I really dislike the corporate hackathon format.<p>It can be great fun as an informal community gathering of developers to work on random pet projects, but the reality of the corporate hackathon trends toward being company sponsored and promoted technical debt creation.<p>It often seems like the corporate hackathon is the clearest distillation of the &quot;business&quot; people not understanding how to create a mature, healthy culture and continuous process around engineering autonomy, ownership, and innovation.  Instead relying on campy caricatures of basement dwelling Mtn. Dew &amp; pizza fueled &quot;hackers&quot;.