At WP Engine, our groups usually host hackathons that purpose to create innovation by a novel theme. These optionally available, company-wide competitions permit staff to work in groups as they craft new concepts, remedy current issues, flex their creativity, and have some enjoyable through the course of.
Traditionally, tasks developed throughout our hackathons have pushed significant improvements for WP Engine extra broadly.
In November, we held our most up-to-date hackathon. Channeling everybody’s favourite heroes in a half shell, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles-themed “Slashathon” noticed groups toiling to enhance efficiency inside WP Engine programs, slashing underused code and eradicating inefficiencies of their tasks.
Workers shaped groups of no less than two folks to create tasks that aligned with the hackathon’s total purpose.
This 12 months, winners had been divided into two classes—Slashers and Engine Tuners—with the first-place winners in every class receiving $1,000 to donate to a charity of their alternative.
The “Slashers” award acknowledges the crew that greatest decommissions code or legacy design components which are not wanted. Winners had been chosen by a well-liked vote amongst Slashathon contributors.
The “Engine Tuners” award acknowledges the crew that greatest improves efficiency, and WP Engine Product and Engineering management chosen the successful mission.
Learn on for a fast overview of the Slashathon tasks and awards, in addition to the charitable contributions that got here out of this 12 months’s WP Engine Slashathon.
The tasks
This 12 months’s competitors featured 5 groups, and every made vital contributions to the general purpose of slashing by inefficiency.
Reapos
Crew Reapos created a service that generates new digital storage repositories, or “repos,” and permits customers to view the present standing of these repositories through a kind.
This was created to scale back pointless prices, lower the variety of repositories, and guarantee GitHub compliance. This mission demonstrated a proof of idea that WP Engine can doubtlessly slash 10,000 traces of code all the way down to 80 traces—an enormous success that may save area on servers.
Reaponomics
Crew Reponomics used their Slashathon mission to create node-reaping automation.
This has the potential to save lots of WP Engine hundreds of {dollars} in labor prices monthly as a result of packing the nodes optimally can routinely and usually scale back server utilization as a substitute of getting people verify workload sizes.
SlasHAthon
Crew SlasHAthon used its mission to make sure stability throughout the platform, specializing in platform efficiency. The crew created a course of that may in the end optimize the shopper consumption system and scale back downtime.
Mesmeric
Crew Mesmeric analyzed WP Engine’s servers and located deprecated knowledge taking on storage.
The crew carried out adjustments within the manufacturing system to cease pointless SQL situations and created a brand new course of for knowledge cleanup. This new course of solely retains 60-day-old notifications as information. After the 60-day interval, the notification is deleted.
Slash Slash Child
The ultimate crew, Slash Slash Child, lower inefficiency, negativity, and litter by their sensible mission.
Members of the crew cleaned up their workspaces and created a gratitude channel in WP Engine’s Slack to assist unfold extra positivity throughout the corporate.
And the winners are…
All of those tasks posed significant concepts and we congratulate everybody who participated on this occasion. Drumroll, please….the winners are:
Slashers Award: Crew Repos
Engine Tuners Award: Crew SlasHAthon
Crew members chosen just a few nonprofit organizations to help with their Slashathon winnings. The chosen organizations embrace the Nebraska Humane Society, Caritas Poland, Texas Equal Entry Fund, Cellular Loves and Fishes, and UNICEF.
Slashing inefficiencies and fixing issues
Congratulations and thanks to everybody who participated in our November Slashathon! A number of of those tasks have the potential to make an actual impression and drive extra environment friendly workflows throughout our platform.
Our subsequent spring hackathon will probably be an important alternative to make use of creativity and innovation, so try our open roles throughout the corporate to seek out your subsequent profession transfer and be part of the crew in time to take part!
