You must be talking about something else. Most companies reserve a day a month or something where people have a little hackathon. They still get paid for it and it takes place during business hours.

I was at a startup once where we had a 24h hackathon. Like Jack Bauer style.

And the next day was presentation of your achievements.

And the day after back to normal.

First day, I "hackathoned" from 9 to 5 and went home. I didn't win...

goofy

> Jack Bauer style

I imagine the winner of this hackathon was the plucky and passionate new hire, fresh out of college, who narrowly managed to save the day, the company, and our american way of life, by: waterboarding the CTO for hours to obtain a confession that both founders and the entire board are complicit in a vast terrorist conspiracy, and then proceeded to execute both founders, kill the board, strangle the interns (one of them had a beard), kick the office puppy, shoot all the competitor's salespeople in the knees (thus helping secure a sale to a major new customer), and disarm the EMP.

I don't remember who won, but it certainly was one of these guys out of college who didn't care to show up on Monday at 9am and stay non stop in the office until Tuesday 5pm.

And honestly, younger me probably would have thought it was fun, but 30yo me with a wife and kid was more "f this shit, you're not getting 12h of my family time without compensation."

If the company actually said that it was going to be a 24-hour hackathon, that would trigger statutory overtime provisions in many jurisdictions. For instance, in Britain, that would mean you must work shorter days during the rest of the week, unless you and your employee decided otherwise (they can't fire you for changing your mind later, though).

Who is not getting paid to do company hackathon?

The hell kind of hackathon did you experience?