The 100: a story about Polarising’s Academy and its trainees.

Academy / By / 25/10/2022
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I could be talking about the tv show’s story: 97 years after a nuclear war that destroyed civilization except some people in a spaceship, 100 juvenile delinquents were sent back to Earth hoping to repopulate the planet. But it is not the case.

I’m here to tell you Polarising’s story about 100 academy trainees that were sent to their first IT job.

I’m talking, alphabetically and just one time each name, about the academy trainees Ágata, Allan, Álvaro, Ana, André, Ângela, Anish, António, Bárbara, Beatriz, Bernardo, Bjorn, Bruno, Carolina, Cláudio, Daniel, David, Diogo, Erica, Filipe, Francisco, Gabriel, Gabriela, Gil, Gonçalo, Guilherme, Hèlena, Henrique, Igor, Inês, Irina, Janek, Jason, Jean, João, Kelly, Luis, Marcelo, Mariana, Marta, Miguel, Nelson, Nuno, Pedro, Raquel, Renato, Ricardo, Rui, Samuel, Sancho, Saulo, Svitlana, Tanguy, Théo, Tiago, Tingting and Tomás.

I was not yet the Champions Academy trainees idol at the time – if you ask, they will say that I’m still not, all lies! – but Polarising started its first Academy early in February 2015 with a team of just foreigner trainees, which went pretty well. Pretty, pretty, pretty well. And I think they enjoyed it too, in fact, one of them was with us until December 2020.

But they were missing their countries, so they left and made us look for other solutions. And there it was, right in front of our noses: Portugal’s resident talent.

And since then, Polarising’s Champions Academy has grown every year (even when we all went remote). Since 2015, almost 10 years went by and there were already 100 academy trainees passing through here (well, in fact they are 102 now but let’s pretend that they are 100, don’t be so fussy about the details!). It is great to review the names of the oldest Champions and realize that they are senior developers today. And good ones.

The objective of the Champions Academy is to give our trainees all the knowledge and tools so they can start their journey in the world of IT, and that’s why our Academies are always evolving and adapting so everybody can have, at least, the foundation knowledge about several technologies and ways of programming.

Are you asking for some statistics? Sorry I can’t hear, so I’ll say it anyway:

  • 65 of these 100 academy trainees are still with us since (their) day 1.
  • The most common name until now is Tiago, but Diogo and João are pretty close. Pretty, pretty, pretty close.
  • Our academy trainees come specially from ISCTE, followed by IST, but outside Lisbon IPLeiria is the winner.

And for you that is reading this – not you, the one that is looking for their first work experience in IT, the Champions Academy recruits all year, so send us your CV and let’s talk.

Who knows in a few months you’ll be learning Java, Spring/Springboot, Angular, TIBCO BusinessWorks 5 and more, and then you’ll be part of this epic wall of fame?

It’s going to be pretty good.

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Daniel Lambuça
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