Hey Folks👋, this blog is about my internship experience at HackerRank.

What is HackerRank 🤩?

HackerRank is a platform that helps companies attract programmers, identify the best talent, and make great hiring decisions in an efficient and cost-effecting way. They also have an active developer community where you can practice code, participate in contests and get hired.

Intro 👉🏻

I am Sougata Das, a full-stack developer and open-source contributor 💻️. I was interning at HackerRank for the last 9 months. I was working in the Labs team building Hackerresume and Application tracker.

How it all started 😀?

Back then I was in the third year of my college, contributing in open source, participating in a competitive contest and also applying to companies for internship opportunities, HackerRank was one of them. One day I got a call from HR she scheduled me interview round with their team, and there were total 3rounds.
I had a call also with their CTO, Harishankaran K. I was nervous before the call 🙂 but once I was in the meeting, I was shocked, at how chill he is, asking a couple of questions about my projects, and my experience and my contribution in past. After clearing all rounds, I was little nervous what would be the final verdict. But suddenly one day I received the mail of getting selected and yeah I can't express how happy I was seeing that 😄.

My Team 💚

I was assigned the labs team in HackerRank, but I had worked with a couple of different teams. I met some amazing folks who were at different levels in their domain. It was hard to stop not having imposter syndrome. I used to think senior developers might be some scary folks, who speak only in an alien language. But that thinking was crushed when I met those folks, helping me to onboard to projects to solve my silly doubts, really grateful to them 🫡.

My contribution ✅

I joined there as a full stack intern. So had a chance to work on both frontend and backend parts. Started by working on small bugs and feature to build a complete application which went live in production, those are some different experience. Working on brainstorming ideas, and fixing bugs in HackerResume to completely bootstrap (both frontend and backend) ApplicationTracker learned a lot. Grateful to them for giving me that opportunity.

First Offsite ❤️

My internship was remote based. So giving an intro, to discuss ideas everything was going on in the meet or in the huddle. After working there 4month I had a chance to be a part of labs offsite. I was going to meet my team for the first time, also it was in Bangalore which was far away from my hometown. When I met them in person, I discovered their 2nd personalities other than what I used to see and I really loved that. They didn't let me think that I am only an Intern. My first time visiting the office was an exciting experience which I will never forget. I was flexing the foods, games and the office vibe to my friends xD. I can't still figure out how that one week just passed by. It seems I only spent 1-2 days with them 😪.

The GoodBye 😢

The day finally came, when I had to say goodbye to my team as my internship period came to an end. By that time I failed, I learnt, and found my better self. Might be in future working with a different company, but won't forget what Hackerrank offered me. If you enjoyed this article, you can support me by buying me a coffee and following me on twitter.