On July 23, Mendez Gandica’s team will join thousands of other Microsoft employees and interns all over the world as they gather to form the largest private global hackathon. They’ll work across organizations and technologies, and some will collaborate with students, teachers, and people who work at nonprofits to solve problems and advance ideas.
Mendez Gandica might not have had the same opportunity to jump-start a passion project like this five years ago, on her own time and resources. An outlet for innovation and making a difference on this grand scale wasn’t yet available to Microsoft employees everywhere.
In 2014, the company had just embarked on a culture change: a quest to become a place where employees take risks to change their world for the better. Launched that July, Microsoft’s Hackathon was one way to help make that culture change happen: one place for everyone to come together, experience creative and fast-paced collaboration, make a difference, and drive the culture forward.
A hackathon is a mishmash of two terms: “hacking” and “marathon.” Typically known as a coding competition that happens over a few days and involves sleep-deprived engineers, Microsoft’s Hackathon is different. All employees, not just coders or makers, bring their unique skill sets to a project. While the technical motivation is still a driver, many teams won’t write a single line of code at all. Plus, they get to work on the project as much as they want to beforehand. And many projects continue well after Hackathon tents come down.
“Hackathon is special because all employees worldwide can spend time contemplating and executing in a learn-fast environment,” said Mendez Gandica. “Hackers don’t have to be engineers. Any employee can contribute with their own unique set of skills.”
Fueled by bottomless caffeinated beverages, buffets of energizing grub (bacon cupcakes!), the excitement of a deadline, and their own driving curiosity, employees experience a whirlwind break from their typical work days to do Hackathon.
“In the early days, Hackathon was an experiment,” said Jeff Ramos, who leads Microsoft Garage, the team that runs Hackathon. “Frankly, we weren’t even sure if people would come. But we had 11,550 people that first year. So we were like, ‘whoa, we’re onto something here.’”