Inside HackerRank: Founder Vivek Ravisankar on shaping the way companies hire the top engineering talent

<p>The first time Vivek ever flew internationally, he asked the flight attendant before takeoff, &quot;This is going to San Francisco, right?&quot; He was on his way to a 10-minute Y Combinator interview with PG, Sam, Jessica, Paul Buchheit, and Harj. His co-founder Hari couldn&#39;t come because his visa was denied. They got into YC, and started HackerRank which later became the template of how to hire engineering talent efficiently.</p><p>Vivek started the company in 2010 as Interview Street, a mock interview service. The idea came from his time interviewing engineers at Amazon, where he saw that resumes didn&#39;t say much about skill. HackerRank went on to create the online assessment which every engineer has grown to know and well, hate. Now, in what Vivek calls a &quot;refounding moment,&quot; they&#39;re tearing it down and rebuilding it to match how the job of an engineer has changed in the era of AI.</p><p>Vivek walks through how tech interviews have always copied whoever the hottest company was. First it was Microsoft&#39;s &quot;how many golf balls fit in a 747.&quot; Then Google&#39;s data structures and algorithms. Then Stripe&#39;s API integration rounds, which Maya had to grind through as a new grad in 2022. Now the job is orchestrating agents, so how do you tell a vibe coder from a real production engineer?</p><p>Vivek&#39;s answer is Chakra, HackerRank&#39;s agentic interviewer. Candidates work on real-world problems with whatever frontier model and harness they want, and Chakra watches the process. Vivek&#39;s take is that anyone can produce an output with AI, so the signal is in how you got there.</p><p>Chakra is now live and you can try it free at <a href="http://hackerrank.com/chakra">hackerrank.com/chakra</a>.</p><p>This episode is brought to you by Kalshi. Sign up at <a href="http://kalshi.com/sign-up?referral=getthecheck">kalshi.com/sign-up?referral=getthecheck</a> and get $10 when you trade using our code GETTHECHECK.</p><p>Follow the pod on Instagram and X @getthecheckpod.</p><p><br></p><p>00:00 Meet Vivek, Founder of HackerRank</p><p>02:15 From counting Golf Balls in a 747 to LeetCode</p><p>05:55 Refounding HackerRank With Chakra</p><p>08:56 Process vs. Output and why partial credit matters</p><p>12:31 Who Adopted Online Assessments First</p><p>14:20 Why Hiring Is a Lagging Indicator</p><p>17:38 What Candidates Like About Chakra</p><p>18:20 How to Remove the Incentive to Cheat</p><p>22:44 The Three Ways People Cheat</p><p>26:59 W