15+ Bay Area Hackathons: The Prize Was Never the Prize

Fifteen-plus lost weekends, four wins, and one config value that took forty minutes to find. What hackathon life in Silicon Valley is actually like.

Pulling into a tech campus at 8am on a Saturday with a laptop bag and no plan has a specific feeling to it.

Half-empty parking lot. A t-shirt in a size somebody guessed. A room of people who decided sleep was optional. Most of what gets built won't survive Monday, and nobody minds.

I've done 15+ across the Bay Area. Student at SJSU for a chunk, intern at Volvo Cars for one, engineer at Cisco now. The title changes. The folding tables don't.

Hackathon