[Fredej]

I love hackathons. But what is described in the article indeed sounds horrible.

At my job, we have a hackathon once a year. You are free to decide if you want to join. It is during work-hours and you can work on anything you want, provided it is somewhat company related. That, however, is a very wide umbrella. Like, someone made a "lego-gun" for automatically plugging USBs in and out. It also helps that we're hardware company, so the ideas can be a bit more high-flying sometimes. Snacks and drinks are served during the day.

After work-hours, there would be a lightning round of presentations to management, and we would vote for different categories. After that, pizza and beer.

Now, it's expanded a bit, and people said they didn't like sticking around after working hours. So it's one day of building and one day of presentations. Both are completely voluntary, but are usually a lot of fun.

I'd never do it on a weekend, and I'd only stick around after hours for a social event.