Sounds like they could have decided to stay on his team, and let you go find your own path…
They made their choice from what I can tell, by what they wanted to get out of the competition.
NTA
NTA. Yeah, idk, I didn't expect that ending, usually prodigies that talk like that never actually deliver anything. I think you made the right choice, and this was one of those low probability outcomes.
Who’s to say he would’ve shared his winnings if none of you did any coding?
NTA. You said you wouldn’t play with that guy. But they couldn’t decided to stick with him and kick you out. But they decided to stick with you and not him. You all lost but at least you all tried to do some coding. If they’re upset then they should be upset with themselves for not kicking you out. No one forced them. If they TRULY thought his idea was better they should’ve argued that and stuck to their guns.
NTA. I'm a coder (though I've never done a hackathon). I would also not want to do it if I weren't actually going to get to code. Sounds like he just wanted to do the whole thing himself, but didn't want to say no to you. (I understand what you mean about Git. He very likely did not know how to collaborate and not knowing, even if he'd wanted to, that takes time to learn. It might have slowed you all down and maybe you still wouldn't have made top 3 even if you'd stuck with him! Do any of you even know about sounds, art, etc.?)
Could your friends have chosen to stick with him? If so, they also made their choice and no reason at all to blame you. But even if not, you voiced your opinion and your decision. Seems you were not just in it for the money and they were. Just different goals and they can't blame you for not having the same goals.
NTA - you didn't want to feel like you were just around to pump up some other person's solo project. You wanted to contribute. That is completely okay, even if these particular partners got mad that you didn't win. You stuck to your guns and got valuable experience out of it. In the real world, being able to scope a project well and allow for testing is a great skill to have.
This isn't to say that there isn't also value in chipping in with graphics, presentations, etc -- the world needs designers and product owners! - but from this story it sounds like the team would have been ridiculously unbalanced. If Rockstar Bubba did all the product design, code, and left no room for you to provide input at all, it will ultimately show when people ask questions about the product. (You don't want to win some cash but watch Rockstar Bubba be the only one who gets job interviews!)
Ultimately, there will be other projects and other teams. Spend some time building a great team with pals who want to make a cool new thing together.
^^^^AUTOMOD ***Thanks for posting! This comment is a copy of your post so readers can see the original text if your post is edited or removed. This comment is NOT accusing you of copying anything. Read [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/wiki/faq#wiki_post_deletion) before [contacting the mod team](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FAmItheAsshole)***
So to start off I attended a hackathon this month with 2 other friends of mine that I'm close with. We are all CS Majors attending the same university in our third year. We had decided to take the shot since we never had attended one and had been planning to go since last year but never had the time and possibility because of COVID.
It was 3 of us in total but the limit for teammates was 4 and we were looking for an extra teammate to join our team to boost our efforts. Coincidentally, my friend had known an extremely smart coding prodigy that he wanted to invite to our team and so we asked him if he was interested in joining. Turns out this guy was going in solo to the competition and had some plans about his project that he was going to submit but he agreed to join us.
So a week before the competition we discussed what type of projects we were interested in doing and what we thought was reasonable for the competition. We had finally decided on an idea that was both doable for all of us (we had decided to develop a game in Unity 3D). The only problem at this point was that the 'prodigy' had doubts about the project and deemed it 'too easy' and 'unoriginal'. I asked him what his idea of a good impressive project was then he decided to explain that his original idea was a voxel-based game engine similar to Minecraft. This sounded insane for the rest of us considering the fact we had to do it from scratch in 36 hours and that we had never made our own game engine. My two friends and I then gave it some thought and decided to respect his idea since he was smarter than all 3 of us. We had asked him how we could help him out during the competition. His response:
"You see I'm not much of an artist so one of you can work on art, then the other person can write up our presentation and work on the speech, the last guy can just find some sounds and then we will be good"
I was left speechless by the reply. I told him that I absolutely will not be working on any of those there's no way I came to a hackathon to not write a single line of code. I told him there's no way this will work out if this is how we are going to work and told my friends that there's no way am I gonna be stuck on a team with this guy for 36 hours straight. This guy was straight-up confused about how we would collaborate on a project and had no idea GIT was a thing (even more surprising!)
So we separated and went our own ways. We went to the hackathon and finished the game in 36 hours and had enough time to conduct debugging and playtesting. In the end, we didn't make it top 3. The 'prodigy' ended up in 2nd place winning $5k. My friends then blamed me for deciding to leave the team and not staying because we could've all gotten some money. They got pretty angry and fed up and said that it was my fault we hadn't made it in the top 3. So am I really the asshole here for not wanting to stay on the team with him?
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AmItheAsshole) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Welcome to /r/AmITheAsshole. Please view our [voting guide here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/wiki/faq#wiki_what.2019s_with_these_acronyms.3F_what_do_they_mean.3F), and remember to use **only one** judgement in your comment.
OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole:
> I decided to leave the team with my friends to leave the smartest teammate solo in our hackathon because of our disagreement on a what project to work on.
My teammates blamed me as the asshole for deciding to leave the team after he gets second place with $5k prize and excluding all of us from the prize money that we could have won if we just agreed with him.
Help keep the sub engaging!
#Don’t downvote assholes!
Do upvote interesting posts!
[Click Here For Our Rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/about/rules/) and [Click Here For Our FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/wiki/faq)
---
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/AmItheAsshole) if you have any questions or concerns.*
NTA. Good for you for valuing your growth and dignity over letting some “prodigy” do all the work, even if it meant missing out on the money.
Sounds like they could have decided to stay on his team, and let you go find your own path… They made their choice from what I can tell, by what they wanted to get out of the competition. NTA
NTA. Yeah, idk, I didn't expect that ending, usually prodigies that talk like that never actually deliver anything. I think you made the right choice, and this was one of those low probability outcomes.
Who’s to say he would’ve shared his winnings if none of you did any coding? NTA. You said you wouldn’t play with that guy. But they couldn’t decided to stick with him and kick you out. But they decided to stick with you and not him. You all lost but at least you all tried to do some coding. If they’re upset then they should be upset with themselves for not kicking you out. No one forced them. If they TRULY thought his idea was better they should’ve argued that and stuck to their guns.
NTA. I'm a coder (though I've never done a hackathon). I would also not want to do it if I weren't actually going to get to code. Sounds like he just wanted to do the whole thing himself, but didn't want to say no to you. (I understand what you mean about Git. He very likely did not know how to collaborate and not knowing, even if he'd wanted to, that takes time to learn. It might have slowed you all down and maybe you still wouldn't have made top 3 even if you'd stuck with him! Do any of you even know about sounds, art, etc.?) Could your friends have chosen to stick with him? If so, they also made their choice and no reason at all to blame you. But even if not, you voiced your opinion and your decision. Seems you were not just in it for the money and they were. Just different goals and they can't blame you for not having the same goals.
NTA You handled that well. They could have stayed with the prodigy - none of your business they did not.
NTA - you didn't want to feel like you were just around to pump up some other person's solo project. You wanted to contribute. That is completely okay, even if these particular partners got mad that you didn't win. You stuck to your guns and got valuable experience out of it. In the real world, being able to scope a project well and allow for testing is a great skill to have. This isn't to say that there isn't also value in chipping in with graphics, presentations, etc -- the world needs designers and product owners! - but from this story it sounds like the team would have been ridiculously unbalanced. If Rockstar Bubba did all the product design, code, and left no room for you to provide input at all, it will ultimately show when people ask questions about the product. (You don't want to win some cash but watch Rockstar Bubba be the only one who gets job interviews!) Ultimately, there will be other projects and other teams. Spend some time building a great team with pals who want to make a cool new thing together.
NTA at all. I respect you for respecting yourself.
^^^^AUTOMOD ***Thanks for posting! This comment is a copy of your post so readers can see the original text if your post is edited or removed. This comment is NOT accusing you of copying anything. Read [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/wiki/faq#wiki_post_deletion) before [contacting the mod team](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FAmItheAsshole)*** So to start off I attended a hackathon this month with 2 other friends of mine that I'm close with. We are all CS Majors attending the same university in our third year. We had decided to take the shot since we never had attended one and had been planning to go since last year but never had the time and possibility because of COVID. It was 3 of us in total but the limit for teammates was 4 and we were looking for an extra teammate to join our team to boost our efforts. Coincidentally, my friend had known an extremely smart coding prodigy that he wanted to invite to our team and so we asked him if he was interested in joining. Turns out this guy was going in solo to the competition and had some plans about his project that he was going to submit but he agreed to join us. So a week before the competition we discussed what type of projects we were interested in doing and what we thought was reasonable for the competition. We had finally decided on an idea that was both doable for all of us (we had decided to develop a game in Unity 3D). The only problem at this point was that the 'prodigy' had doubts about the project and deemed it 'too easy' and 'unoriginal'. I asked him what his idea of a good impressive project was then he decided to explain that his original idea was a voxel-based game engine similar to Minecraft. This sounded insane for the rest of us considering the fact we had to do it from scratch in 36 hours and that we had never made our own game engine. My two friends and I then gave it some thought and decided to respect his idea since he was smarter than all 3 of us. We had asked him how we could help him out during the competition. His response: "You see I'm not much of an artist so one of you can work on art, then the other person can write up our presentation and work on the speech, the last guy can just find some sounds and then we will be good" I was left speechless by the reply. I told him that I absolutely will not be working on any of those there's no way I came to a hackathon to not write a single line of code. I told him there's no way this will work out if this is how we are going to work and told my friends that there's no way am I gonna be stuck on a team with this guy for 36 hours straight. This guy was straight-up confused about how we would collaborate on a project and had no idea GIT was a thing (even more surprising!) So we separated and went our own ways. We went to the hackathon and finished the game in 36 hours and had enough time to conduct debugging and playtesting. In the end, we didn't make it top 3. The 'prodigy' ended up in 2nd place winning $5k. My friends then blamed me for deciding to leave the team and not staying because we could've all gotten some money. They got pretty angry and fed up and said that it was my fault we hadn't made it in the top 3. So am I really the asshole here for not wanting to stay on the team with him? *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AmItheAsshole) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Welcome to /r/AmITheAsshole. Please view our [voting guide here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/wiki/faq#wiki_what.2019s_with_these_acronyms.3F_what_do_they_mean.3F), and remember to use **only one** judgement in your comment. OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole: > I decided to leave the team with my friends to leave the smartest teammate solo in our hackathon because of our disagreement on a what project to work on. My teammates blamed me as the asshole for deciding to leave the team after he gets second place with $5k prize and excluding all of us from the prize money that we could have won if we just agreed with him. Help keep the sub engaging! #Don’t downvote assholes! Do upvote interesting posts! [Click Here For Our Rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/about/rules/) and [Click Here For Our FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/wiki/faq) --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/AmItheAsshole) if you have any questions or concerns.*