HackerRank

2008: Google standardized leetcode-style interviews. Every company copied it. 2026: Google is ending it. They're finally letting candidates use AI assistants in interviews. The leetcode interview tested one thing: can you write an algorithm from memory. That made sense when the job was writing code line by line. Developers today orchestrate AI agents and ship 10x faster than they could two years ago. The best engineers I talk to aren't reversing linked lists from memory. They're running multiple agents in parallel. Reviewing, rather than writing code. If history is any guide, Google changed how companies do technical interviewing once. They'll do it again. We've been building the new version of HackerRank for this shift. The job changed. Hiring is finally catching up.

Great meeting the team at Franklin Templeton in Hyderabad and having some really insightful conversations around how the hiring landscape is evolving in the age of AI. It was exciting to discuss how organizations are rethinking technical hiring, interview workflows, candidate evaluation, and developer readiness, not just from a scalability standpoint, but also from the perspective of building the next generation of AI-native talent. We’re proud to continue partnering with Franklin Templeton in this journey and explore how AI-powered hiring workflows, interviews, and evaluation can create more efficient and meaningful hiring experiences moving forward. A big thank you to the team for the warm conversations and thoughtful insights. Looking forward to what’s ahead! 🚀 Kunal Sharma Bharathi Raju Franklin Templeton HackerRank #AI #Hiring #TalentAcquisition #DeveloperHiring #FutureOfWork #HackerRank #AIInterviews #TechnicalHiring

Next week, I'll be at the 41st SIOP Annual Conference in New Orleans (April 29–May 2) with some of my favorite colleagues, and I can't wait. We're thinking a lot about what it means to hire for the agentic era -- how do you assess for it? How do you know who's going to thrive when AI is part of the team? These are the conversations we're most excited to have with I-O psychologists, TA leaders, and anyone else wrestling with the future of work. Are you going to be at SIOP? Drop a comment below #SIOP2026 #HackerRank #TalentAcquisition #IOPsychology #FutureOfWork #AgenticAI

Excited to be heading to Seattle next week for From Day One at the Seattle Art Museum. HackerRank is the title sponsor and I am taking the stage to talk about what it actually means to hire for the agentic era, why the traditional technical interview is broken, and what leading companies are doing differently. If you're going to be there, come find us. Would love to connect. https://lnkd.in/gAu85DU8

Whatever comes to your mind, you can build it now. That's the promise of the AI era. But here's what nobody talks about just because you can build it doesn't mean you should. I've watched features get built beautifully and then thrown away. Not because the engineering was bad. But because nobody stopped to ask if the problem still mattered. And this will only get worse. Execution is cheap now. But your time? Your energy? Your focus? Those are still expensive. The real differentiator isn't speed. It's not even judgment. It's caring. Judgment is the what. Caring is the why. You don't ask "why does this matter" unless you actually care about the answer. I picked this up at HackerRank. They had this core value that stuck with me for years "We truly, madly, deeply care. Just when we think we have cared enough, we care some more." Whether it's a feature, a copy on the website, an email, or the margins on a presentation. Everything counts. Everything adds up. That changed how I approach building. I don't just ask "can I build this?" I ask "does this solve a real problem for a real person?" I ask "am I willing to own this after it ships?" The engineers who thrive won't just be fast. They won't just have good judgment. They'll be the ones who care deeply about what they build. Without care, judgment is just opinion. With care, it becomes conviction. Before you open that new branch ask "do I care enough about this to build it right?" That question will save you more time than any AI tool ever will.

Spending the week at HackerRank 's Bay Area office. The view: Intel out the window, the Santa Clara hills on the horizon, and a bright sunny day outside. Literally sitting across from the silicon that named the valley. Not a bad spot to work from. ✨

We just built a world class content studio in Bangalore. Best in class cameras, VP screen, broadcast audio, teleprompters, the works. Now we need two people to help us be part of the team that runs it. This video is a good example of what we make. B2B content for Offices of CTOs and CHROs, produced entirely in-house, by a small and fast team at HackerRank , a company that's been thinking about the future of technical hiring for over a decade and championing next-gen developers. We're hiring two roles, both Bangalore-based, both 2-3 years of experience: Content Writer and Strategist: You write for humans but build with AI. You can go from a brief to a LinkedIn post, a script for a video, or a product narrative without four rounds of alignment. You know the difference between writing for a CHRO and an engineering leader, and you don't flatten them into the same voice. Video Editor (AI-Native): You edit fast and think in stories. You're already using Premiere, DaVinci, or CapCut alongside AI tools like Runway and Claude Code with Remotion. You've shot and edited, not just one or the other, and same-day turnarounds don't rattle you. Both roles: we want people who show up with a point of view, move without being pushed, and treat AI as how they work, not something they dabble in on the side. If that sounds like you, DM me with 3 bullets on why we should hire you. Include proof of work. No cover letters, no PDFs. We're a small team doing work that punches well above its weight. We'd love to find people who want to be part of that. We assess the world's best technical talent for a living. We'll try to go easy on you! 😆

It's a founding moment for the company as we build HackerRank for the agentic era.

Harshita Arora grew up in Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh. Dropped out of school at 15. And just became the youngest General Partner in Y Combinator's history at 25. Most VCs her age are still grinding as associates, hoping to make principal in five years if they're lucky. Between dropping out and becoming a partner, she discovered coding at 13, built a crypto portfolio tracker at 16 that Apple featured in the App Store, got it acquired, and won India's Bal Shakti Puraskar. Then she got an O-1 visa, moved to SF, and applied to YC with her co-founder. Their idea was to fix city transportation with better shuttle buses. While building the network, they discovered transportation payments were completely broken. COVID killed the bus idea a few months later, but the payments problem remained. So Harshita spent weeks visiting truck stops across California, talking to drivers, watching how they paid for fuel, and realizing that the entire payments infrastructure for trucking was stuck in the 1990s despite moving billions of dollars. She built AtoB to fix it. Modern fuel cards, instant payouts, and transparent pricing. Today AtoB is a Series C company serving 30,000+ fleets across the US, valued at $700M. Now she's backing the next generation of founders at YC. At 25. Most VCs spend a decade at banks and consulting firms collecting credentials. Harshita built a $700M company instead. At HackerRank we believe skills > pedigree. She's proof!