EY Romania organized its first hackathon dedicated to students and junior programmers in Bucharest. The winners, the Inception team, went home with €3,000.

The EY Tech Challenge Hackathon (May 20-21, 2023) at Unirii Commons was open to all early-stage programmers. 21 participants, divided into 7 groups, registered to participate in the competition, which was asked to develop a mobile application that would measure the degree of crowding in different places in Bucharest and provide important information in case of emergency (e.g. air raid map of the shelter, guidance and instructions) .

The team received a prize of 3,000 euros for the first place beginning. The application developed by the team members attracted the attention of the jury as fulfilling the formulated requirements, in particular by filtering and selecting the desired landmarks in the city, checking their crowding and, at their own choice, sharing this information with other people nearby, as well as adding some original elements – for example, adapting a map with landmarks for colorblind people.

The jury, which included 5 specialists from the EY Tech Romania team, evaluated the participants’ applications according to three dimensions – technical, creative and supporting for the presentation: Cătălina Dodu, head of the technology consulting department, Aurelia Costache, head of intelligent automation EMEIA, Ionela Sten, director of Tech Consulting , Marius Antoni, Executive Director of Tech Consulting and Adrian Grigorash, Director of Tech Consulting.

All participants received advice and mentoring from EY Tech specialists, as well as support from the organizing team throughout the event.

“During the 24 hours of the hackathon, we also had some surprises. A few members dropped out and the remaining members of the 2 original teams joined together to form an entirely new team. On Saturday night, they started the project from scratch, which they bravely presented the next day. Resilience and agility are the two things we at EY most admire in the new generation of professionals“, – says Iryna Minzale, head of EY’s HR department in Romania and Moldova.

The EY Tech Challenge aims to be a recurring event where junior programmers can learn from each other and have fun exploring the best solutions to the challenges posed by the EY team.

***

About EY Romania

EY is one of the world’s largest professional services firms, with 312,250 employees in more than 700 offices in 150 countries.

Present in Romania since 1992, EY is a leader in the professional services market. More than 800 employees in Romania and the Republic of Moldova provide integrated audit, tax, legal, strategy and transaction support services, as well as advise international and local companies. We have offices in Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca, Timisoara, Iasi and Chisinau. In 2014, EY Romania joined the only global competition dedicated to entrepreneurship, EY Entrepreneur Of The Year. The winner of the local edition represents Romania in the world final, which takes place every June in Monte Carlo. In the global final, the title of World Entrepreneur Of The Year is awarded.

In 2023, EY Romania was awarded the “Best Employer” certificate for the second year in a row in Romania, as well as the first time it was awarded the “Best Employer” certificate in Europe, being the first of the largest local professional services companies to receive this certificate.

Article supported by EY Romania