This Year’s Microsoft’s Hackathon

This week, I joined Microsoft’s Hackathon for the first time. In fact, big tech companies like Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta all host Hackathons every year—it’s part of their culture. Microsoft’s Hackathon usually takes place in September and lasts three days. Engineers and researchers can freely form teams to work on fun projects around the themes of “Build” and “Hack.” Three days isn’t enough to build a full product, so the focus is on creating a prototype, and at the end, teams submit a video for evaluation.

Last year, there was also a Hackathon, but it wasn’t company-wide and had no awards, so I just treated it as a chance to learn and have fun. Two years ago, an colleague in USA invited me to join his Hackathon team, but due to the time zone difference, I didn’t really participate—though I did manage to collect the event T-shirt of that year of Hackathan.

Speaking of T-shirts, this year they were available on Monday at the lobby, but only for participants who scan their employee badge, and it’s one per person. I originally wanted to grab an extra one for my wife, but no luck.

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Microsoft Hackathan’s Free Goodies (Including a Free Lunch Voucher)

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Microsoft Hackathan’s Free Goodies T-shirt

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Microsoft Hackathan’s Free Goodies T-shirt

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Free Lunch Microsoft Hackathan 2025

Update: We actually won a local (Cambridge) award! Everyone on the team got a mug — though it doesn’t even have the company’s logo on it. It just says “> Hackathon Winner”. I guess the third-party vendor probably left the logo off so they could reuse it for many other big tech companies for the similar events.