“Yes! We have elegance!” says a student from the University of Waterloo. Then he pauses, and his shoulders slump. “Actually,” he adds, “I don’t know what the fuck this is.”
He points to a botched graphic on his computer screen, and his fellow students crowd around. They talk quietly among themselves, making suggestions here and there, and ultimately, they find a way of achieving something at least a little closer to elegance.
This is what happens at a Hackathon. If you’re a spectator, it’s not exactly riveting stuff. But if you’re a participant, it’s a gas — particularly when you’re competing in building number 4 on the campus of Facebook’s Palo Alto headquarters. These students aren’t just hacking for fun. They’re hacking for a job with one of the biggest names on the net.
Facebook, Google, and other tech giants use events like this as recruiting tools. Sports teams hold combines to assess prospective players. Internet companies hold Hackathons to size up developers. They throw coders into a large room and give them a task or a problem to solve, and if their solution is good enough, they win some cash and a trophy — or maybe a call from the Facebook HR department. [Wired]
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