We’ve sold each other for profit and lost what makes us happy.

Part I.

The very first hackathon I attended was back in high school. It consisted of me, a close friend of mine, roughly a dozen and a half 20- and 30-something programmers, and a box of muffins. Somebody had reserved a room or two at their church and posted about it on a local meetup group. We hung out all day, ate muffins, worked on whatever we felt like, talked with each other about our current projects, and helped debug things when we got stuck.

When I came to Berkeley, the OCF(?) threw a hackathon. They reserved a room, brought snacks. We worked on whatever we felt like, asked each other about our projects, helped debug things when we got stuck. Everyone was there for the joy of building things with technology. Nobody cared about anything else.

Later on, the CSUA had a hackathon. With sponsors. Yahoo! was there, and some other companies whose names now escape me. It was certainly more fancy than the OCF(?)’s event. Yahoo! bought us all dinner; there was now a judging process; there were now first, second, and third places, with associated prizes. I remember these prizes being alluring — people were less willing to talk about what they were building, less willing to help others debug, because that was time they could spend building their hack. And if they had the best hack, they could beat everyone else and take first place. Yahoo! might even hire them. All of a sudden, people cared about something else.

Flash forward to the present. Hackathons are now explicitly a competition, and it’s even a competition to attend and win as many as you can (thanks, MLH). Companies are everywhere — corporate recruiters are expected to sponsor hackathons as a standard part of their outreach expenses. Prizes, even for student-run events, have become astronomically large:

— $60,000 investment in the company you’ll create around your hack.

— Automatic interview with YCombinator.

— We’ll fly your team anywhere in the world and back.

— We’ll fly your team to space.

so large that people have begun making a living off winning hackathons; so large that people systematically game the system to win these prizes.

Thousands upon thousands of students rush to compete. Dozens upon dozens of companies attend as sponsors. Student hackathons raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in sponsorships. Hackers are expected to listen to hours of company talks before being allowed (allowed?!) to hack. There is a clear contractual transaction of goods and supply: your time, your résumés, and your intellectual labor in return for their dinner, their cheap sunglasses, and their shirts emblazoned with corporate logos. Everything is big big huge giant at scale “unprecedented opportunity” the <adjective>est <noun> hackathon ~~EVER~~. Witness as we glorify our winners; shower them in praise and material goods. Losers get the consolation prize of form emails from sponsors who purchased the “contact information of attendees” package.

From: [Redacted]

To: Rodney Folz <greylock-hack@rodneyfolz.com> Hello, I hope you had a fantastic weekend! My team at [Redacted] would like to extend a huge congratulations for being accepted to and participating in the Greylock Hackathon a few weeks back. Everyone did an awesome job! It was great to see so much innovation, teamwork and out-of the box thinking in one place! We were incredibly impressed with the all the participants, however your work stood out to us as being particularly exceptional — both in the hack and throughout your college career. […]

(I signed up for, but never attended, that summer’s Greylock hackathon.)

Want to organize a hackathon? Good luck — acceptance rates (acceptance rates?!) for organizing teams run around the same as Ivy League schools. Unless you’re friends with the organizers, of course. Then nepotism trumps all. No better company to sell out student hackers than with your friends.