As a woman engineer I understand what the OP is trying to say, but it sounds callous and (surprisingly) oblivious to the realities of this field.
As someone else pointed out: "1) What is the nature of hackathons? Many are pitchathons."
I have also lost "hackathons" to projects that were objectively NOT technical (mocked-up images of an app, without a single line of code). It happens often, and it's always a bummer to lose, but often they might actually be solving a bigger issue than me or my team.
For the group of women (girls?) that won - as you pointed out - maybe they will continue doing hackathons (and maybe - despite your doubt - they even eventually progressing beyond the Wix stage) because they won an encouragement award at their first hackathon. It's like a consolation prize for mustering up the courage to present their product that was obviously not as technically advanced as some other products. That takes guts, a lot of people (men/women/other...) might just slink out the back door after the first few presentations.
So good for them, in that sense - they indeed are an inspiration for people just starting out.
Yeah, one of the huge problems our field has is that it doesn't give people a solid sense of how you upgrade your skills and what kind of waypoint you're at relative to others (and that that's okay!).
It is magnificent to encourage newcomers to the field. We should also have level playing fields for folks to participate with everyone (and not stratify further than we already do). But it sucks when these sorts of objectives collide and end up alienating people. (and heck sports have awards for rookies for example!)
The other thing that's really gear-grinding about OP is that... we're judging our worth based on what happens in hackathons? I hope to $deity most people aren't doing that, because hackathons are super slanted POVs on the world.
Actually no, in most professional leagues the rookie of the year/season award is handed out to the best rookie whether that rookie performed below, above, or at the same level as their more experienced peers. They are graded only against other rookies.
Agreed. The tech community is rabidly hypercritical and even those considered part of the "typical" programmer demographic are often met with biting vitriol when publishing code or projects that the community views as bad, poor form, too ambitious or reinventing the wheel. That type of hostility will really intimidate novices, especially if they already feel like an outsider. I think it's a positive step to encourage the less represented demographics because it says "we see you, and there is a place for you, even if you're just taking baby steps"
As someone else pointed out: "1) What is the nature of hackathons? Many are pitchathons."
I have also lost "hackathons" to projects that were objectively NOT technical (mocked-up images of an app, without a single line of code). It happens often, and it's always a bummer to lose, but often they might actually be solving a bigger issue than me or my team.
For the group of women (girls?) that won - as you pointed out - maybe they will continue doing hackathons (and maybe - despite your doubt - they even eventually progressing beyond the Wix stage) because they won an encouragement award at their first hackathon. It's like a consolation prize for mustering up the courage to present their product that was obviously not as technically advanced as some other products. That takes guts, a lot of people (men/women/other...) might just slink out the back door after the first few presentations.
So good for them, in that sense - they indeed are an inspiration for people just starting out.