Coding contests are hiring hubs for global companies
BANGALORE: Twitter, Facebook, Quora, Evernote, Bloomberg and Adobe are increasingly giving traditional recruiting avenues a miss and hiring Indian developers on coding platforms like HackerRank and HackerEarth. They are offering top dollars to those who have taken lead positions on programming leader boards tackling mind-bending challenges.
A bunch of Indian programmers participating in HackerRank's coding contests are being offered annual salaries ranging from $120,000-$150,000 (Rs 72 lakh-90 lakh) for US-based positions.
"We've had over 10,000 hackers (programmers) hired by our customers like VMware, FireEye, Bloomberg, LinkedIn, Yelp, Adobe, Capital One and others in the past two years. Coding platforms replace unnatural career fairs, helping companies make right hiring decisions in a cost-effective way," says Vivek Ravisankar, co-founder of HackerRank, a social platform for programmers that was formerly called InterviewStreet. The Bangalore- and Palo Alto-based startup has raised $12.4 million in funding from investors including Khosla Ventures and YCombinator.
Another Bangalore-based coding platform, HackerEarth, is running an Adobe Security Czar Challenge to hire security specialists with 5-7 years experience offering annual salaries in the range of Rs 15 lakh to 24 lakh.
Mobile advertising company InMobi has hired seven senior developers with an annual salary of Rs 15 lakh. Recently, ad and technology analytics firm Sokrati , Google's largest preferred partner in India, hosted a coding challenge on HackerEarth to hire software developers offering salaries in the Rs 5 lakh-20 lakh range.
Another coding platform, Techgig.com, has helped 300 technology firms hire 20,000 programmers in the 2014 fiscal alone, says Vivek Madhukar, COO of Times Business Solutions that runs Techgig.com.
Programmers are not only rewarded for their coding skills; they also get incentives for demonstrating extraordinary skills. Financial technology company Addepar, for instance, hosted a hackathon on HackerRank that saw 3,800 participants. The top contestant will win an all-expenses-paid trip to Mountain View to dine with Addepar co-founder Joe Lonsdale.
Companies are increasingly using hackathons as a recruitment tool to evaluate coding skills in real time by giving developers "think on your feet" scenarios. "Interview and skills assessment tools such as HackerRank will become a mandatory step in technical interviews of junior- to medium-level staff,". These tools provide companies low cost and scalable self-service methodology to assess a wide range of technical skills with a high degree of dispassionate consistency," says Ravi Gururaj, co-founder of Frictionless Ventures and chairman of Nasscom Product Council.
Coding challenges are rewriting the rules of technical recruitment, replacing career fairs and reducing dependence on varsity credentials by making the entire process robust and transparent. "Credentialing offered by universities will wane in importance. Its place will be taken by the review of the artifacts that you have produced. In fact, this has already happened in open source software," The only credentials that matter are related to the software artifacts that you have created in the past. University credentials in this area are irrelevant," says Sharad Sharma, co-founder, iSpirt.
Sachin Gupta, co-founder, HackerEarth, says computer education has democratized programming that doesn't necessarily require a formal training. "Coding platform goes a step beyond is assessing the right skills compared to the traditional metrics like the number of years of experience and the pedigree of the individual and institution they come from."
A bunch of Indian programmers participating in HackerRank's coding contests are being offered annual salaries ranging from $120,000-$150,000 (Rs 72 lakh-90 lakh) for US-based positions.
"We've had over 10,000 hackers (programmers) hired by our customers like VMware, FireEye, Bloomberg, LinkedIn, Yelp, Adobe, Capital One and others in the past two years. Coding platforms replace unnatural career fairs, helping companies make right hiring decisions in a cost-effective way," says Vivek Ravisankar, co-founder of HackerRank, a social platform for programmers that was formerly called InterviewStreet. The Bangalore- and Palo Alto-based startup has raised $12.4 million in funding from investors including Khosla Ventures and YCombinator.
Another Bangalore-based coding platform, HackerEarth, is running an Adobe Security Czar Challenge to hire security specialists with 5-7 years experience offering annual salaries in the range of Rs 15 lakh to 24 lakh.
Mobile advertising company InMobi has hired seven senior developers with an annual salary of Rs 15 lakh. Recently, ad and technology analytics firm Sokrati , Google's largest preferred partner in India, hosted a coding challenge on HackerEarth to hire software developers offering salaries in the Rs 5 lakh-20 lakh range.
Another coding platform, Techgig.com, has helped 300 technology firms hire 20,000 programmers in the 2014 fiscal alone, says Vivek Madhukar, COO of Times Business Solutions that runs Techgig.com.
Programmers are not only rewarded for their coding skills; they also get incentives for demonstrating extraordinary skills. Financial technology company Addepar, for instance, hosted a hackathon on HackerRank that saw 3,800 participants. The top contestant will win an all-expenses-paid trip to Mountain View to dine with Addepar co-founder Joe Lonsdale.
Companies are increasingly using hackathons as a recruitment tool to evaluate coding skills in real time by giving developers "think on your feet" scenarios. "Interview and skills assessment tools such as HackerRank will become a mandatory step in technical interviews of junior- to medium-level staff,". These tools provide companies low cost and scalable self-service methodology to assess a wide range of technical skills with a high degree of dispassionate consistency," says Ravi Gururaj, co-founder of Frictionless Ventures and chairman of Nasscom Product Council.
Coding challenges are rewriting the rules of technical recruitment, replacing career fairs and reducing dependence on varsity credentials by making the entire process robust and transparent. "Credentialing offered by universities will wane in importance. Its place will be taken by the review of the artifacts that you have produced. In fact, this has already happened in open source software," The only credentials that matter are related to the software artifacts that you have created in the past. University credentials in this area are irrelevant," says Sharad Sharma, co-founder, iSpirt.
Sachin Gupta, co-founder, HackerEarth, says computer education has democratized programming that doesn't necessarily require a formal training. "Coding platform goes a step beyond is assessing the right skills compared to the traditional metrics like the number of years of experience and the pedigree of the individual and institution they come from."
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