Business Wire IndiaHow do you relate to the words like ‘hackathon’, ‘code contest’ or ‘codeathon’? One assumes that it is a laborious exercise where youngsters’ frantically type codes, day and night.
Well, you are in for a pleasant surprise since most techies associate words like ‘cool’ and ‘fun’ with these events! In fact, ambitious coders mostly associate it with terms like ‘exploring professional networking’, ‘skill polishing’ and ‘finding core jobs’ with it.
Meet Sonny Laskar, who won Big Data Analytics and Machine Learning theme rounds at world’s largest code contest TechGig Code Gladiators 2017. Sonny is presently working as Senior Principal Architect, Automation & Analytics at Microland and habitually participates in hackathons to test his skills.
“Hackathons help you learn about various new techniques, unique problems and their possible solutions which you may not get to work on otherwise,” says Sonny, the avid coder. For him, participating at TechGig Code Gladiators 2017 was “fun” and a definite laurel on his resume. His team member for Machine Learning theme Sudalai Rajkumar is ecstatic about the fact that hackathons offer the opportunity to meet other high-potential coders and network with them. “Hackathons help in polishing skills, but most importantly they help in connecting with the core coding community,” says Sudalai Rajkumar.
Delhi-based Dilip Kasana, who was the second runner-up at Code Gladiators 2017 and was also the winner for ‘Beat The Leader’ title, says that the professional recognition that one earns from such platforms is paramount. “After my win at Code Gladiators, my organisation took a serious note of my coding capabilities. Whenever there is an important critical project at hand, I am considered for such projects immediately,” says Dilip.
Another millennial engineer, Shantanu Kumar who was the theme winner for Data Science at TechGig Code Gladiators 2017 describes it as a “perfect opportunity for networking”. Shantanu – who was completing his course till last year – believes that TechGig Code Gladiators 2017 gave him an opportunity to network among tech community. “I was the only student at Data Science theme round and the other competitors were professionals. I learnt how people use their experience and learnings on problems at hand.
I got a chance to connect with the tech pros working with various companies,” he says recollecting his memories from the event floor. After TechGig Code Gladiators 2017, he worked Analytics Vidhya as an intern and is currently working with Udacity.
For many young engineers, more than job opportunities, hackathon victories play a pivotal role in elevating their position and clout with the present employers and peers. As Sowmiyan Morri, Data Science theme winner at TechGig Code Gladiators 2017, says his theme win helped him get shortlisted for more challenging projects at his workplace. He is working with Data Scientist at a Bengaluru-based firm, as was the case last year, but ever since his victory at the Code Gladiators event, Sowmiyan had been given a more critical project pertaining to healthcare. He is confident that a promising future awaits him in this domain.
As the 2018 edition of Code Gladiators prepares for its take off, these winners – and the IT community as such is excited about the prospects of the upcoming event. “Code Gladiators is a flagship event – not only for TechGig but the Indian IT industry as well. This kind of mega stage allows us to bring in talent from all landscapes, and that in turn gives wings to many dreams in the hiding. We have had many inspiring stories from the Code Gladiators stage,” said Ramathreya Krishnamurthi, Business Head, TimesJobs and TechGig. On the sidelines, he also mentioned that Code Gladiators 2018 will focus on new technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, IoT among others to provide an endless canvas for coders and programmers to experiment with problem solutions. Details on the new season will be updated @https://www.techgig.com/codegladiators
As for techie achievers, each had their own mantra for success which they would like to share with future participants. Shantanu Kumar says that any solution proposed should be linked to business outcome. “Don’t just provide a solution, make sure that your solution has a business outcome or impact as well,” he cautioned. Looks like he has learnt his lessons well!
