Since I got invited, I went to a hackerx event in Zurich. Since it is "by invite only" I thought it could be interesting but hey what a disappointment. When I arrived (somewhat later), the office space of the company was totally overcrowded - must have been around 100 "invitees" so you had to queue about 10m to reach an employee and get some information. So after 2 minutes I left again sorry. Really astonishing what some people endure for a beer and a crappy pizza slice.

Invite only is purely used as a marketing term and meaningless given how invites are handed out.

It might be nice if you have time to spare/waste and are looking for a job in the sector, but truth be told everybody with skills in the sector does not need those events.

Amazing how much you can tell about an event you only looked at for two minutes from 10m away.

Looking forward to how many "thanks for this useful thread" you will get for it

But sorry, you go to such an event with expectations that it is something special, personal and not a mass processing like at the airport check-in.

The event is most likely the way it was and will be, your expectations were off

Next time do a bit of research on the web upfront

I also got an invite (and many reminders) but decided not to go. Once of the reasons being that I'm neither a software developer nor a hacker.

Have been on similar event in Amsterdam, NL.

Suppose to be at office of Ebay company. At the end, it was in entrance lobby and overcrowded.
The good thing was (for me) to meet some folks and chat. However, I would agree with OP about advertising and outcome.

indeed, already hacker/pizza/beer should have thrown up red flags, next time I check for consultant/delicious snacks/vintage champagne

What kind of event did you expect it to be? And based on what, other than the name?

don't waste your time there:


https://www.google.com/search?client...Gr6z2Xb7P4SgM:


instead having a good time here:


https://www.google.ch/search?biw=192...p6Jgirl-M4kNM:

I have been to HackerX couple of times and it's always been a complete waste of time. Most of the companies that attend the event can't or don't want to pay average Swiss rates and they also don't want to pay for serious recruiting so they resort to this cheap blind-date recruiting event organizer. The free food and drinks are also terrible, fast food style



The company representatives they send are also a bit unprofessional, once I talked to one that told me: if you want to do C++ we pay 120k p.a. no introduction no information about their company vision, ideas, goals, fit, etc only seat do C++ we pay 120k ... terrible!



The only positive thing I can think of is the networking with fellow candidates, far more enriching and interesting than talking to those cheapo loser companies.

I have learnt about it only this year but the first blog note I found about the event made me forget about it.