By Ram Superable Agustin
Hong Kong-based analytics company StackTrek has announced that it will be staging StackLeague, which is said to be the first of its kind free coding e-sports competition, on August 3-4 at the StackLeague Arena Tektite (formerly Philippine Stock Exchange Trading Floor in Ortigas, Pasig City) for programmers of all ages.
StackTrek, which operates its regional headquarters in the Philippines, said the competition is part of its initiative to transform tech education to employment in programming.
To propagate its advocacy, StackTrek is giving out StackED, a free educational platform built for talent assessment in local universities and schools.
“We provide our technology to schools. Using our technology to run programming courses in schools, we can gather data about the capacities and capabilities of the programming students,” said StackTrek CEO and founder Billy Yuen.
StackTrek is an analytics company that specializes on producing programming teams for large technology companies by utilizing its proprietary technologies in assessing, analyzing, and improving programmer capabilities.
The assessment tool streamlines the recruitment, training and management of programmers for tech firms and even startups.
The StackLeague tournament, on the other hand, is a public-private initiative with ties to the national government, the Department of Trade and Industry, LGUs, and universities.
“The StackLeague is about creating a platform for Filipino developers to showcase their skills to tech companies around the world. In order for us to build an ecosystem, we need to have role models. There are no ‘Mark Zuckerbergs’ in the Philippines, so we need to create these role models or rockstar developers for the younger generation to look up to,” shared Yuen.
“I did some research and I realized that the Philippines is the world’s number 2 IT outsourcing destination. We first need to improve the education quality. We also need to attract more employers to employ Filipino developers. That’s why we have StackLab. Together, these three factors form an ecosystem which serves as the foundation to help us in rebranding the Philippines,” Yuen explained.
At its core, StackLab prioritizes the recruitment of the best tech talent in the country by global tech companies. Through StackLeague, promising talents and hiring employers will be bridged.
Nigel Villanueva, StackTrek director, shared that the purpose of the competition is to be able to showcase the talents and skills of different coders. After the competition, he said StackTrek can provide them with ways to connect with global tech firms.
“If a particular school wants their students to attend a competition, and they want to find out if their own curriculum is able to stand up against other schools, we can provide a report after the competition to these schools,” he added.
Interested contenders may visit stackleague.com to register.