Another year, another reason to celebrate. This year was filled with many new experiences and achievements, as well as a renewal of our strong traditions. We continued to make things look easy even though most of the time they really weren’t. So why not relive the past year with us as we explore all the ways we at Atlantbh experienced life on top!
Big Growth, Big Changes
Our shining moment? We achieved our goal of reaching 100 Atlanters in 2019. Actually, we surpassed it since we are officially 108 strong with 38 new hires this year. This was an amazing feat but with big growth come big changes and big challenges. More people meant we needed more space, so we added a floor! Our office doubled in size and with the additional space, we got a whole fun zone equipped with table tennis, foosball, and a massive terrace perfect for BBQs – which is exactly how we celebrated the expanded office!
Supporting young talents
Believe it or not, 13 of our new hires this year were none other than our ABH interns. As always, we organized multiple cycles of the ABH Internship where students had the opportunity to gain practical experience by working on their very own IT projects with one-on-one mentorship from ABH engineers. A total of 30 interns got to build their profile with us in 2019, meaning nearly half of them became Atlanters!
2019 also marked the first year of ABH Scholarships. 10 first and second-year students studying in an IT-related field at a B&H university were awarded scholarships to help offset the cost of education. Not only do we plan on repeating this in 2020 but we are gonna double up. That’s right, 20 scholarships for 20 students to celebrate our 20th birthday … 2020 is gonna be a big year for us.
We also continued to support students and student-run organizations such as the EESETC JobFair at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Sarajevo, and numerous national/international competitions.
Spicing up old traditions
As traditions go, we kept ours alive… with a twist. We hosted another ABH JobFair but this time we were on wheels. Knowing that our country has a lot of talent to offer from all over, we decided to bring Atlantbh to them and our first ABH JobFair on wheels was hosted in Tuzla. What city/ies will we be hitting up in 2020? You’ll need to follow us on social media to find out.
We also organized our Atlantbh Dev Days workshop only this time we spiced things up and gave students the chance to work in teams, where each member fulfilled a role typically included in the IT project team. Students got to experience what it’s like to work on an actual IT project, with tasks and client expectations – the whole deal.
We also resurrected our Sarajevo Data Science Day in 2019, but we made it bigger. More than 200 professionals, academics, students, and enthusiasts working in the fields of Data Science, Big Data, Data Mining, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence had the opportunity to interact with leading speakers and Data Science experts, as well as exchange experiences and knowledge with one another.
Education, education, education
This year was probably a record-breaking one with the number of books and conferences attended. Our Education Budget was used to the max and our Atlanters purchased a whopping 140 books and took 35 courses. Oh, and we also attended 7 international conferences from the Kubernetes DevSecOps Summit in New York City to We Are Developed in Berlin. For you geeks out there, a group of our developers also attended IT Konekt in Zagreb this year for the chance to chat with Uncle Bob a.k.a Robert C. Martin, author of IT holy grails such as “Clean Code” and “Clean Architecture”. He’s basically an IT Hero.
People come first
Of course, we didn’t let the year go by without having fun… lots and lots of fun. We contributed to multiple causes and jumped at the chance to help out wherever we could. While we stand behind every contribution, we are especially proud of our collaboration with Save the Children for International Children’s Day. We funded a playground for one of the daily care centers in Mostar and the smiles on the children’s faces were priceless.
Our support is not always of a charitable nature. We’re also proud to have been able to support Bosnia and Herzegovina’s young athletes. Namely, we helped our national kickboxing and karate representatives attend the European Championship for Juniors and Cadets in Hungary. The came homes with 4 medals! We also supported young Hamza Turulja by supporting his journey to Chile and the World Karate Championship. Hamza delivered, bringing home the second place in the U21 Kumite Male -75 kg category and he’s only 18 years old!
As for team building … aside from the standard after-work chillout sessions and dinners we also upped our game. We began the year with a one-day winter team-building trip. We hit the slopes for some skiing, where Atlanters had the chance to shred powder. For those with no experience, we provided an instructor and for those who aren’t fans of adrenaline, we organized a hike through the woods. As awesome as this was, the teambuilding event of the year was our annual Retreat.
Last year’s Tribal Games set the bar high so his year, we had to deliver. We did. We took our Atlanters across the border… then across the sea to the Croatian island of Brač for the Tidal Games. Needless to say, we have no idea how we’re going to top this next year, but challenge accepted.
To end the year off, we had our annual end of the year festivities such as our holiday party, secret Santa gifts and children’s play. Yet, we need to end the year off a little earlier … on the 25th of December to be exact. Yet again, we will be closing the office early and taking a well-deserved office-wide vacation. We need a break from making things look easy year-round… besides, with next year marking 20 years of Atlantbh, we need to be prepared to make it our best yet. Until then, happy holidays and see you in the new year!
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