Hackathons Are Dystopian Events That Dupe People Into Working For Free, Say Sociologists (fastcompany.com)

An anonymous reader writes: That's the conclusion that two sociologists came to after observing seven hackathons over the period of one year, reports Wired. In "Hackathons As Co-optation Ritual: Socializing Workers and Institutionalizing Innovation in the 'New' Economy," sociologists Sharon Zukin and Max Papadantonakis argue that companies use the allure of hackathons to get people to work for free. They says sponsors fuel the "romance of digital innovation by appealing to the hackers' aspiration to be multi-dimensional agents of change" when in fact the hackathons are just a means of labor control.

Comments

Socialists or sociologists?

[dlleigh]

I know that the terms are not mutually exclusive.

Re:Socialists or sociologists?

[alvinrod]

There's a great deal of overlap between the two (at least in academia), but it isn't fair to just make that assumption. Sharon Zukin has authored books such as "Beyond Marx and Tito : Theory and Practice in Yugoslav Socialism" and "Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places". Given that I'd probably guess she's a Marxist of some sort. The other author is apparently her PhD student so he doesn't have much in the way of publications.

I can't find a PDF copy or free access to the full text of the publication so I can't speak to its quality, but with quotes like "romance of digital innovation by appealing to the hackers' aspiration to be multi-dimensional agents of change" I wouldn't be surprised if it's the same kind of flowery shit that Sokal made fun of over two decades ago.

Re:Socialists or sociologists?

[Penguinisto]

I can't find a PDF copy or free access to the full text of the publication so I can't speak to its quality, but with quotes like "romance of digital innovation by appealing to the hackers' aspiration to be multi-dimensional agents of change" I wouldn't be surprised if it's the same kind of flowery shit that Sokal made fun of over two decades ago.

What's even funnier is that I don't think that "labor control" (understood as forcing more labor out of someone in a short period of time) is as important as the desire for 'intellectual farming', wherein hackers spew out original ideas, processes, and code, and corporations (and/or sponsors) immediately take possession of that freshly brewed intellectual property, immediately locking it down as theirs.

love the summary

[ooloorie]

Read the article summary carefully:

Hackathons Are Dystopian Events That Dupe People Into Working For Free, Say Sociologists. That's the conclusion that two socialists came to after observing seven hackathons over the period of one year, reports Wired.

The mask slips.

Re:love the summary

[jareth-0205]

Read the article summary carefully:

Hackathons Are Dystopian Events That Dupe People Into Working For Free, Say Sociologists. That's the conclusion that two socialists came to after observing seven hackathons over the period of one year, reports Wired.

The mask slips.

Over-analysing a typo is 'insightful' now?

They may be considered as free advertising

[bobstreo]

And while on the subject, please feel free to discuss non-paying Internships...

Re:They may be considered as free advertising

[El Cubano]

And while on the subject, please feel free to discuss non-paying Internships...

Different animal altogether. I work as a programmer and I like to attend hackathons every once in a while for the following reasons (in no particular order):

• Meet other programmers outside my normal professional circle
• Get to work on/hack on projects substantially different from what I work on day-to-day
• Getting the brain moving/heading in a different programming direction for a while makes me a better programmer with the "normal" things I program every day

There are probably other benefits that I do not specifically consider, but the ones above are the big ones for me.

I go to hackathons because I get something out of it, more than they get from me, as it were.

Original article is here

[XXongo]

For some reason the summary linked a news article ABOUT the Wired article, not the Wired article:
https://www.wired.com/story/sociologists-examine-hackathons-and-see-exploitation/amp

nor the actual paper being discussed:
https://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/S0277-283320170000031005

Re:sociology

[JaredOfEuropa]

That's the definition. In practise, in a lot of cases GP isn't too far beside the mark. That doesn't mean there's no science going on at all in sociology departments, but if you read some of the papers coming out (which I do just to amuse myself from time to time), you'll see that a big part of it is an enormous echo chamber where "scientists" repeat dogma with little or no scientific basis.

idiotologists

[goombah99]

Why is it considered duping to get people excited about working on something for free? Passion is one of the greatest joys and I'd sacrifice a lot of take home pay if I could get more passion for my work. Thus breaks now and then where I get excited and work on fun challenges with other people to create something remarkable are not working for free, they are working for me.

Re:idiotologists

[postbigbang]

Mod parent up.

People don't necessarily work for the money. Yes, they have to eat, and monetary reward wasn't the first things on their minds. Viz teachers, social workers, and so many volunteers in so many areas.

There are people that work for slave labor, meaning university adjuncts. I see pride in workmanship that has little or nothing to do with the wages paid.

Hackathons are an exercise. They're olympics of the mind. They're full of ego, truthfully, but also a competitive spirit. Does someone rob them of their code? I don't think so. Open Source is full of dramatic contributions by brilliant people that weren't looking for the first penny. Yes, there are bad contributions, too, but often fueled by the same zeal and sense of common good, if not artistry breezing through a compiler.

Re:idiotologists

[war4peace]

I'll be the devil's advocate here.
Going to a hackaton and working for free isn't the problem. The problem is what happens with said work afterwards. Does it become F/OSS with some sort of GPL license or something similar, thus preventing corporations from taking that work and making it theirs, locking down the code? Then it's all cool.
But if corporations lure people into working for free through whatever means, then use those ideas, that code and that development to expand their portfolio, making shit tons of money in the process, then there's a big problem.

I did work for free in the past out of enthusiasm, saw my work being used by other entities to make lots of money and I got the shaft, so I can relate to TFA concerns.

"Duping" people ?

[mysidia]

Well, if the Hackathon is for something like OpenBSD, then I think people already know and expect the work will be free/open source and such.

If the hackathon is for a proprietary company, then the people either work for the company, or receive some sort of compensation for their work, otherwise they would retain the rights to their code; either way, it's not free work....

Their technical credentials and aspirations are..?

[llamalad]

Didn't read TFA, but do these researchers understand what motivates people to participate?

Speaking as an established professional in a highly technical field -and as someone whose career has been further as much by hobbies and personal interests as certifications and professional experience- hackathons are in fact insanely fun, an invaluable social outlet that helps form lasting friendships and establish professional contacts, and a great way to build teamwork skills, learn new things, and challenge your abilities.

Sure, it's a challenge to build an app in a weekend (Rails Rumble), but it's fun. If that's your idea of fun.

I wonder how these researchers would describe gyms (establishments which trick you into paying money to do meaningless physical labor?), marathons, and online dating?

Good ones aren't.

[TREE]

Good hackathons should be:
- optional
- during regular working hours
- not limited in scope or expected value to the company

Re:So Volunteering

[war4peace]

It's easy to abuse that kind of "contests".
Star Citizen did it with various contests such as "design a weapon" and so on, where they had literally dozens of teams competing for the "glory" of having a ship weapon they designed implemented in the game. No, you can't say "nobody forced them to participate", because while it's true (nobody was forced), there's more than one way to have someone work a lot for free. Such as the ole carrot-on-a-stick: "your NAME will be in the GAME" - well fuck that, how about my name being in the game AND I get paid for that work?
Sure, teams who don't win and whose work isn't used would not be paid, and that's fine, but if you're going to use my work in a commercial product, I fully expect to be paid.

you know what is dystopian?

[mapkinase]

Everything in the future. And you know why? Because it's strange.

We do not like realistic depiction of the future and call it dystopia because it is different from our way of life. We will be gone and what we call dystopia will be just normal for contemporaries.

hackathons run by private individuals

[rsilvergun]

aren't what's being called out in the article. It's ones being run by businesses. I've been lucky enough to have a pretty solid career trajectory. But several of my buddies have been stuck applying everywhere under the sun. One of the most common tricks they've all seen is when they 'test' you to solve this one problem and you do and never get a call back. The huge number of unemployed and underemployed techs (thanks, H1-B program!) mean companies can do this pretty much indefinitely. A lot of company run hackathons are just that.

If you'll allow me to indulge in a bit of "Back in my day", companies used to do these things during working hours. It was part of your ongoing training. For those of you too young to know what that is, training is what companies did before they could go running to Congress to bring in as much cheap labor as they want.

WIRED and Emerald Insight are both pay sites

[tepples]

Both the wired.com and emeraldinsight.com articles are paywalled.