I’m tired of the opportunists and their hackathons

I'm not entirely sure what hackathons Ryan Carson has been to, but this post is seriously misguided.<p>Developers don't go to hackathons to be "code monkeys", rather they go to build something cool in a fun environment. It's often a great break outside of the day job to build something they would otherwise not have the motivation to. No one is stealing their concept or forcing them to take it further, it's just fun.<p>As for hacker mansions, people like to live with like-minded folk and code. What's wrong with that? I fail to see how people are being exploited here. Perhaps some examples would help.

&#62; It’s a joke and I’m tired of it. Developers aren’t monkeys in a cage who can’t wait to do the next “hackathon”. They’ve got families, bills to pay and every other pressure that normal people do. They don’t want to drink Red Bull all night and sleep under their desks.<p>Except I do want to do those things, and many others do as well. Not all developers have families or lots of bills to pay. Even those with lots of responsibilities enjoy the occasional hackathon.<p>If they don't appeal to you, don't go to them, but don't pass it off as a joke because there are many people that really do enjoy hackathons and get some value out of them.

Heard at ISOJ 2012: "Making software is easy. It's the journalism that's hard" (13th International Symposium on Online Journalism)<p>I can only speak of the Buenos Aires startup scene. It's even worse than OP states. For example, this weekend an organization called "Palermo Valley" (claims to be non-profit but runs on a .com) organized a "Geeks on a Plane" meetup. If you see the about us pages and speakers it's full of marketroids, SEO "experts", journalists and douchy business types. A hacker friend was there and reports: "I just went to a palermovalley meetup and it was crawling with nontechnical people and too loud to talk".<p>There was another conference-meetup oriented to startups recently, but not for programmers. One of the talks was about how to handle the "monkeys". It was basically how to manipulate and find ways to make junior programmers work overtime for free, and pay them less by giving away token gifts. And of course never hire people over 24 or "too experienced".<p>Make sure you get paid fairly for every hour of your work. They need us more than we need them.

I appreciate the sentiment greatly, and I'm only in the valley about once a month or so (and not in the startup circles) so I can't speak to how intentional the exploitation is, but from the other side:<p>At 34, I can hardly be considered the youthful optimist he casts us at. I have a life, and a family, but I really enjoy the occasional hackathon. In fact, I'd suspect that a lot of my best code is done without the distractions of the house and family -- without worrying about whether or not the lawn is getting too high, or needs watering, or if the dogs need feeding, or whether my kid needs help with her homework, or if there's a spider that my wife needs me to kill.<p>Lock me up in a room for a few days and give me root on a server and I'll bang something out, and I'm happy to do so. Working at home is rife with distraction, but working at the office is even worse, but while there are certainly hackathon environments that aren't conducive to productivity, most of them at least free the developers of any responsibility that isn't 'code production'.<p>In short, they're enjoyable if they're done correctly, and they're horrible if they aren't... but I've never felt exploited by them, so either it's unique to the valley or I've just done a good job of avoiding that sort of thon.

<i>They don’t want to drink Red Bull all night and sleep under their desks.</i><p>Some of us do from time to time. It's fun. I've got a family, etc, but I like geeky extra curricular activities in the same way other people like gardening, hiking, or whatever.<p>All that said, I've seen the sort of hackathons Ryan's describing and they're a kind of stereotype in the same way "brogrammers" are a programmer stereotype. They're not the majority, they're just the cases people seem to be gossiping about. (Scoble has been to and written about quite a few good ones over the years, I think, and here in the UK, they're certainly more down to earth generally.)<p>So I think Ryan has a point for the <i>opportunists' hackathons</i> but not hackathons generally, and it's easy to misinterpret it that way.

&#62; <i>They’re probably just trying to cash in on your youth and optimism.</i><p>It is the nature of optimistic youth that they rarely notice. And when they do, they quickly become old codgers (like the person typing this comment.)

I've been to two hackathon type events. I would have gone to more, but I was living in an area without much of a startup/hacker scene.<p>The first was SuperHappyDevHouse, following Startup School in 2006. It was mostly hackers working on their own projects and occasionally collaborating. I saw no evidence of anybody attempting to exploit anybody else, especially not non-hackers trying to get free work from hackers.<p>This was the second: <a href="http://hackd.it/" rel="nofollow">http://hackd.it/</a>. I've gone a couple times now, and didn't feel like there was any exploitation going on there. The ratio of hackers to non-hackers was good and people seemed to mostly be working on things they had a stake in.<p>A similar event run by non-technical people looking to get their ideas built cheap/free wouldn't be enjoyable for hackers, I expect. If you know an event is like that, don't go.

Developers go to hackathons because they like to build things. What could be simpler to understand?

I feel that Ryan's conflating hackathons - 1-2 day coding events - with 2+ week residence situations where you would probably be trying to actually build a business.<p>Some developers do enjoy drinking redbull and sleeping under a desk because evidently they do it voluntarily. I don't see the problem with that.<p>What's missing from the arguments in the article? I'm generally a supporter of hackathons, but if I was to play devil's advocate and advise caution among developers, I'd say:<p>* Although the entry price is usually free/nominal, there's still the opportunity cost of your time. And hackathons can leave you pretty drained for the next day, so a weekend hackathon needs to be justifiably worth it in terms of the learning, fun, and/or social connections you'll make from it.<p>* Most hackathons nowadays are sponsored by companies wanting to promote their platforms among developers. If the focus or requirement is to use those platforms, you need to think hard about whether they're worth your effort.<p>* You will be subjected to pitches of varying lengths. I've witnessed "one day hackathons" which were half a day of preamble. So your hacking efforts may be minimal.<p>* Wifi access is critical and if the organisers haven't got their act together, you would have been more productive at home.<p>* You can learn a technology at a hackathon or you can build something cool. You will be disappointed if you expect to do both at the same event.<p>* If you're trying to start a business at a weekend, coding is probably not the way to do it. So if you're going to a pure coding hackathon with the aim of starting a business, you will probably be disappointed. (Startup Weekend etc make more sense for that.)

I wish we had more hackathons. Working intensely together is the best way for both sides to gauge each other. I consider myself a crusty old codger, and I'm tired of shotgun hirings where you are expected to work together like gangbusters after just an interview together.

A lot of bitterness on behalf of the author against, essentially, people who don't have kids and choose to spend more of their time coding. Sure we don't want to drive people over the edge by encouraging everyone everywhere to work all the time, but this post makes it seem like anyone who makes different life choices than the author (not having a family) is somehow just getting swindled.

Another related issue are the startup accelerators claiming to be based on the Y Combinator model. Full of MBAs and no hackers in sight. They only offer office space, marketing advice, template spreadsheets, and a very tiny bit of money (none of it for paying workers).

I disagree with this - I've been to several hackathons/API hack days, and like anything I guess you could be exploited, but I don't really see it.<p>What's nice is not only did I get to focus on building one thing straight out from start to finish in the alloted time, but it's mine - I get to commercialize it, market it, etc.<p>I definitely wasn't exploited - for all three of the ones where I've won a prize, I was the driving force/sole developer/whatever, so there wasn't some evil "business guy" getting me to work for free :) For Startup Weekend, I pitched, no one wanted to build what I wanted to build, so I joined another team. No big deal.<p>One of the best ones I went to was simply a "you hack all night on your own thing, no distractions, we're just keeping the lights on and ordering pizza." I think it might have cost $10 for the space.

Agree with Ryan. And besides, what good can possibly come from say 48 hours of caffeine-fueled chasing of shiny dangling objects. That's not how you make software

The problem for me is not so much the hackathon, but the commodified entrepreneur in general. The whole ecosystem of accelerators, incubators, and mansions generate innovation culture not innovation. Kind of like going to jazz school. A total oxymoron.

Sometimes it's not about opportunism. I live in a 4 bedroom hacker house with 11 entrepreneurs/programmers. It's cramped, we have bunk beds and sleeping bags. I've personally never been happier.<p>Despite many of us being (second time) founders of companies, contractors, or having jobs, we hack together several times a week, work 14+ hour days (including weekends), manage CodeSF events monthly, find time to attend hackathons together, and learn + share knowledge together at our local hackerspace, Noisebridge.<p>Yes, there are opportunists in the world who want to make a quick buck.<p>There are also a lot of people who are genuinely enthused (obsessed) with computer science and who devote their lives to knowledge... Who learn how to implement JK flip flops on a breadboard, build languages entirely from lambda calculus, and study convex optimization in their free time. More importantly, they do so because they love hacking, not because they love being a hacker (though I admit hacker culture and community is something I value).<p>At this stage in my life, getting married and having a family would rob me of my youth more-so than any weekend hackathon -- but I'm sure this mindset will change sooner or later.<p>There are plenty of great hacker meetups and hackathons (Super Happy Dev House SHDH, for instance) and SF hackerspaces (Noisebridge, Hacker Dojo) which provide non-opportunistic methods for furthering your hacker-foo.<p>Ryan, I am not sure how many hackathons you've attended or possibly even hosted at "Treehouse Mansion", but it seems like you, especially, would understand the importance of hacker meetups and how to host one effectively. It's also possible you hire great engineers and not hackers, which is fine too.<p>Here is the _real_ problem: More people want to be hackers than are hackers. Many people only want the stigmas that comes along with being a 'hacker', a term whose meaning has been diluted and whose definition perpetually misrepresented and obfuscated by media.<p>In San Francisco, for instance, the terms entrepreneur and hacker have been squished uncomfortably close for my liking, partly as a result of media like Hacker News (who I'd argue contributes to the conflation of the term 'hacker' by catering primarily to a general technical startup audience).<p>I enjoy hacker news, admire Paul Graham and the rest of YC, and believe that anyone can launch a successful startup, with enough hard work and dedication. One problem is, great hackers are not always great entrepreneurs. Great entrepreneurs understand where there's demand for a hack, where many hackers simply want to work on the most exciting and technically challenging problems. Sometimes these two overlap beautifully (I think Stripe is a good example).<p>The bottom line is, movies like, "Social Network", and media like TechCrunch have spotlighted mergers and acquisitions, high valuations, and a party life style as hacker/entrepreneurial culture. From my experience, this has impacted hackathons in that judges favor high impact web 2.0 viable products over "righteous hacks".

Isn't pushing perks like 4-day work week,etc you do at your company the same thing you are talking about regarding trying to cash in on someones youth and optimism?

A friend of mine used to work as a lawyer, and many of them used to get involved in mock trials, where they could test themselves on a complicated case and see how the other half does things.<p>Although this isn't much different and an argument against this post I do agree with Ryan Carson in that a lot of developers are judged on things they do outside of work, as if not going to hackathons or working on open-source projects makes you a worse coder than someone who does.<p>I work on my own projects from time to time, but I know many developers who treat it as a 9-6 job and a good number of them are far better than me. Carson is right in that there are a LOT of opportunists out there who are more than happy to take advantage of developers. I know people in my own area that use hackathons as a way to promote their own company, and while they're not "selling" this code they're definitely using it as a way to promote their business.<p>Should developers care? Probably not, but given the attitude towards developers in general more of them would do good to be more cynical.

I just went to my first hackathon this weekend, and I quite enjoyed it. Doing a week-end project is much more fun in groups, and there is a final presentation to enjoy and aim for. For this particular hackathon, we had sponsors who offered us free food and five prizes of 2000 pounds each. Considering they were only twenty teams, that's really not bad.

Normally, the majority of comments disagree with the OP. That's the nature of commenting. But in this case, the disagreement is almost complete: I see only one comment slightly in agreement.<p>I have no idea where this post came from. I can only assume ryancarson is going to different hackathons and hacker houses than everyone else.

I have never been to a hackathon, but I do find the conditions of some of them a little strange. Why not provide normal work (call them fun if you want) hours for participants, say 8 hours distributed over three to four days? If your concern is people using the spare hours to work more on their products, well then great, make that part of the rules. In this case they will get three 8 hours shifts with all the support you can provide as an organizer, and the rest of the day they are on their own (StackOverflowing, real life feedback..). I can't help but notice that one of the reasons the author is complaining can be traced back to this let's-code-all-night type of deal. If only they can make that optional.

I think the point was: Do whatever makes you happy any way you want it, but don't project any particular model as the best or only way to reach the ultimate goal.<p>I can write great code alone, in my man cave, with a glass of wine or a bottle of beer. It works for me. Coding in more public places also works for me. Coding in the backyard is great as well. Doing pair programming with a friend is also awesome.<p>But, I would never impose these various ways to code as being better or worse than any other.<p>Because Facebook got so rich so fast, there is definitely a crowd of people out there, who believe in silver bullets and who now claim that a hacker that won't join hackathons can't be good. That's nonsense.

I've never been to a hackathon but as a coder it sounds fun to me.<p>Not everything's about the money.

Its a way for up and coming devs to get known; else we are left at at mercy of YOUR contact network which may not know about us.<p>Its also expedient in terms of time we have to invest pursuing that position.

One role of hackathons that I haven't seen mentioned here is they provide a way for developers and API makers to interact. For developers, it can helps them learn about different APIs in person by interacting with technical people from the offering companies. For companies with APIs, it helps them get developer mindshare, first-hand experience with how developers use their APIs, and offers the possibilities of having demos they can show future customers.

I don't think you can tar and feather all hackathons. Some of the events I support are where groups unite to help charities or civic hacking that supports communities.

&#62;&#62; <i>"I have a Computer Science degree, but it’s been five years since I’ve written a line of commercial code, so now I employ very talented Developers to build product."</i><p>Where did you find these talented developers? Was it a hackathon?<p>While there may be some opportunists out there looking to exploit young coders, the vast majority are seeking to legitimately employ bright young/old talent. Well at least I thought so?<p>Has anyone had experiences of being exploited? Please share.

I'm surprised this article is on the front page of HN. If developers are not X but are Y, then surely all of these schemes to employ and get developers with X tactics will soon disappear for lack of efficacy.

Hackathons are good demonstration of some underlying reasons why non-software engineers hesitate to call us engineers as well :)<p>Would you live in a house built during a "civil-engineerathon"?

You have a point, but doing it every once in a while doesn't hurt (I do it once or twice per year), since it's a great way to meet new people (and opportunities)

" Developers aren’t monkeys in a cage who can’t wait to do the next “hackathon”. They’ve got families, bills to pay and every other pressure that normal people do. " - Ryan Carson<p>Really? So most hackers that go to these things have families?

I think it's time to dust off the word "carpetbagger".

s/^I\'m tired of/Fuck/g;

People are comfortable when others in their class assume the chronology of traditional employment. In the office, nine to five Monday through Friday, drinks after work on Thirsty Thursday, see you on Monday again. That's called career stagnation and threatens no one, hence it's widely accepted.<p>The way out of stagnation is to develop methodologies and processes that take advantage of the inherent weaknesses of the stagnated. Rooming a bunch of guys together or maxing out on Red Bull isn't the answer. Finding smart, dedicated and talented people to work with and avoiding the bozos is.

Hmmm. How is this different from an incubator? Maybe the similarities are more interesting than the differences.