The Life Skills My First Hackathon Taught Me
Applicable anywhere, any time — to any situation.
I just completed my first Hackathon! Thanks to the folks at General Assembly (alumni shoutout) — I was able to participate in a three-day hackathon that asked teams to leverage e-commerce solutions to support small businesses in light of the current Covid pandemic. It was an amazing journey and I thoroughly enjoyed working with other Software Engineers, a team of Data Scientists and a team of UX Designers.
Though I gained a lot of technical experience, I also gained a lot of self-knowledge — as this was an emotionally taxing experience and I’d love to share that with the world. Here are some of the lessons I was able to gain from my first hackathon:
An obstacle or challenge is not a stop sign.
From a developer’s perspective — three days is not really a long time to bring an idea to a functional product. This means that the normal rollercoaster of emotions that is part of the development process was crunched into a very short amount of time.
It was then I realized how quickly I wanted to step away or distract myself when I encountered a bug or a really challenging feature. Escapism is so common — especially in uncomfortable situations (*ahem* code reviews) but it is in no way a means to a solution-based end. The only way out is through — and you’ll be better for it.
Ego has no place in growth.
I was very clearly the least experienced developer on my team and facing that fact — as challenging as it was for my ego — is what really allowed us to move forward and make real strides. I reached out when I needed help and I wasn’t pretentious about the technical knowledge or experience I don’t yet posses. My honesty was crucial when approaching my fellow developers; they were able to step in and work on what they knew while I was able to work on something else. It’s often easy to let our egos determine the decisions we make — especially if we compare ourselves to others. This hinders growth.
Believe in yourself and in your ideas.
I basically convinced myself that I had (virtually) entered a room full of people way smarter than me and that they would decide on their own ideas and I’d just help build it for them. Can you say imposter syndrome?
When I finally got the courage to speak, I was able to share a personal use case for our challenge — my mother is a small business co-owner in the service industry and I remember how much Covid impacted our profits and productivity and how much a Covid-relief loan helped them out.
My initial idea was to build product that connected struggling small businesses with loan options — and the team loved it! They believed in my idea before I believed in it and watching it come to fruition as well take part in it was such a wonderful experience.
There were several other observations I was able to make but I’ll take some time in introspection over the next few days. I want to end this with gratitude — for the team, the hackathon experience and anyone who reads this. Check out my brief hackathon live-tweeting thread below.
