spend a lot of time (after hours) on the project. In the old days that was called a job and you got paid.
Calwestjobs
same as hardware hacking on "conferences" - they make you go with them on 2 hour journey of unlocking something, just for you to realize after doing some of it by yourself, that they can just download firmware update from manufacturer and run BINWALK utility on it, it will spit out filesystems, which you just mount, and read from that how is everything configured, how things work, what version of linux kernel they use.... so it is just hacking of YOU. it is advertisement, marketing story. XD
smelendez
I haven't been to a hackathon in a long time, but the best ones I remember were explicitly about getting designers and developers to build something concrete but simple for a good cause. I think in some cases just a working prototype was sufficient for the "client," who could then more easily apply for grants to build a more robust or fully featured version.
POV, the PBS documentary series, used to have weekend hackathons in NYC in the early 2010s that paired the filmmakers with designers and coders. They were pretty good—filmmakers would come with an idea for a website they needed to support the film, basically, often a data visualization component or something to collect information from the public about the subject of the film.
The Tribeca Film Institute did something similar a couple of times, too—I went to one at CERN that they ran where scientists worked with designers, developers, musicians, etc. to build projects presenting their research, and another in Detroit.
I remember others like this as well from other organizations. It's still a bit of a weird format because you're basically doing pro bono or minimally paid freelance work on a tight deadline with your client sitting next to you, but they could produce some generally interesting work.
Some hackathons in this category I remember also had a goal of letting non-coders understand how the coding process works, which is hard to balance with actually getting stuff done.
throwaway13337
Game jams are less fake and quite numerous.
The reason is simply because there is very little money in indie video games. But still a ton of passion. If you want authentic nerd dev time, it's still there.
Just don't expect it to be catered.
zitterbewegung
Ten years ago they were fake. Everyone that won basically prepped their system and worked on their own presentation.
Been going to a bunch of hackathons in SF lately and honestly, everything feels fake. There are like 20 sponsors handing out credits for their tools that all do the same thing. Half the time, they can’t even explain what they’re for. They’re just hoping someone uses them so they can count it as adoption. Everyone jams these into projects to check a box, and what gets built is mostly BS with zero innovation. Was it always like this and I'm noticing it now, or has something changed?