Hack-a-thons negatively correlated with job performance

Guest post by Kemal Ahmed (@carpetfortwo) of Communote (@communotey) [original article]

[P]rogramming contest winners are used to cranking solutions out fast and that you performed better at the job if you were more reflective and went slowly and made sure things were right.

I’m a huge advocate of hack-a-thons. Not enough students actively try to apply the knowledge that they’re learning and as a result, they forget it. They don’t know what it is useful for and they don’t enjoy it. When they try to practice what they’re learning, it makes more sense.Hack-a-thons are a really fun way of doing that. They have more experience working in teams and become more acquainted with the coding community. Before I continue, I want to make sure you know what a hack-a-thon is.

Hack-a-thon: (Noun) an event where people compete to build the coolest prototype of a product within 12-48 hours. They are judged by originality, completion, and quality of presentation. Often, there are bonus prizes for using technology by event sponsors. Sponsors also sometimes cover the cost of prizes, food, accommodations, transportation, and registration, making them a fun event for everyone. Most of the time, hack-a-thons are programming competitions.

Many feel like hack-a-thons take too much time out of school, but I think side-projects are part of education. They allow you to avoid the drama of scheduling multiple meetings to work on projects where either only half the group shows up or the group decides to have fewer meetings, so that everyone can attend every meeting. They also incentivize group projects which people don’t do enough of.

However, too many people see hack-a-thons as their only source of practical programming knowledge; their only side projects are at hack-a-thons. As a result, they don’t spend enough time practicing version control, unit testing, continuous integration, build automation, and code planning. There is so little time that developers rush to complete the project without thinking about how to build it sustainably. As a result, being good at programming competitions is said to be negatively correlated with being good on the job.