> “Basically, there are two ways to build an organization,” a former Facebook employee explains. “You can be really, really good at hiring, or you can be really, really good at firing.” Zuckerberg has been really good at firing.
There seems to be a plethora of news about hiring, but when was the last time you saw something about firing?
This is cool data, but it would be best if you could release numbers about the distribution more than just the average, ie standard deviation, quartile, medians.
It is hard to determine significance from these graphs, especially as pflats commented that the y-axis are skewed.
Hackathons are not meant to make production ready code, or even "elegant" code. It is meant to be a hack - a project where decisions are made in favor of speed or elegance.
Hackathons don't generate code ready to ship, but that does not make it nonsense. They are meant to create "sketches" of programs. Sketches are created to convey an idea, and solidify the imagination. They are not the end product themselves or are they the basis for the end product. They are instead an aid. Similarly, whenever I hack and decide that I actually want to pursue the project, I start from scratch. The hack helps refine the design and architecture of the project much more than simply thinking about the project.
disclosure:
I'm an officer of the Hackers@Berkeley club in UC Berkeley. From what I've seen, hackathons are when students really step out of their comfort zones and learn new skills to create innovative projects. Great things have come out of them. Once in a while, those hacks even become the sketches for new startups.
I agree very much with the idea of "improving on something that already exists". I hate it when you tell someone an idea, and they rule it out because "it already exists". There is always a better way to execute on the same idea.
However, I am not a fan of "Has business model other than advertising". Although it is something to have in the back of your mind, it is hard to say what the product/idea will evolve into when it actually becomes something that can be profitable.
I think a careful evaluation should be spent in finding the right balance between "General enough, so you can find users" (as advised in the article) and "if you're a solo entrepreneur find a niche so you have less competition, expecially from big names" (paraphrasing Rob Walling, Tim Ferris and others)
This is good stuff! The other day when I was writing a game that involved a small physics engine, I ended up having to retouch up on the friction, and a lot of basic physics concepts. Having the knowledge of where to apply the things you learn is just as important as learning the concepts themselves. Education is a tool, and the mindset of "STEM" is to learn how to utilize these tools in tangible ways.
