Hack Day
What is hack day?
Well, it’s something we do here at Big Fish that, we guess, is unique to us. It basically involves working during the weekend. Now wait – before you close this window; know that hack day is much more than that.
See, we’re busy. Always busy actually. So when it comes to doing a lot of in-house projects or just fun ideas we want to execute, it’s hard to find the time to do it. That’s why we created hack days.
A normal hack day involves everyone coming in on a Saturday and working. But it’s not your “regular” work. We normally pick one thing we want to accomplish and all of us work on it throughout the day.
It should be mentioned that a hack day doesn’t normally involve being stuck in an office for eight hours. We’ve had about three so far, and most of them have consisted of us shuffling around Baton Rouge doing work, filming, and having fun.
See, the true purpose of hack day isn’t to accomplish something you’ve been wanting to do – obviously it kind of is – but it’s mostly about working together on something and spending time as a team. We don’t always get projects that start from the ground up, meaning that a lot of times different people will be working on different stages of different projects.
So with a constant influx of projects, coming in at separate stages, it’s hard to really get everyone together to consistently work or brainstorm on the exact same thing for longer than 20 minutes.
We had a hack day last Saturday and we spent all day working on our company culture video. We went to the park and filmed us… being us. We then went and got some drinks and ate lunch. After that, we came back to the office and continued our antics, filming everything the entire time.
Here are a few pictures from that day. Unfortunately, we forgot to keep taking pictures at some point, but you get the idea.
So when it boils down to it you can say that, yeah, hack day is technically coming in on a Saturday to do work. But that’s not what our hack day is.
Our hack day is about hanging out with each other, as a team, and working on something that we all love and want to accomplish, but wouldn’t have the time to otherwise. Yeah, we sacrifice our weekend, but it’s worth it to do the work you care about with the people you care about.
And, as always, thanks for reading.
Share your opinion.