Innovative technology company 99x announced the launch of ‘Hacktitude’, an inter-university hackathon geared at grooming young talent to be industry-ready upon graduation, by exposing them to technical challenges that drive participants to develop ‘production-grade’ code.
The competition will take place on 22nd January 2022, with the winning team walking away with MacBook Pros, other prizes, future internships, and job opportunities – and the guarantee of knowing they are among the best young developers in Sri Lanka. Launched on 1st December 2021, the competition has already received over 100 registrations from undergraduate teams across the island.
“The uniqueness about Hacktitude is that participants will get the opportunity to work on a near real-world project on a machine of their choosing and a development environment they are comfortable in. This means that the winner will emerge based purely on their skills, teamwork and technical prowess. It will also be excellent exposure for the participants to problems faced in real client projects, allowing them to develop their industry readiness before even entering the job market,” explained 99x Chief Product Officer Chatura de Silva.
Comprising of challenges worth 99 points, ‘Hacktitude’ aims to push the boundaries of what’s possible in hackathons. The challenges will be hosted on DevGrade, a first-of-its-kind platform developed by 99x to train product engineers and assist in evaluations. Hacktitude allows candidates to use any IDE or tools of their preference and will be given a near real-world project to work on for 9 hours, comprising of a wide mix of feature implementations, bug fixes, improvements and algorithmic problems.
Looking to build stronger connections with the academia, a compulsory requirement of each participating team is the inclusion of an academic coach, a member of the university faculty who will mentor the teams throughout the competition. The coach too walks away with a MacBook Pro and other prizes, and a trophy for the winning university. 99x will work with these coaches in the long term to bring about stronger university-industry collaborations and improve the quality of graduates gearing to become the IT leaders and professionals of the future.
Registrations for the Hacktitude hackathon are still open on a first come, first serve basis until 7th January 2022. For more information and to apply, please visit hacktitude.io.
99x is a technology company co-creating well-engineered, innovative digital products for the Scandinavian market. Its expertise has been proven through a portfolio of over 150 impactful global digital products, developed together with leading Independent Software Vendors (ISVs). 99x employs over 350 technology and product specialists, who are high achievers, creative thinkers and team players. The company is one of Asia’s Best Workplaces for 2021 and has been named a Best Workplace in Sri Lanka for nine consecutive years.