- HackerRank's mission is to match developers with the right job based on their skills, rather than relying on resumes.
- Developers can use HackerRank to practice and improve their skills in various areas, such as algorithms and database skills.
- When applying to a company, developers take that company's coding challenge on HackerRank.
- The platform offers a wide range of challenges, from simple problem-solving to real-world scenarios.
- HackerRank initially started as Interview Street, offering mock interviews for students preparing for technical interviews.
- However, this model did not succeed due to various challenges, such as payment issues and lack of focus.
- The founders then pivoted to helping people apply for master's programs in the US, but this also did not work out.
- Eventually, the need to find a solution to their financial situation led them to the current iteration of HackerRank.
- They used their network and connections to reach out to people in the US and gather data for their platform.

- The motivation for Indians to pursue a master's degree in the US is often seen as a checkbox or a pathway to getting a job in the Silicon Valley.
- The founders of the company did not pursue a master's degree and instead started their own company.
- They decided to create a platform for companies to identify the right developers based on their skills, which led to early traction and acceptance into Y Combinator.
- The founders had to navigate cultural differences and learn how to interact and communicate effectively in the US.
- Demo day at Y Combinator was a challenging but exciting experience for the founders, and they enjoyed pitching to a large group of investors.
- After Y Combinator, the founders decided to stay in California due to the positive experiences and opportunities they encountered.

- The speaker, Arif Karim, is from India and found the weather, food, and people in the location he moved to (presumably the US) to be a perfect fit for him.
- His company was the first Indian-based company to be accepted into Y Combinator.
- The intensity of the Y Combinator program was high, with weekly dinners and a fixed deadline for a demo day.
- The speaker and his co-founder have maintained their intensity and hunger to win, but they need to extend that mindset to the entire company.
- The company conducted a survey of their developer community, with close to 40,000 people completing the survey out of 1 million active developers.
- The survey provided interesting insights about developers, and the company plans to publish the raw data for further analysis.
- Python is a popular programming language, and Go is becoming more popular.
- The company helps developers find the best fit for their skills and interests.
- One interesting insight from the survey is that 1 in every 4 developers learn to code before they learn to drive.
- The value of coding bootcamps varies among hiring managers, with some valuing them highly and others not as much.
- The speaker mentions a school called 42 that takes a different approach, providing room and board for years and allowing students to explore different computer science topics.

- The speaker discusses the potential impact of a billionaire-funded experiment in France to create more developers and improve technology.
- Hiring managers have mixed opinions about boot camps, with startups valuing open source contributions and portfolios more than larger companies.
- Work-life balance is highly valued by developers, and companies can signal this by supporting side projects and offering continuous learning opportunities.
- Developers are increasingly learning from YouTube and other online platforms, leading to a paradigm shift in recruiting based on skills rather than educational background or work experience.
- Standout projects for developers include those that demonstrate drive and depth of thinking.
- Hiring remote developers requires a strong focus on communication and ensuring synchronization within the team.

- The future of engineering teams is the ability to build them anywhere, not just in the Bay Area, with effective communication and understanding of skills and contributions.
- There is a need to test the efficacy of remote developers, both in technical skills and ability to work in different environments and time zones.
- Companies like booking.com are successfully hiring developers globally using platforms like HackerRank to assess skills and strengths.
- Improvements are needed in providing beginner-friendly coding environments and fostering a purpose-driven mindset for developers, rather than just focusing on high salaries.
- Paradigm shifts for developers include moving towards a more meritocratic hiring system and valuing business acumen in addition to technical skills.
- Developers should also interview companies and ask questions about the company's strategy and how they can contribute.
- Brain teasers are not favored by developers as a hiring tool, as they don't accurately assess computational thinking skills.

- The goal is to assess computational thinking and problem-solving skills in hiring developers
- There are better ways to assess these skills in a developer-friendly and coding-friendly manner
- Hiring developers without traditional qualifications can lead to successful outcomes
- Passion for the mission and problem-solving abilities are important factors to consider in hiring developers
- Finding great people requires doing the work and identifying those with the right skills and passion

HackerRank is a platform that matches developers with job opportunities based on their skills rather than resumes. Developers can use the platform to practice and improve their skills in various areas. The company started as Interview Street but pivoted to focus on helping developers find the right job. They gathered data from their network and connections to build their platform. The founders had to navigate cultural differences and learn how to interact effectively in the US. They were accepted into Y Combinator and decided to stay in California. The company conducted a survey of their developer community and found interesting insights. Python and Go are popular programming languages. Coding bootcamps have varying value among hiring managers. Work-life balance and continuous learning opportunities are important to developers. Hiring remote developers requires strong communication and synchronization. The future of engineering teams is the ability to build them anywhere. Companies like booking.com are successfully hiring developers globally using platforms like HackerRank. Improvements are needed in beginner-friendly coding environments and fostering a purpose-driven mindset. Paradigm shifts for developers include a more meritocratic hiring system and valuing business acumen. Passion and problem-solving abilities are important factors in hiring developers."""

Vivek Ravisankar is the CEO and cofounder of HackerRank - https://www.hackerrank.com/ - which was in the Summer 2011 batch.

They surveyed 40,000 developers on things including their favorite frameworks, what they want in a job, and how they learned to code. You can read the report here - https://research.hackerrank.com/developer-skills/2018/

All right, Vivek, why don't we start with what you guys do and then we'll rewind to before you even did YC.

Our mission at HackerRank is to match every developer to the right job, with the underlying driver being skill.

Resumes are just a very poor correlation to skills.

What we do as a product, as a developer, you could come on to HackerRank to practice and improve your skills across different dimensions, whether it's algorithms or artificial intelligence or database skills.

And when you're applying to a company, instead of going through the traditional route of uploading a resume and it's mostly going to be a black hole, you take a company's coding challenge.

So if you want to apply to Airbnb, you take an Airbnb's coding challenge.

If you want to apply to VMware, you take a VMware's coding challenge.

And if you have the required skills, basically we automate the whole code and give you a report.

So it's great for developers because it's a merit-based process.

It's great for companies because now you're able to track the right developers for their interview process.

Peter Collins And what might 1 of those challenges look like?

For instance, Airbnb, are we being put into the code base in any way?

We've built a platform where it's super custom for companies to go ahead and create.

So you could have a simple problem-solving challenge to something close to a real world, where you could have a, you could give an access to our GitHub repo.

And people can go ahead and modify the code, fix a bug on your repo to go ahead and do it.

So that's a wide range of problems that you could give on the platform.

So you guys haven't always been doing this, correct?

We used to do a bunch of things together in college.

And we started the company, technically, we quit our jobs.

I used to work at Amazon as a developer before this, where I did a lot of technical interviews, which is kind of where I saw the problem.

You know, the resumes were not a good correlation to skills.

The way we started to do the, we thought that the way to solve this problem of resumes not correlating skills was to help prepare students for their interviews.

So we started Interview Street, that was our first version.

So let's say you had an interview call with Amazon or Google next week.

You could come onto our site and attend a mock interview with either somebody from Amazon or somebody, an ex-Amazon person, who can give you a walkthrough of here are the things.

We'll do a mock interview and give you what are the areas that you need to improve, where do you stand, and all of those things.

And the students would be paying these people for their time?

So it's going to be hard for people to comprehend the value here in the US, because we were doing it in India, but we were charging 350 rupees, Indian currency, from the student.

And we used to pay 250 rupees to the interviewer.

So you could almost imagine that to be something on the lines of, I mean, technically it's $6 and $5.

you could say a student would pay $200, something like that, and an interviewer would get about $150.

So then if you then think about it in that way, it was pretty expensive for students And we didn't have any good payment gateways or anything of that in India.

So we used to set up campus ambassadors in different colleges.

And Hari and I used to do a trip every month to visit all of these colleges to collect money from these campus ambassadors.

And from an interviewer perspective, 250 rupees or like $150 or something on those lines here is not very, is not enticing, right?

If I have to spend an hour of my time doing a mock interview and giving you feedback, is it worth it?

So I still have the Excel, which projects us to make, I think, somewhere on the lines of $100 million or 100 crores, whatever it's like $50 million, something along those lines.

I think we made about 4,000 rupees or maybe about that's like an equivalent of $100 here.

So clearly you could just drag the cells in the Excel in whatever way you want and get the numbers, but it's very hard to execute.

I mean, we had a lot of lessons that we learned from that.

Most importantly, I mean, the students didn't have cash, there was a lot of scheduling.

And I think 1 of the things that YC stresses on the most, I wish we had actually done YC at that point, I think this was done by Paul Bouquet, make something that 100 users really, really love versus making 1,000 people or 10,000 people sort of okay like.

I think we should have focused on, you know what, we're just going to focus on these 2 companies, mock interviews, right, versus any tech company anywhere in the world.

And we were scrambling for interviewers from Amazon, Google, Microsoft, all over.

You know what, these are the 3 companies that we're going to focus.

If you want to get a job here, you can come in too and make it really happy and then figure out a way to scale.

Yeah, whenever people did the interviews, they really liked it.

In fact, there were a lot of really interesting testimonials of people who actually attended the interviews, got their job, they knew what are some of the areas that they need to improve, they need to prepare and all of those things.

Yeah, I mean, I remember all the interviews I did during college, like if I could have just gotten the email of someone at 1 of these companies, it would have been invaluable to me.

We used to do that sort of informally in college, right?

When we were in the final year of college, we used to train people for sort of mock interviews and others.

Why can't you do this on over the web across everyone?

So you weren't necessarily off the mark around finding something that people really like, but you found that you kind of hit a ceiling somewhere?

And it was, it wasn't very focused either.

So there were a lot of, there were different cohorts of people.

Some of them were students, some of them were, were a couple of years into their work experience.

And some of them wanted to do technical interviews.

Some of them wanted to do sort of a automobile interview.

And then we had to go ahead and scramble and figure out, can we get somebody from the automobile division to come and take the interview?

We had no contacts, so we had to figure out a way to scramble through LinkedIn and Facebook.

I think it was sort of okay, but it really taught us to stay strong.

Okay, and so at what point do you decide, like, you know what, we have to change this, this isn't working?

We'd applied to Y Combinator with this idea.

Then I think it was about 12, 15 months, something on those lines, when clearly this wasn't going anywhere.

The Excel was completely off the trajectory of the Excel graph and where we were.

And then we switched our business model or idea to something different.

So there is a big trend that is still present in India, which is once you graduate, you have to do your master's in a school here.

I mean, pretty much, you know, I don't know, 80, 90% of people would attempt their GRE, which is your standard way of getting here, your TOEFL, they will prepare their statement of purpose, they will do all of those.

And the application form is pretty expensive.

And so you could only apply to maybe 5 or 6 universities because it was so expensive and you couldn't just, you couldn't just apply to all the schools in the US.

So what we did was we connected people who were already studying in these schools who can review your statement of purpose, your resume and tell you if you had a chance to come here to apply to the school.

That actually took off a bit, but then after 3 months or so, the traffic was down to 0.

Turns out you can only apply twice a year.

So we didn't know what to do for the rest of the year.

We'd actually apply to YC even with this idea.

So I think this whole thing about mock interviews, applying, helping people apply for their masters, prepare, maybe a year and a half to 2, something on those lines that we worked on.

Okay, and then What sparked you to start working on where you are now?

And, you know, of course we had really good jobs.

And Amazon was a great company to work at.

So just to pause you really quickly, how are you making the connections of people here if you were based in India?

So what we did was we used to take the directory of people from our school who went ahead and did masters at all of these different universities and who are working in different companies.

So we used to go through the directory, keep calling people, email them, hey, are you interested?

that university touch in to get them on board.

So it was just friends, network, second degree.

And I used to make, I don't know, 50 calls every day to get this going.

Okay, and just for context for me, people from India want to do a master's here because it's a gateway to getting a job here or what?

Maybe it was just, I think it is, it's sort of a checkbox.

I'm not sure that this changed now, but it was definitely, I mean, I graduated 8 years back, or 9 years back, it was definitely a pride.

Okay, you know what, I'm going to do my master's here.

And there's of course some glamour associated with the great American dream coming here and working in the Silicon Valley.

Silicon Valley is sort of this mythical place for all technology developers to be here.

I still think it is the case that you would have to apply if you had good GPAs and if you had good grades.

The question is why aren't you going, why aren't you applying for a master's?

Even among the like the very talented, smart kids going to great schools in India.

I think it's why aren't you applying for a master's?

Why aren't you doing your PhD here in Carnegie Mellon or Stanford or Purdue?

And there are a lot of, actually, Hari and I might actually be the odd man out.

And I'm happy because I'd applied to 6 schools and all of them turned me down.

I was so dejected when the last school turned me down, but in hindsight, it's great, because I don't think we would have started a company if I had come here.

Yes, and you have to, once you graduate, you'd have to get a job because you have to pay back the loan, which is pretty big.

So you do 2 years of masters, then you do 2 to 3 years of working in different companies to pay back the loan.

And by the time you want to start, you're already, I don't know, close to 5, 6 years invested in this.

And the friction to, or the inertia to go ahead and start another company when you're happy working at Amazon or Google is gonna be hard.

And so, okay, so you're basically out of money.

Yeah, And yeah, so we had a clear choice, which is we could go back and get a job.

I think we could have got that, but something we just wanted to keep going.

We just wanted to try this out once more.

And I have no idea what kept us going at that point in time.

And there was some conversation we were just walking around, which was, it sounds obvious.

Hey, if you have to make money, you have to sell something to people who have money.

Otherwise, there is no way that you're going to make any money.

We were selling to students and others who were already in whatever they had called student debt and they had very little money.

So that's when we said, hey, can we invert this?

Which is, can we build a product for companies to help them identify the right developers based on our skills?

Of course, we didn't have the mission written down, like match every developer to the right job.

But looking back, I think that was the core of every decision that we made.

And we felt, you know, we'll still stay true to our core because it doesn't, mock interviews is 1 way of doing this, but if you actually give a platform that can enable developers from, it doesn't matter what school did you go to, which company you went, but you have a chance to showcase your skills and get the dream job that you want, then that's great.

That's how we got started and that got the early traction.

So that was the third time we applied to YC.

And was it because you were showing significant growth at the time or the idea was just working out?

I definitely didn't wanna ask why are you guys calling us now?

Yeah, so, and we had some struggles there as well.

Hari, my co-founder couldn't get his visa to come here.

And I still think it's the stance of YC, but YC cares about co-founders a lot.

And so I got my visa, Hari couldn't get, and so I flew in here just for the 10 minute interview.

And fortunately we got in, and I remember, you know, I think there was a panel of interviews.

It was PG, Sam, Harge, Jessica, and Paul Bouquet, the 5 people interviewing me.

And I landed in the morning and the evening was the YC interview because I couldn't get my visa on time.

And then you see all these 5 people as a creator of Gmail.

And frankly, I didn't think we'd get into IC.

And maybe it worked to our advantage, because I was just completely open and honest about everything.

Because I didn't fake any of my answers or try to impress them.

Look, this is the problem, I really want to come here and go ahead and do this." And it probably worked out to our advantage.

Yeah, I mean, so what you were working on before has this separate difficulty in the application because you have to educate someone about what it's like in India versus here where we have the exact same problem of like, oh, we're this company, we have all these jobs,

don't have enough engineers, like let's sort this out.

I think there is a different way things, I mean, yeah, you're right, the environment is different.

I mean, I remember I used PG's, so I didn't have, so I used to sit in the Pioneer Way office Y Combinator office for most, actually our first office was right opposite to the YC Pioneer office.

It was the RethinkDB's old office, which we actually took, so it was right opposite.

So I used to be in Y Combinator for the most part.

I remember I took PG's charger, Mac charger, by mistake, home.

And this was the second day or the third day.

And I was so, I didn't know what to do because oh my God, what is PG gonna think?

And then I started emailing him, really, really sorry, I took your charger.

He said, no problem, just keep it there tomorrow.

And I said, okay, are you gonna come in tomorrow?

And he said, he's not gonna come in tomorrow.

Because the way, at least I was brought up, and for most part in India, is if you keep a charger or if you keep the Amazon box right outside the door, somebody's gonna take it away, right?

And then I had to, you have to learn about how the environment is different, how people talk, how people react to it.

So I remember sending a calendar invite for dinner to a person that I wanted to recruit for 9 p.m.

And he said, that's kind of my bedtime, so I can't meet you in 9 p.m.

So there are all of these things that you have to learn.

And it's not just the macro part of the developer, how it works, but even the tiny things about how you interact, how you work with people and all of those things you have to learn.

Has that been incorporated into your product?

Because I imagine you have all these international people applying to US companies.

How do you help educate them on the cultural norms?

Yeah, no, it is a really good question because right from how you sort of, how the types of sentences or words that you use varies quite a bit between what you would say to somebody in Asia, what you would say somebody to you in UK and what you would say somebody here.

So all of those nuances we need to take care of because there is a different cultural aspect on how you sell, how you talk, how you get people going.

I've shifted a little, But I think it's a constant learning.

Yeah, my friend moved to India for a couple years and he explained the exact thing opposite.

Yeah, I mean, it's just the way you grow up is different.

I mean, there's nothing that's right or wrong.

It's just different and you have to get used to it.

And I remember PG and Sam correcting me from everything to even the tiny nuances.

So in India, you would probably say programmer.

You would add the A at the end, but here people will not be able to follow, it's pro-grammar.

So if you have to say, and when I was doing my demo day pitches, all of these little things mattered because it was just a 5 minute pitch, or no, I think it was a 2 minute or a 5 minute pitch in the demo day.

And every little thing matters a lot, because when you're talking to investors.

So it's not just the accent, but how you talk, how you schedule meetings, how you follow up, and everything is different.

Because you're pitching amidst a group, I think you said your batch was 60 or 70?

Prithviraj- Yeah, I think our batch was 63 or 65.

and so that's enough companies for 1 to just fall into monotony, like, murr, murr, murr,

Prithviraj- But interestingly, I really enjoyed it, Because I've never been exposed to such a large group of investors and I couldn't even sleep the previous day.

Look, I wanted to pitch and get a CDSA going.

So you raise money after YC and you're committed.

Yeah, I mean, after I came here to Mountain View, and I don't know, maybe that's partially the reason the first city, well, I technically landed in San Francisco, but immediately took a cab and came to Mountain View.

It was, I just, I think everything looked great.

I mean, right from the kind of the people that you interact with, the advice that you get, the weather, the food, sort of the perfect mix for me coming from India.

You had the weather similar to Bangalore and the food similar to Bangalore and Chennai, and then you had all the people that I really wanted to talk and get advice from in terms of building a company.

So it was the perfect mix, at least for me.

So I was very much determined to stay here and build a company.

Leeson Man, what was that like, flying here and then seeing all the people who you read their blog posts?

I didn't know it was, as I said, I thought I was going to just stammer and flunk the interview, but like I mentioned, I didn't think we'd get in.

Actually, we were the first Indian-based company to get into Y Combinator.

And so that was another, I don't know if it helped or didn't help, because we thought, okay, they've never chosen a completely Indian-based company, so our odds are low.

That really helped, because I was just completely free and open, but it was great.

It was great to meet all of the people that you admire far off from reading their blog posts or Twitter or watching their videos.

And what were your greatest learnings from the experience?

I think the intensity was very, very high because there was a dinner every week.

And I noticed that each founder had their own set of people that they interact with.

Of course I interact with a lot of them, but you talk to a few people and then you hear their updates every week and you want to push harder.

You have a fixed deadline, 3 months down.

3 months you have a demo day which you have to go and present to investors.

So you have a fixed demo, a fixed timeline to make sure that you have a good prototype.

See all Y Combinator transcripts on Youtube

Breaking Down HackerRank's Survey of 40,000 Developers with Vivek Ravisankar