My Hackerrank Internship Experience

This article is about my internship at Hackerrank.

HackerRank is a technology hiring platform that helps over 1,000 companies hire skilled developers and innovate faster. Their mission is to match every developer to the right job. They also have an active developer community (5 million and counting) where folks around the world can practice coding, prepare for interviews, and get hired.

Intro

I am Pratik Singh, a final-year engineering student from Bangalore.
In this blog post, I will describe the application process, the interview process, and my experience working at this company.

My Story

In this section, I will discuss my story with Hackerrank. I started with Hackerrank back in 2019. I was a first-year student who got stuck (still stuck😒 ) with a college I did not want. I started my coding Journey and my Best Friend & Mentor Vivek told me this:

“You will regret each day, that you don't start HackerRank.”

I did invest a lot of time in Hackerrank during the pandemic. My ID: Here.
Wrote an article on Hackerrank back in 2020: Here

So, when I got to know Hackerrank is looking for interns I HAD to apply!
I have been trying to get hired into Hackerrank, since 2021. I was rejected both times in 2021 😢. Well, in 2022 God had planned something else.

Selection Process

• The e-mail ✉️ :

Hackerrank contacted me based on my Open Source profile ✨
YES! it was very surprising to me as well.

• Coding Test 💻 :

The journey of an email followed with a test link of, well... Hackerrank 😂 . There were two questions as far as I remember. The time provided was reasonable and the questions were of an appropriate level. Since I was hired for the Software Developer Role, my test was a bit different from the other openings. There are openings for SDET and TCE interns as well in Hackerrank.

• Technical Interview ⚔️ :

This was the round I was prepared for! It was more around my past internship experiences. We discussed Kubernetes and my proficiency in Go. we also discussed the different aspects of DevOps. The interviewer also asked me about my projects.

You will have a positive experience if you are confident in the skills you've listed on your resume. Be thorough with your Projects. The company does not expect you to have a deep understanding of each topic.

• Interview with the Co-Founder 😱:

This was very terrifying for me! I never expected that the Co-Founder of Hackerrank will take my Interview one day. I was very scared, to be honest.

But Hari is the sweetest interviewer ever! He made the process super calm and comfortable. Other than my past experience, we discussed the work they do at Hackerrank. He did ask me a question I am still pondering about. He asked me: "What do you want to do in Life other than coding?"
I hope to have the answer sometime and revert to Hari on that!

• SELECTED! 🎉

My Experience

For the six months of my Internship, I was involved with the Platform Engineering Team. In particular, I was working on a Golang-based Project. My responsibilities included upgrading runtimes, enabling languages, and more upgradation features.
Worked thoroughly with all the SQL Databases: MySQL, PostgreSQL, tsql, and Oracle. We had code repositories and proper CI/CD pipelines for the tasks provided. hated the Travis Builds, but seniors definitely made it easier! I loved the aspect of my work that I got to learn the project's working and architecture. I had to test the features on Staging and Production. We managed the Kubernetes Cluster. Got a better understanding of Docker and its underlying stuff. Learned about runc and different aspects of a container. I am proud that some of the changes I did are running on the Production of Hackerrank.

Hackerrank being a Remote-first Company was a blessing for me to strike a work-life balance. When my family needed me, I was able to work in a small village in Bihar. My team and manager were very supportive of me.
I would like to thank my seniors and manager for bearing with me and all of my stupid questions. Not only good coding practices, I learned to respect and follow the calendar. Working with a remote team and helping each other out.

The Intern Program

I have been an intern before Hackerrank. There are several companies that have an intern program. But Hackerrank wins as far as I have heard from my peers. Even when I had offers from other companies before joining Hackerrank, still i choose it because of the program. I had a couple of Friends working in Hackerrank before I joined Adyasha, Ishan, Harsh, Ameer, Apoorv, and more!
Some Major Perks:

• Each Intern has a say in which tech/team they want to work with.
• The weekly updates are taken by Hari himself!
• Hari is very open and easy to talk to (I troubled him many times 😅 )
• We have a bet with Hari to build an Intern website in a given time.
• Even the onboarding teaches you a lot!

The FUN!!

I am not even sure where to start on this! I can assure you will have a load of fun from Day 0 at Hackerrank. Hari and our Super Boss Vaasavi ensure that each intern is comfortable and open with the team. We had placed the bet for this Website : Summer Interns 2022.
We lost the bet and had to face its consequences during our offsite.

During our Offsite in Bangalore, we did all kinds of amazing stuff! We partied, played poker till dawn, had adventure sports, and much more stuff. Hari, Vaasavi, and Karthik were always there with us. They ensured to cover all our expenses during the offsite. The company ensured a great experience.
Honestly, it was the most amazing 1 week of my college life so far. I made friends for life 🥰.

We might have a separated journey now. But this was a group of the most talented developers in my age group that I met. Each of them is a Hustler and taught me a lot!

Conclusion

Hackerrank is an amazing place to be as a Developer. One gets a perfect work-life balance because of the remote-first culture. You will learn and grow as the team is open to trying new technologies. They keep on adopting new tools and technologies thus there is always something to learn! The office itself is very fun. I used to think the office was only meant to be a place to work, but Hackerrank taught me it can be so much more than that. I will finish my article with this statement:

“You will miss each day, that you worked at HackerRank.”

Thanks for reading my article :)