Hackathons are a sign of a workflow that doesn't encourage innovation
aftenposten.substack.com
The first time I took part in a hackathon, I thought it was awesome. Dedicated time with colleagues to make something totally different from normal? Who wouldn’t be excited by that, assuming you like your colleagues. Now days, I have soured against hackathons a lot, and instead recommend having biweekly sessions on self-development. If you needed a hackathon in order to demostrate a product idea, then that usually means in my experience that your weekly workflow doesn’t allow for room for suggesting new ideas. Instead, it focuses on fixing things raised by others: developers aren’t encouraged to have their own ideas, instead they are passed ideas from other departments. Product, UX, end users, etc. That’s not the kind of environment I would want to work in. You might argue that there is a problem with time: how can you find time to work on X when you also have Y, Z, A, delta? The problem with time is usually about
Hackathons are a sign of a workflow that doesn't encourage innovation
Hackathons are a sign of a workflow that…
Hackathons are a sign of a workflow that doesn't encourage innovation
The first time I took part in a hackathon, I thought it was awesome. Dedicated time with colleagues to make something totally different from normal? Who wouldn’t be excited by that, assuming you like your colleagues. Now days, I have soured against hackathons a lot, and instead recommend having biweekly sessions on self-development. If you needed a hackathon in order to demostrate a product idea, then that usually means in my experience that your weekly workflow doesn’t allow for room for suggesting new ideas. Instead, it focuses on fixing things raised by others: developers aren’t encouraged to have their own ideas, instead they are passed ideas from other departments. Product, UX, end users, etc. That’s not the kind of environment I would want to work in. You might argue that there is a problem with time: how can you find time to work on X when you also have Y, Z, A, delta? The problem with time is usually about