Hackweek 2021, a Great Opportunity for UiPathers Working in Product and Engineering

72 hours of hacking, 35 teams and 119 hackers. These are the amazing stats of Hackweek 2021, the inaugural hackathon for the Product and Engineering teams here at UiPath.

The rules were rather simple: the teams could choose any project under the sun, having to figure out what to do and how to do it. For the duration of the event, the hackers were encouraged to focus solely on their project, and defer their normal meetings and work. During the closing ceremonies, each team gave a two-minute presentation describing what they learned, built, and what the next steps would be.

The event lasted for three full days and the timing was great, as the teams were shifting from 21.4 to 21.10 execution. It was a great opportunity to step back, explore some challenges outside our product roadmap, and interact with others in a different context.

Matthew Vanderzee, VP of Software Engineering, and a group of volunteers designed the Hackweek. After the closing ceremonies, awards were voted on by the audience and a judging panel. The awards covered a wide array of dimensions such as best moonshot, best internal investment, and best product feature. The judges panel included UiPath executives:

• Daniel Dines, CEO

• Ted Kummert, EVP, Product & Engineering,

• Marius Tirca, CTO

• Gerd Weishaar, SVP of Product - Test Automation

• Justin Greenberger, VP, Customer Success & Sales Engineering

• Vineet Joshi, VP, Engineering

The judges were so thrilled with the quality and the breadth of the projects that some new awards were added.

Our goal for this hackathon was to foster innovation by giving everyone in Product and Engineering time to work on hacks. Intentionally, hacks come in all forms, whether features prototyped in the product, new product ideas, internal tools, moonshot big ideas, and things just done for fun to learn new tech or build some different type of software. Congratulations to all of the winners and thanks to all the participants and volunteers that made the first UiPath Hackathon such a success,” said Kummert after the event.

“It was tremendous to see so many teams take on hugely impactful work and achieve meaningful outcomes in the short span of Hackweek,” said Vanderzee.

Following Hackweek, the Product Management team will be building on the outcomes, and factoring the various projects into future roadmaps.