Three days, 60 engineers, and a Wild West bounty hunt that shipped real product improvements.
Last week, the engineering team at Elixir Technologies did something we've never done before. We cleared the calendar, put 63 engineering challenges on a bounty board, split into 12 teams, and spent three days building.
We called it "Elixir's Most Wanted."
The idea was simple: take real engineering work (bugs, features, infrastructure improvements, documentation gaps) and turn it into a competition. Each challenge was assigned a difficulty tier and point value. Teams claimed bounties from the board, completed them, and earned points. Points converted to prizes.
The twist: if you claimed a bounty and didn't finish it, it died. No points for anyone. This forced teams to think strategically about what they could realistically deliver, not just grab everything in sight.
Day 1 (Tuesday): Opening ceremony, bounty claims, and coding begins
Day 2 (Wednesday): Full day of building, with a code freeze at midnight
Day 3 (Thursday): QA, judging, and awards ceremony
Teams of five competed across challenges spanning frontend, backend, infrastructure, observability, security, and documentation. Bounties ranged from quick UI fixes to full architectural migrations.
This wasn't a hackathon where people build throwaway demos. Every bounty was a real task pulled from our engineering backlog and roadmap. The code ships to production. The improvements are permanent. The documentation gets published.
We also made AI-assisted development a core part of the event. Every team used Amazon Q and Kiro throughout the hackathon, documenting how these tools accelerated their work. It was a chance for the entire engineering team to build muscle memory with AI-assisted workflows in a high-intensity, supportive environment.
One participant said, "The bounty format completely changed the energy. Instead of building something cool that might sit on a shelf, we knew our code could actually ship to customers if we executed well. That real-world impact made every decision feel more meaningful."
Over three days, our teams:
Completed bounties across every tier, from quick wins to legendary challenges
Shipped infrastructure improvements, UI fixes, new features, and comprehensive documentation
Collaborated across team boundaries, sharing knowledge and helping each other debug
Built working relationships that will carry forward into daily work
Autonomy drives quality. When people choose what they work on, the pride in the output changes. Teams weren't just completing tasks. They were solving problems they genuinely cared about.
Competition brings out collaboration. We expected rivalry. What we got was teams helping each other, sharing tips, and celebrating each other's wins. The competitive structure created energy, not silos.
Focused time produces outsized results. Three days of uninterrupted building, with no meetings, no sprint ceremonies, and no context switching, produced work that would have taken weeks in a normal cycle.
This was our first bounty-style hackathon. It won't be our last. We're already planning the next one with a different format: more creative, more open-ended, and with flexible team sizes. The goal remains the same: give talented engineers the space to innovate, collaborate, and build something they're proud of.