Hack days are great for the heck of it

My team had a hack day this week, and it was stressful, exhausting, enlightening, and very fun. For the uninitiated, hack days can be run in a number of ways; but at the core of it, it is about taking a full day to work full time with a team on a problem, with the aim of producing a prototype at the end of it.

My first experience with hack days was with the Active Ageing Hackathon organized by UP Singapore in 2013. It was a hackathon that was open to the public, and I formed one of the 15 groups that took part. Back then, it was a little frustrating for me because my technical skills were not great, and we only managed to flesh out a concept instead of building a prototype.

Still, I met a bunch of people from different walks of life that I wouldn't have met otherwise – from a director in a public sector agency to software engineers to students – and I learned so much during our discussions that it was time well spent. The idea, which was born from my final-year thesis in university, was also challenged and stretched and shaped into something much more refined. We didn’t win the hackathon, but it was definitely not a waste. 

(That’s me and my hackathon team circa 2013)

Fast-forward five years later, it is now my third hack day in LinkedIn. I still love it.

I love blocking out time to focus only on the problem at hand for one full day. I love getting diverse ideas and perspectives from my teammates, being challenged to refine our ideas and to find better ways of solving the problem and telling a story. I love the fast iteration and the prototype that we ship at the end of the day. And yes, I can finally build some sort of prototype now with the team, and it is exhilarating to bring an idea to life within a day (even if the prototype is kind of scrappy). And above all, I love how we grow closer as a team at the end of it.

There are downsides to hack days, of course. The moment you check your inbox at the end of it and see a large number of unread emails, or the moment you reassess your to-do list can bring reality crashing down pretty hard. Life goes on, and you have to go back to unfinished business after losing a day.

Not having the prototype adopted and refined for the long term can also be discouraging. This is especially true for teams who have worked particularly hard, and challenged each other or pushed boundaries the most. The blow to morale can be hard to swallow sometimes.

It is hard to measure the achievements from hack days. I bet most ideas from hack days don’t go far, because such is the nature of innovation. All the good intention and brainpower in the world cannot guarantee an innovative solution that works, given a company’s specific circumstances and constraints.

Does that mean that hack days are a waste of time then? If not to the company (which can rely on at least a few good ideas out of many that bring returns), then to the people who take part?

I disagree. Even if our prototypes do not get adopted (and statistically speaking that is much more likely), the thinking and the debate that go into it will no doubt refine our approach to the same issue in the future. That is true for all the teams that take part, and I believe it will lead to a more mature level of thinking across the board. I have also written about how learning from colleagues is an essential part of learning on the job, and a hack day is a short but intense platform for that to happen.

It is true that ‘real work’ does not get done on the hack day, and we have to go back and pick up the slack afterwards. But it is a day of being focused, intellectually challenged and working in a state of flow without other distractions. It is a day of learning from teammates whom you don’t normally work with, and a day of supporting each other as you stare down a seemingly impossible goal of shipping something within a short time.

It will be an exhausting day. But you will grow as a person, grow in your thinking, and grow together as a team.

Hack days are great, even just for the heck of it. 

P.S. Here's a shoutout to the amazing Team Xwomen: Ara Cho, Alvin Kan, Suvendu Jena, Candice Cheng. I'd do this again with you even if we don't win (touch wood).