The 2024 “Slashathon” Recap

At WP Engine, our teams regularly host hackathons that aim to create innovation through a unique theme. These optional, company-wide competitions allow employees to work in teams as they craft new ideas, solve existing problems, flex their creativity, and have some fun during the process.

Historically, projects developed during our hackathons have driven meaningful innovations for WP Engine more broadly.

In November, we held our most recent hackathon. Channeling everyone’s favorite heroes in a half shell, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles-themed “Slashathon” saw teams toiling to improve performance within WP Engine systems, slashing underused code and removing inefficiencies in their projects. 

Employees formed teams of at least two people to create projects that aligned with the hackathon’s overall goal. 

This year, winners were divided into two categories—Slashers and Engine Tuners—with the first-place winners in each category receiving $1,000 to donate to a charity of their choice.

The “Slashers” award recognizes the team that best decommissions code or legacy design elements that are no longer needed. Winners were selected through a popular vote among Slashathon participants. 

The “Engine Tuners” award recognizes the team that best improves performance, and WP Engine Product and Engineering leadership selected the winning project. 

Read on for a quick overview of the Slashathon projects and awards, as well as the charitable contributions that came out of this year’s WP Engine Slashathon.

The projects

This year’s competition featured five teams, and each made significant contributions to the overall goal of slashing through inefficiency. 

Reapos

Team Reapos created a service that generates new digital storage repositories, or “repos,” and allows users to view the current status of those repositories via a form. 

This was created to reduce unnecessary costs, decrease the number of repositories, and ensure GitHub compliance. This project demonstrated a proof of concept that WP Engine can potentially slash 10,000 lines of code down to 80 lines—a huge success that will save space on servers. 

Reaponomics

Team Reponomics used their Slashathon project to create node-reaping automation.

This has the potential to save WP Engine thousands of dollars in labor costs per month because packing the nodes optimally can automatically and regularly reduce server usage instead of having humans check workload sizes. 

SlasHAthon

Team SlasHAthon used its project to ensure stability within the platform, focusing on platform performance. The team created a process that will ultimately optimize the customer intake system and reduce downtime. 

Mesmeric

Team Mesmeric analyzed WP Engine’s servers and found deprecated data taking up storage. 

The team implemented changes in the production system to stop unnecessary SQL instances and created a new process for data cleanup. This new process only keeps 60-day-old notifications as records. After the 60-day period, the notification is deleted. 

Slash Slash Baby

The final team, Slash Slash Baby, cut inefficiency, negativity, and clutter through their practical project. 

Members of the team cleaned up their workspaces and created a gratitude channel in WP Engine’s Slack to help spread more positivity across the company. 

And the winners are…

All of these projects posed meaningful ideas and we congratulate everyone who participated in this event. Drumroll, please….the winners are:

Slashers Award: Team Repos

Engine Tuners Award: Team SlasHAthon

Team members selected a few nonprofit organizations to support with their Slashathon winnings. The chosen organizations include the Nebraska Humane Society, Caritas Poland, Texas Equal Access Fund, Mobile Loves and Fishes, and UNICEF. 

Slashing inefficiencies and solving problems

Congratulations and thank you to everyone who participated in our November Slashathon! Several of these projects have the potential to make a real impact and drive more efficient workflows across our platform. 

Our next spring hackathon will be a great opportunity to use creativity and innovation, so check out our open roles across the company to find your next career move and join the team in time to participate!