The whole concept of this type of hackathon brings many thoughts to my mind as a veteran developer and designer:
- How can a relatively disorganized group of developers create a cohesive and well written piece of functioning/debugged software in a very short amount of time (usually a night, day or weekend)?
- Wouldn't the "festival" atmosphere which sometimes includes loud music, drinking, shows of various types and much socializing make focused concentration on developing software almost an impossibility?
- What is the motivation of the hackathon organizer? How many of these are publicity "stunts" for companies or products? Some hackathons even charge developers to come provide a free service!? Is this becoming to new "must do" thing/buzzword bingo for upper management in companies?
It then occurred to me that many hackathon-like organizers that I know are extraverts. It seems to make intuitive sense as extraverts tend to be managers and organizers more often than not in my experience. I'm sure some are not but...
My hypothesis is that this hackathon phenomenon came about by well-meaning, but in my opinion misled, extraverts (or introverts who buy in to the extraverted culture prevalent in the US currently) trying to focus developer energy in a social way.
Let's look at some data that I found:
- "One-half to two-thirds of the software development population is introverted" and "ISTJ’s [alone] comprise from 25 to 40 percent of software developers" ... so most software developers are introverted. No surprise there right?
- "Decades of research have consistently shown that brainstorming groups think of far fewer ideas than the same number of people who work alone and later pool their ideas." ... and yet brainstorming sessions at work, peer programming and hackathons are seemingly becoming more common if not mandated by some work environments.
- "Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption. And the most spectacularly creative people in many fields are often introverted, according to studies by the psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Gregory Feist." ... again reinforcing the previous point that solitude and lack of interruptions are needed to be creative. The article also includes some great quotes from Wozniak who is often underrated when compared to Jobs in my opinion.
- "What distinguished programmers at the top-performing companies wasn’t greater experience or better pay. It was how much privacy, personal workspace and freedom from interruption they enjoyed" ... and again, ok, I think that gets the point across but there are many other amazing quotes in the article worth reading.
So how can the positive networking and gathering of diverse expert backgrounds for a common purpose from hackathons be brought into an introvert friendly environment? It seems like one of those "what is the meaning of life" (42, I know, I know) questions that can't be answered universally. It isn't flashy in this day and age of hyper social environments but most introverts I know rely heavily on newsgroups, email lists, chat programs (IRC is common) or things like SourceForge. Perhaps "flashy" isn't really necessary.
Disclaimer: This article may cause much disagreement in the community as this goes against the current trend of thinking, at least in the US and I'm sure there have been many successful hackathons. This is the opinion of one introvert and is backed by some data from other articles/research. The goal is not to convince anyone that this opinion is correct but to foster discussion and thought on this topic. Thanks to my friend "E" who made a Facebook post that got me thinking about this topic.
I have never been to a hackathon, and yes, I expressed doubt on Facebook whether any kind of useful piece of software could be written by a rag-tag bunch of people who got together for a weekend. But as my friend Janet pointed out on Facebook, two useful purposes could be achieved by a hackathon: (1) an organization wants specific functionality to be implemented, and has it designed ahead of time, so it could just hand it off to a team of volunteer implementers, and (2) the organization wants people to explore its new API, tinker with it, and write *any* kind of prototype that demonstrates what could be done with it. In theory I think that both types of hackathons, but especially the first one, could actually work well for introverts, providing a structured way for them to socialize. But the devil may be, as always, in the details. The design should be pretty well thought-out and detailed, so that the implementers would not go in circles, stall, and succumb to group dynamics where the loudest person, i.e. extrovert, gets to dictate the direction of work. Basically, I think a hackathon could work if the organizers can always be on the alert for negative group dynamics, and counter it at every turn. But it's difficult to swim against the current, and I don't know if this has ever been successfully.
ReplyDeleteYet, if successful, it could be a fulfilling social interaction for introverts, because they would be communicating about something they're passionate about, instead of engaging in small talk, which many introverts hate. Needless to say, loud music and drinking are also counterproductive.
Without having been to a hackathon, it's all just idle speculation on my part. However, I have been to many "coworking" events, and I find the notion of coworking to be an oxymoron. In almost none of those events, nobody got any work done, or even tried. People mostly just chatted. As always, extroverts set the tone for the group. I would be surprised if this didn't also happen at hackathons.