Last weekend our team participated in the hackathon. I slept off and decided to write about it.
This is the first hackathon within the walls of Tinkoff.ru, but the prizes were immediately set high — a new iPhone for all team members.
So, how it was:
On the day of the presentation of the new iPhone, the HR team sent an announcement about the event to employees:
The first thought is why mentoring? We talked to the HR team who started the hackathon, and everything fell into place.
- Over the past 2 years, our teams have grown a lot and not only in numbers, but also in geography. Guys from 10 cities (Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Sochi, Rostov-on-Don, Izhevsk, Ryazan, Kazan, Novosibirsk) work on different projects.
- The issue of onboarding is impossible to ignore: herds of juniors, distributed teams, the development of remote offices - everything requires quick decisions.
- We thought it was a chance to tell how and in what way we solve the problems of mentoring in a team + a real opportunity to take a break from work processes and try something new.
- A hackathon is an opportunity to see colleagues with whom you used to communicate only by phone or slack.
- And yes! It's fun as hell)
The rules for participation were simple. Assuming a lot of interest in the first hackathon, our HR decided that the first 5 teams that applied would get into the list of participants immediately, 2 will be selected by the jury, and one team will be selected by the most confluence likes. Each team was allowed a maximum of 5 people - regardless of the department, project, technology and, most importantly, the city. Therefore, it was very easy to assemble a team and bring colleagues from our ten development centers. For example, our team included Timur, a Windows developer from St. Petersburg.
We called an emergency meeting, had a brainstorm and came up with an idea. They called themselves "T-mentor", briefly described the essence of the future project and the technology stack (C #, UWP), sent an application. They were terribly afraid of being late, but they ended up second and automatically became participants.
If we rewind a little, we received a letter about the hackathon on September 4, i.e. we had a little over 3 weeks to work out the details. During this time, we prepared a little: we thought over the idea, user cases and drew a little design. Our project is a platform where two problems are solved:
- Search for a mentor within the company.
- Assistance in the interaction between the mentor and the mentee.
The interface helps to set up regular meetings, put down notes for these meetings, and prepare for personal interaction between the mentor and the mentee. We believe that mentoring is primarily a personal communication, and the system should not replace regular meetings - only help organize the process. As a result, it turned out something like this:
Day X has come (29.09.2018/XNUMX/XNUMX)
The gathering of participants was scheduled for 10:30.
For the duration of the Tinkoff.Cafe hackathon, it became more like not a cafe, but a real platform for creativity: separate work areas for teams, a relaxation area with blankets and pillows, and a teahouse-style table.
HR took care of everything: since the hackathon lasts a long time, we were given toothpaste, brushes and a towel, a doctor was on duty in the office, who could be contacted all 24 hours.
Each team was equipped with workplaces, provided with additional sockets, water and everything necessary so that we could immerse ourselves in the process with our heads. We listened to the parting words of the organizers, the rules of the hackathon, the bell rang, and with the slogan “For the Tinkoff Horde”, everyone began to plan, share responsibilities and code.
After solving all organizational issues, we refueled with pilaf and returned to crazy coding again.
We planned and drew screens, argued about the priority of features that we can skip if we don’t have time.
The day flew by very quickly, we did, unfortunately, little. The organizers showed a lot of attention, periodically came up and were interested in our affairs, gave advice.
We raised some API, made some UI. And suddenly evening crept up, and we were completely mired in pain and despair in development.
Work was in full swing: someone was discussing something, someone lay down to sleep, we were working. We were 4 UWP developers (we are working on a mobile bank at Tinkoff.ru) and the wonderful Camilla is our technologist. Somewhere between 5 and 6 o'clock in the morning, when we had already made several pages and raised ASP.NET WebApi, our backend decided to lie down, but we did not get crashes on the production.
At about 6 o'clock in the morning we were overtaken by the thought that all was lost. There were no planned screens yet, some pens in the API gave out 500, 400, 404. This spurred me to gather the rest of my will into a fist and start working harder.
In the morning at 8:00 we were stuffed with breakfast and given some time to finish the projects and prepare the presentation.
Before the start of the hackathon, we thought that we would drink everything in 10 hours - we would sleep and get the main prize. Friends, this is not working.
Tips (now) experienced:
- Think of an idea.
- Assign roles.
- Designate the area of responsibility.
- Don't hang out before the competition.
- Get a good night's sleep.
- Take comfortable clothes 🙂 and shoes with you.
At 11:00 we started presentations of our creations. The presentations were cool, but there was not enough time to “feel” the colleagues’ project with their hands - it took about an hour for the performances of all the teams.
The jury deliberated for another 15-20 minutes, and in the meantime the organizers talked about the audience award. We were asked to vote for the project that we liked the most. One vote from the team for one of the teams (it was impossible to vote for your own).
According to the participants, the SkillCloud team won.
The guys have created an application in which employees can assign skill sets to themselves, based on the principle of a tag cloud. It helps to find people who understand a particular project, or who are ready to help with a particular technology. It will be useful for new employees who have not yet established contacts and do not know who to contact.
The opinions of the jury and the participants coincided. Therefore, SkillCloud took the main prize, and we were offered to re-vote
Then we chose Mentor.me
Project idea guys:
Mentoring service for new employees: a set of activities that need to be completed is created under the position. There are two types of activities: the study of materials and communication with an expert on the topic. After studying, you need to answer questions and rate the course / mentor. The mentor and the expert also evaluate the beginner
After that came the awards ceremony and photo shoot.
TOTAL
After 24 hours of crazy coding, we started to drift apart. Even though we didn't win, we didn't feel like we lost.
The event itself was very positive and fun. We got to know our abilities and weaknesses better - something that still needs to be worked on.
They remembered how scary it is to go to a new place of work and how cool it is to be in a friendly team.
One of the teams even shot a video in which they reflected the importance of onboarding and the incidents of the first day. The video can be viewed .
Personally, I received a positive charge, had a good time. Now I'm looking forward to the next hackathon.
- I love you, kiss you. Zaphod.
Source: habr.com