Our company does not and I'm trying to get a sense of how common/uncommon this is.
Reasons given by leadership:
1) It is a lot of time (and therefore money) to not put towards roadmap items / things that "will never get used"
2) It creates dissonance between Eng and other teams (eg why don't the other teams get a day to do events like this? And of course, to suggest involving the other teams would invoke #1)
3) Though they have heard arguments that Hackathons might be good for culture building, they "honestly don’t see the connection between a hackathon and culture building"
I have never heard of a company outright saying "Absolutely not, we will not have a Hackathon", so I'd be curious to hear if any of you have.
While it is true that many of the projects that result from a hackathon are not going into production, in my opinion the learning of new tech, the exercise in fast-paced collaboration, and the fun factor of building obsurd things and sparking creativity do have a value that a company shouldn't shut the door on.