Deputy Hackathon: Makeshift 2022

Around a month ago Deputies moved into a new home at 580 George St — roughly one whole year since moving out of our old office and working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Although we’ve been working out of a WeWork earlier this year, it wasn’t quite the same as having our own office to call home. The excitement around the new office was quite palpable — people volunteered to help move things, set up monitors and even decorate the office.

Deputy’s very own Product Designers leaving their creative mark on the office walls

Although Deputy enables all team members to work remotely, it was important to have this space where teams can flexibly come together to collaborate.

The sense of camaraderie during this period of time was infectious: bringing people back together sparked some impactful conversations, including one about organising a company-wide hackathon. What better way to celebrate than coming together for a hackathon?

Why another hackathon?

When asked about motivations for this hackathon, Deputy’s VP of Engineering Rajini Carpenter touched on The Disruptive Innovation Model — which theorises that new innovations can often arise internally, but often deprioritised due to perceived low ROI. Therefore, it is necessary to dedicate a time for an organisation to think creatively beyond current constraints and pursue innovative ideas.

As our CPO Deepesh also put it eloquently, hackathons enable Deputies to challenge themselves and solve meaty customer problems. Anyone can come up with an idea, rally a team and prototype it together.

Looking back, our Diversity and Inclusion hackathon last year led to us launching impactful features such as introducing employee engagement health check, a new Apple Watch app as well as improvements to language support and accessibility.

Makeshift 2022

This coming July, we open our hackathon Makeshift to any Deputy with an idea that could improve Deputy for business owners, managers and shift workers.

With ideas already brewing and teams slowly forming, the new office is buzzing with energy — ready for Deputies to make things happen!