Venmo
| KATIE MULLIGAN, PEOPLE TEAM
A company-wide hackathon is a great opportunity for folks to team up with people from different departments and tackle a project that isn’t currently on the roadmap. And, working with new team members on interesting projects cultivates creativity and innovation. At Venmo, Hack Week also means bringing remote employees to our NYC headquarters, peppering the week with activities that encourage cross-team socialization, and making sure to end on a high note– our annual summer party. The result was an incredibly fun week that left us reeling with Venmo pride.
Since everyone was diligently hacking away on ambitious projects, we made sure to sneak in a couple breaks. One afternoon, we pushed our cafeteria tables aside for a fun and re-energizing Michael Jackson dance class. We also offered relaxing meditation sessions every day and a chance for individual teams to go out to dinner together. The most popular activity was Venmo’s first ever “Lunch Roulette.” We split everyone into groups varied by team and office location, and sent them out to lunch together. Lunch Roulette successfully got folks out of the office and sharing a meal with people they don’t necessarily interact with day to day.
At the end of the week, the entire company got together to watch the presentations from our fourteen different Hack Week teams. Among the winners, a group who designed an internal Bot that allows our team to give each other positive feedback via Venmo payments, and a proposed feature that would send your friends a musical greeting through Venmo on their birthdays. The coveted People’s Choice prize went to a group that choreographed a lip dub video around the Venmo office.
The best part of Hack Week was that we got to take all that positivity and inspiration with us to a huge Venmo summer celebration at the end of the week. We boarded a boat for a dinner cruise on the Hudson River, followed by a full evening of dancing and karaoke. Venmo parties are always a blast, but we were celebrating so much more this time around– the amazingly talented group of people that we’re so lucky to come to work with everyday.
Interested in being part of the Venmo crew? Check out our jobs page.