Your Hackathon survival guide (modern stack, 2025)
My advice and exact tools & technologies recommendations after being a judge in 10+ hackathons.
👋 Hey, it’s Stephane. Welcome to my weekly newsletter where I share lessons, and stories from my journey to help you lead with confidence as an Engineering Manager.
Participating in hackathons is something I recommend every Software Engineer and Engineering Manager do at least twice a year!
If you're reading this, chances are you're either thinking about joining a hackathon or getting ready for one.
That's awesome! You're already ahead of the game by preparing properly.
As someone who's seen great ideas fall apart because teams wasted time, I want to share a few tools that can help you prototype FAST.
None of the tools below are sponsored or anything like that. They are just tools I genuinely love using in my day-to-day on side projects. For example my website Tools for Engineering Managers uses many of them.
Here’s the setup I’d use if I were hacking tomorrow: