Atlassian rolls out second ‘Hack House’ for budding techies

The first class of Atlassian Hack House graduates have highlighted their achievements since participating in the program, after the second class began work yesterday.

Atlassian, founded in 2002 by Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar, helps organisations plan, build and launch software. Customers include Citigroup, eBay, Netflix and Nike.

In February last year, Atlassian announced it would send 10 software graduates to its Hack House for a week of training, coding and team-building activities.

Graduates are required to complete their first ShipIt Day, during which they’re given 24 hours to build an add-on, update or feature for an existing Atlassian product.

At the end of the week, they present their projects to Atlassian’s Sydney team.

“When I was told that I would be writing a ShipIt project in my first week of work, I was very excited,” says Robert Massaioli, a Hack House 2012 graduate.

“How often can you claim that you built something completely new for your company at your own discretion, let alone in your first week of work?”

A number of Hack House projects have been incorporated into Atlassian products and sold through the Atlassian Marketplace, where customers can browse, try and buy product add-ons.

Two graduates from last year’s program built a software add-on product for Atlassian Confluence – a team and content collaboration tool. It has received close to 500 downloads.

“Using what we’d learned at Hack House, we identified a need and built a plug-in,” says Christopher Doble.

“Within 24 hours, we had it selling on the Atlassian Marketplace. It’s used by a few enterprise customers on a daily basis.”

Last year, the Hack House was located in the beachside suburb of Narrabeen in northern Sydney. This year, it is taking place at an upscale apartment in inner-city suburb Surry Hills.

Participants will spend the week receiving training and mentorship from Atlassian engineers, work on some of Atlassian’s products, and build products to be sold on Atlassian Marketplace.

According to Joris Luijke, Atlassian vice president of talent, Hack House is a snapshot of what a career at Atlassian would be like.

“We’ve worked hard to build a culture of ‘work hard, play hard’ and Hack House is a perfect embodiment of this value,” Luijke says.

“We look not only for the best and the brightest talent… but we also look for those who can thrive in a dynamic environment and support the spirit of innovation.”

Interested graduates, or students finishing a degree in computer science or software engineering, are encouraged to apply for Atlassian’s upcoming graduate and intern programs.

Atlassian will cover the relocation costs for participants based outside of Australia.