# Dogfooding developer products: gathering insights from internal hackathons

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## Summary:

* Stay out of the way during hack week.&#x20;
  * Hackers are eager to dive into products!&#x20;
* Learn as much as possible from the developer experience of hack teams that were building on our API and SDK products during Hack Week, of which there were many.
* ‌Studying DX from employed developers can be tough.&#x20;
* Avoid collecting feedback on your entire platform.
* Be super aware of which resources your internal developers use when they build their hacks.&#x20;
* Take some time at the end of your internal hackathon to interview developers.

## Scribbles:&#x20;

* One was to stay out of the way during hack week. &#x20;
* Learn as much as possible from the developer experience of hack teams that were building on our API and SDK products during Hack Week, of which there were many.

#### ‌Studying DX from employed developers can be tough.&#x20;

* They are very different from external developers who use your SDK or API and
* They often bring background knowledge about a product that an external developer would not have access to.&#x20;

###

### Tips to make it easier to get useful DX insights from a hack event.

* **Avoid collecting feedback on your entire platform.**
  * Pick really specific topics that I wanted to study and do a deep dive on those.
  * Focusing on a small area can make it actionable for the product team.
* **Be super aware of which resources your internal developers use when they build their hacks.**&#x20;
  * Employees at a company tend to have extra access to resources like log files, source code, and other developers who may have worked on the developer tools that they’re going to use.&#x20;
  * When hack teams’ internal hack teams stray away from using your public documentation, that decision can be really insightful and could indicate a gap or problem with what’s publicly available on your website for developers.
* **Take some time at the end of your internal hackathon to interview developers.**
  * One-on-one about their experience with your chosen process or product area.
    * It helps to bring pre-planned questions and to be really specific in these interviews.&#x20;
  * As part of the interview, it’s also really important to take time to understand their day job, the team that they worked with on their hack,&#x20;
  * The project goals of the hack&#x20;
    * This context really helps place the feedback, makes it actionable and gives you context that can help turn that into something you could bring back to your product team.