At least for myself and my best friend (we do hackathons together), we like the brainstorming that&#x27;s borne out of it. We don&#x27;t <i>need</i> the hackathons to do this, but it seems to have hit on just the right formula for the both of us to come up with some pretty cool project ideas. In fact, we work on our ideas far more often after the hackathons have ended than we do during the X hours of the hackathon.<p>But I think companies that try to wedge &quot;hackathons&quot; into their employees&#x27; schedules as some cool twist on getting more free (or very cheap) work out of them should burn in hell.