March 17, 2012 - 22:45 AMT
Facebook holding 2nd annual Hacker Cup

25 of the world’s best hackers gathered for Facebook’s 2nd annual Hacker Cup event being held at its offices in Menlo Park, The Next Web reports.

The registration for the event opened in January and started off with three online rounds of problem solving. Out of 6,000 (8,000 submissions total) qualifying submissions, the group has been shrunken down to just 25 and flown to Facebook for the finals.

The top coders, all male from around the world, are a mix of students, independent coders, and professionals. Facebook paid their way to California, including a stipend for obtaining a Visa, since only one of the participants is from the United States. The rest of the finalists are from Russia, Germany, Ukraine, Poland, China, South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan.

The company describes the Hacker Cup as “an annual algorithmic programming contest open to engineers from around the world.”

The participants will be given three problems of varying difficulty to solve in three hours and will be judged on speed and accuracy.

Along with the title of “world champion” as the top hacker, the first prize is $5 000, second prize is $2 000, $1 000 for third, and $100 for everyone else.