Here at Zalando Tech, hacking has a long tradition and it’s not merely limited to writing lines of code. Back in the day, when there were no blinds to protect our screens from the reflection of the sun, staff covered the office windows with paper bags. This pragmatism is what makes working at Zalando unique.

With our first Hack Night in Hamburg, a similar approach could be felt. We faced a certain challenge and our concept around Hack Night held a pragmatic solution.

The challenge: Our Hamburg Teams weren’t able to participate in Hack Week last year but wanted to hack just like their colleagues.

The solution: We invited all teams working on adtech topics in Berlin to Hamburg and hosted a hackathon for two days in our newly opened Tech Hub. The teams had 30 hours to work on challenges around our advertising products. They were also supported by 25 business students from the Hamburg Media School.

In the end, the teams came up with projects that looked quite advanced for the short amount of time they had on their hands. Not only that, they also got to know each other across office locations and their collaboration efforts grew all the more for it. But don’t take our word for it, see for yourself:

Going forward, we will iterate and adapt the Hack Night structure and hopefully bring it to every Tech Office in the future, powered by their respective expert technologies. Keep your eyes peeled for what might be our next challenge.