Updated in 2023
Hi, I’m Brian, a former senior software engineer and now software engineering mentor at Pathrise. I have worked with hundreds of software engineers to help them land their dream job. Check out my review of HackerEarth.
- What does HackerEarth do?
- Who is HackerEarth for?
- What does HackerEarth cost?
- Ratings and reviews of HackerEarth
- Alternatives to HackerEarth
- How does HackerEarth compare to Pathrise?
What does HackerEarth do?
The HackerEarth platform has 2 main goals: assessment and community. On the recruitment side, they provide an assessment tool to companies that are hiring software engineering roles. In this way, it is similar to HackerRank. They have thousands of questions in a variety of languages that recruiters can use for these challenges.
They are also known for hosting hackathons. Internally, companies work with HackerEarth to create hackathons for their teams to collaborate, challenge each other, and think outside the box. Externally, companies can create hackathons to find candidates for their pipeline. They also use them to find strong software engineers to contribute to their technologies. In fact, Amazon did this when they ran an Alexa-software hackathon through HackerEarth. Most of these company-sponsored challenges have prizes for the winners.
There are 3.5 million developers worldwide in their community, who can connect through HackerEarth or company-created hackathons.
Who is HackerEarth for?
HackerEarth has two main audiences. The first is companies who are looking to hire developers. They use the platform to test their candidates on technical questions. The second is software engineers who are looking to advance their skills by participating in technical challenges. There are a lot of options for hackathons depending on their goals.
What does HackerEarth cost? How much work is involved?
For users, HackerEarth is free. They make their money from the companies that use their platform to assess candidates. Users do need to sign up for a profile in order to access the questions. But, there is no application process.
Ratings and reviews
HackerEarth is based in India, with offices in the US. But, a lot of the reviews talk about company-sponsored hiring hackathons by Indian-based branches or Indian companies, though they are offered around the world. Some people have successfully moved forward from the short list to an interview and even an offer. But, others never heard back from the company, despite being short-listed.
A reviewer who is not from India mentioned that she felt the questions were difficult to understand because they were written by a non-native English speaker. In addition, some of the questions have time limits. This frustrated users who feel like they would be able to solve it without the time constraints. But, when compared on question content with HackerRank, users feel HackerEarth has more advanced questions. Therefore, they say it would be better for someone who wants to practice these tougher challenges.
Alternatives to HackerEarth
- HackerRank is probably the most well known alternative to HackerEarth. Similarly, it also compiles many software engineering questions and acts as a technical assessment platform for recruiters. The main difference is that HackerEarth does coding challenges and hackathons, while HackerRank is mainly just practice questions.
- A good option is AlgoExpert. This is a platform where software engineers can practice questions that cover a variety of interview topics.
- Coderbyte offer a mix of free and paid resources and challenges for software engineers looking to practice their skills. Read more about Coderbyte in our review.
- Leetcode has many software engineering questions that are more geared towards real work and are often better practice for technical interviews.
- Created by a former Google software engineer, Interview Cake is a study tool that teaches people the right way to think about technical questions so they do well in interviews. Read more about Interview Cake in our review.
- Similarly, Codebasil features questions written by software engineers at top tech companies like Facebook, Apple, and Amazon.
More alternatives
- Software engineers can use the tracks offered by Educative to brush up on skills or practice for specific-language interviews.
- For people looking to prep with real world problems, CodeKata provides challenges that mimic requests from real tech companies.
- For software engineers interested in coding challenges that lead into interviews, Codesignal has challenges online for users to participate in and for companies to use for recruiting.
- There is also CodinGame, a free gamified platform that software engineers can use to keep their skills sharp while having fun, which is similar to Codewars, a community-built gamified platform.
- With exercises in Python and JavaScript for beginners and advanced engineers, CheckiO is a good free resource to check out.
- Similarly, Quastor sends out a daily newsletter with software engineering interview questions. They also have a free online course.
We compiled a list of resources to practice software engineer interview questions that you can use to decide the best one for you.
How does HackerEarth compare to Pathrise?
HackerEarth is a good tool for experienced software engineers to practice coding in a competitive environment and potentially join hiring pipelines. They can also make money if they win the company-sponsored hackathons.
At Pathrise, we are focused on helping our fellows with the entire job search. Part of that is mastering the technical interview and so we recommend that software engineers in the program practice all types of questions that they might see in interviews as much as possible so they can feel comfortable and confident. Job-seekers can benefit from participating in HackerEarth challenges alongside working with Pathrise. You can also check out our list of 93 software engineering interview questions from top tech companies to practice.
Pathrise is a career accelerator that works with students and professionals 1-on-1 so they can land their dream job in tech. With our tips and guidance, job-seekers in our program have seen their interview scores double.
If you want to work with any of our industry mentors 1-on-1 to get help with your software engineer interviews or with any other aspect of the job search, join Pathrise.
Apply today.
