Yesterday, a major company reached out to me on LinkedIn asking if I'd be interested in having a chat about a role they were hiring for. We had a 20 minute screening call which went well, but I was on the fence about it due to the tech stack and the requirement to always work from their office (train journey for me while I'm fully WFH in my current job).

At the end of the call, I was told to expect an email that would outline the next steps in the process. I opened the email and saw that I was required to complete two HackerRank assessments.

I immediately decided just to withdraw myself from consideration for the role. I spend my time building software, developing games and properly improving my abilities and experience as an engineer and as an architect of high-quality software. I don't have time to grind HackerRank challenges, and why should I? It's a terrible indicator of someone's ability as an engineer, and I've reached a point in the job hunt where I just can't bring myself to sit through these pointless algorithm challenges (that'll never be used in the role) anymore. I also consider it to be a bit of a red flag - if they're evaluating candidates through their ability to memorize algorithm challenges, I don't think that bodes well for the quality of their engineering teams.

I sent a message on LinkedIn saying:

Hi [Redacted],   I've decided to withdraw myself from consideration for the role. I feel that HackerRank assessments don't align with my approach to software engineering. As I build my career, I’m looking to join a team that evaluates talent through real-world tasks and the approach they take to solving problems.   Thank you for your time, I hope you're able to find the right candidate for the role.   Regards, [Redacted]

Has anyone else reached this point? Anyone else just outright refusing to participate in such a hiring process? I'm not sure how much this will limit my options, and I may well be forced to swallow the pill and revoke my stance, but I felt it was the right thing to do. I told a couple of colleagues about it and the consensus was "good for you", and that they wouldn't complete them either - but they're further along in their career (senior level), while I've been in the industry for 3 years full-time (and 2 years part-time while at university).

TLDR; Refusing to do HackerRank challenges during hiring process, can't bring myself to do them anymore. Is anyone else refusing this? What are your thoughts?

I dont know why but does anyone else have issues with hacker rank? I have been writing code since highschool and am comfortable in several languages but man for some reason hackrank just kills me in interviewing, I can never understand the questions or I flat out write garbage because I dont understand the questions. I constantly study but it just seems I cant get it down. Does anyone else have this issue and what are ways you fought this?

I'm aware that HackerRank is generally used by employers to see how skilled a potential employee is. For someone like me who's in high school and coding leisurely (and professionally in the near future), would HackerRank be a good way to learn? It seems like I'd be killing two birds with one stone: learning and strengthening my resume at the same time. What are your thoughts?

Note about where I am so far: Java is my strength but I am new to the more "advanced" areas like RegEx. I've never used any other language, although I have learned.

Is this just the end of my career?

I've been a software engineer for many years -- well over a decade. Lost my job, and am trying to prepare on HackerRank. Can't even do the "easy" preparation problems. Between having no idea how to deal with the hidden test cases (seriously, how am I supposed to debug a bug that I'm not allowed to look at?!?!) and a couple where I just have no idea, I'm just stumped.

And I'll have to do two of these in under an hour?!?! Am I really just this completely awful at the job I had for so long, in the field I'm stuck in?

Or should I devote my time to projects instead? I like the gameification of the site and have answered 30+ so far of the practice questions but really wondering if it is worth my time. Do employers look at your rank or is it just based off of the tournaments? Have any of you recieved offers from this site?

Recently graduated and I’m currently applying for software engineer roles. I’ve gotten to the first stage for multiple companies and they all send me a coding challenge to be completed on Hackerrank or Codility. Usually a 75 - 90 minute programming challenge. I’ve failed all of them except 2 so far. What’s really frustrating is that these problems look easy enough at first and if I didn’t have a short timer over my head I’d have no problem writing an optimal solution. It seems as if someone might struggle if a solution doesn’t immediately come to mind. For the two I passed, I knew off the top of my head what algorithms I could apply because of the input form and type of problem. But for the rest, if I haven’t seen a similar problem, I’ll end up wasting a lot of time trying to think of an optimal solution. Unfortunately though, after so much time passes I just try to write an ugly brute force method that’ll pass less than half of the test cases. It’s incredibly frustrating because I know myself that if I could do it in my own time without a short timer I could get the solution. I have no issue building complex software. I code for fun and have built some cool things, like poker bots, trading bots, even a mini compiler. Yet I just can’t seem to score high enough with these timed arbitrary problems.

How can I get better at these tests?

What topics should I focus on so that a solution can quickly come to mind?

Does anybody have a real life algorithm for solving most of these problems :P By real life algorithm I mean some kind of structured learning plan.

Thanks in advance for any help!

tl;dr - Sorry, this turned into a rant but I am really disappointed with the lack of technical UI functionality of HackerRank coding questions and I'm wondering if it's me or them?

Recently I applied and got through the first interview for an awesome front end job, yay! Next step would be an online technical test with HackerRank. Well, "okay" I say and since I've never used that platform but have a lot of experience with CodeWars so... I head on over to check it out, do some practice, and try to work out any technical bugs (like uBlock needs to be off!). Alrighty, let's get a beverage, steel our nerves, and take the test!

Holy crap what a pain.

There were a few multiple choices which were fine and some code tests, cool. When it came to one particular coding test I found the error handling nonexistent, the instructions obtuse, and for the life of me I could not work out how to find the errant inputs in the "hidden case" errors. It felt like throwing spaghetti at a wall and praying that it somehow works for the test criteria, of which I know nothing. So here I am, hoping to impress and land this dream job, stuck on one bit of code that won't even tell me what's wrong or what the inputs are on one particular question. Passed 8 of the 13 test cases and ran out of time with absolutely no indication of which "hidden cases" failed or why.

Disappointed and fuming I took a walk, came back, and built the function again in my normal environment and it works as intended. I still have no idea why the hidden edge cases were borked and I'm pretty sure this will take me out of the running for the job even if I nailed every other part of the test.

Sorry for the rant. I guess I just wanted to express my frustration as I'm pretty sure I'll get an email in the morning and it's probably going to be a "maybe next time" because of an interface issue.

Question: Has anyone else had experience with HackerRank and was it positive or not? Am I the idiot because there's an easy way to track errors within their testing environment?

Thank you for your kind attention and I believe this post is inline with the sub rules but let me know if not.