I’m Vivek, co-founder/ceo of HackerRank. We’re sorry we made you grind leetcode. That line is on billboards around SF now.
HackerRank didn’t invent algorithmic interviews, but we helped normalize a version of technical hiring that turned into months of grinding questions with little connection to the actual job.
Technical interviews have come a long way: from “How many golf balls fit in a 747?” to reading code over the phone, writing it on a whiteboard, and eventually solving LeetCode-style problems.
Each step got us a little closer to the work. But we were still mostly evaluating how well someone had prepared for an interview, not how well they could build software.
