Raghu Mohan

If you were to take a list of the top 20–30 programmers in the world , you will quickly find that between them, they’ve been attributed to almost everything significant about computer science today.

This brings up the point that most of the world’s advancements are driven by a very small group of people. The world's biggest businesses, like the ones Gates and Zuckerberg built, were built on great programming ability, which at the time, could have only been done by them. These people are outliers.

It is also interesting to see the countries that they come from. You will invariably find that these countries have an education system that is friendly to outliers. As oxymoronic as this sounds, there is no shortage of outliers in the world, but systems around them often fail them, and they never realise their full potential.

Joydeep Sen Sarma, the founder of Big Data company Qubole (also one of the inventors of Apache Hive at Facebook), cited this as one of the reasons why the Indian startup ecosystem doesn’t have a company like Google or Facebook emerge, despite the availability of talent.

In an answer on Quora, he says —

Indian education system is hostile to outliers. As an example – a teen who just loves to spend all his time programming (and can't stand anything else like social sciences/arts/literature) can have a very bright future (assuming he has talent) in the US – and has none in India. The system in India will give him/her poor grades, teachers/parents/friends would destroy him emotionally. Forget about doing well – such a person would do very badly in India – and I wouldn't be surprised if they end up as a wreck.

Just to back this up – in all my years of interacting with multiple adjacent batches of IITians (and alumni of other Indian schools) – there is but one true outlier that I have seen who ever made it through the system.

To state the point a different way – what we consider top Indian talent (grads from IITs etc. – going to top schools or employers in US) – is almost systematically biased (because of how they were chosen) to not be tech geniuses of the types that start large iconic tech companies.

To exemplify this point, I will point out two references:

• David Karp Quit School to Get Serious About Tumblr
• The two paths to success (Paul Buchheit's story)

These stories are improbable, if not impossible today in an equivalent Indian context. Suffice to say – none of us has ever heard a story like this about Indian programmers or engineers.

As a part of my old job, I had a chance to speak with Joydeep personally , and he said, “You so often hear about 14-year-olds graduating from college. You hardly hear about these sorts of things in India. How will these people ever realise their potential if you put them through the same education as everyone else? How will they shine if you judge them on things that don’t interest them?”

It’s a vicious cycle; as an outlier, your skill sets are skewed to one thing, and one thing only. You’re probably miserable at everything else at school, but unfortunately, those things matter. Soon, you’ll end up with a bad grade at school, not make it to the college and course that you deserve, and never find the job that so badly needs you. Loss everywhere.

We at HackerEarth want to change this. And we think we’ve made some headway.

When it comes to finding a job, it was not long ago that your identity would be restricted to a resume, sitting alongside millions of others on some job posting site — and you would be judged on a whole host of things that you probably weren’t good at.

On every hiring challenge that we’ve done so far, the unprecedented has happened: candidates are shortlisted based only on their ability to code, and nothing else.

The recently launched developer profile was another manifestation of this intent. So what if your CGPA wasn’t up there with the rest to land you a job at Google or Facebook? The profile shows exactly what you’re good at — your languages, your skills.

Of course, this is just a tiny dent in the massive problem that countries like India face today. But it’s only one half of the problem.

The other half is you. If you are a programmer, you need to change. Do enough relevant, verifiable work. Have a GitHub profile, solve problems on competitive coding platforms, and prove what you do.

And then, recruiters will change. Make verifiable work a necessity. And because the industry changes, education will also change. The focus will be on relevant learning.

And then, maybe — just maybe — we might see the next Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates come from India?

Have you ever seen a school of fish? In the ocean, a large group of fish moves together as if they were one entity—and they move fast. When a new fish joins, it doesn't think about moving fast; the school just takes it along, and the new fish moves just as quickly.

This is exactly what comes to mind when I think of Housing.com. The founders had just graduated from college a year earlier, and instead of taking the lucrative offers they had, they chose the tough road of starting up. It’s never easy, even for the experienced. But what they did next will go down in Indian startup folklore—three quick rounds of funding, a 750+ member team across India, and an eye on the international market, all in about a year. If you're a fish in the Housing.com school, you're swimming—really, really fast.

Much of Housing.com’s growth is credited to the product itself. Their revolutionary map-based real estate search earned rave reviews for disrupting a stable market. This product was built and enhanced by their 75-member engineering team, and they’re now looking to expand their mobile wing. As a participating company in the Android Hiring Challenge, they’re hiring top-performing Android developers from the event.

But before you opt to join this fast-paced journey, read our chat with co-founder Advitiya Sharma to understand what it’s like to work at Housing.com:

How did Housing.com come to be?

Housing was founded by a group of IIT Bombay graduates, many from small towns. Personally, I’m from Jammu and had never searched for a place to live until my final semester at IIT. When the time came, it turned out to be a nightmare. After a month of searching, we finally found something, but we kept thinking, "This problem has existed for years. Why hasn’t it been solved yet?"

That realization sparked the idea of creating a solution. It’s a problem that:

• Affects a large number of people
• Has existed for a long time, and people want a solution

That idea eventually blossomed into Housing.com :)

Why is Housing.com the coolest place for engineers?

We care deeply about changing the industry trajectory. We’re building great products and platforms, which means constantly pushing the boundaries of technology while keeping things intuitive and user-friendly. The thrill lies in creating meaningful, innovative work.

What kind of engineers impress you, and how do you keep them?

We admire engineers who are not only skilled but also passionate about their craft. We don’t enforce strict working hours—people take responsibility for their projects and work flexibly, even from home. Our HQ offers great perks: free lunch, pizza parties, movie nights. We’ve got it all :)

What’s the most challenging part of working at Housing.com?

People don’t come here to be spectators. They come to create impact and work with the best. That means constantly leveling up and growing fast. Scaling up and taking on big responsibilities is the toughest yet most rewarding part of being here.

Is it easy for new hires to settle in?

Absolutely. Our tech team has 75+ people out of a 750-strong company. A great idea is valued over hierarchy. If you share ideas and have the desire to learn, you’ll fit right in. We’ve got A+ folks in every department doing revolutionary work together.

What’s your vision for the company culture?

Housing is all about great people and their ideas. Everyone is focused on doing exceptional work—and having fun while doing it. We even emphasize the design of our office spaces. People come to work not because they have to, but because they want to.

Why should a developer join Housing.com?

There’s work, and then there’s work that makes you feel proud—where your fingerprints are all over it. If you want to do work that truly brings change, you can do that at Housing every single day.

You heard it from the source. If you're an Android developer and want to work at this fast-growing company, sign up for the Android Hiring Challenge today!

That’s obvious right? I mean, who wouldn’t want an iPad. But the point I’m trying to make here is bigger. As a HR professional, how often have you been faced with a situation where you’ve had to reward a resource for their outstanding work, outside of appraisals. If your company has been doing well for itself, you’ve faced this quite a few times.

So what do you do? Who can possibly know what every employee likes? Might as well give them an attractive cash prize and be done with it, right? Wrong.

You want to give your star performer a good gift. A souvenir that will remind them of their achievement. And not some memento that they can keep on their dusty display shelves. And definitely not a cash prize that they’ll spend over a weekend or so. You want to be able to give them a great gift.

So what is a good gift?

Dan Ariely, the author of the international bestseller, predictably irrational, shared that a good gift is something that circumvents guilt. On his blog he says-

“A good gift is something that someone really wants, but feels guilty buying it for themselves.”

“I think that the best gifts circumvent guilt in two key ways: by eliminating the guilt that accompanies extravagant purchases, and by reducing the guilt that comes from coupling payment with consumption.”

The first point is fairly straightforward - buy them a gift they would be guilty of buying themselves. An expensive pair of shoes, a premium end electronic gadget or a great coat that is outside a justifiable price range. These are far better than cash prizes, as they probably wouldn’t have been spent on these things because of the guilt associated with it. And it is guaranteed, that they will not only enjoy using it, but will also be a souvenir of their achievement.

Imagine that you have just finished a fantastic meal and have the option to pay with cash or with a credit card. Which one will “hurt” a bit more? You probably think that paying with cash will be a more miserable way of spending your money – but why? Because, as Drazen Prelec and George Loewenstein show, when we couple payment with consumption, the result is a reduction in happiness. When we pay with a credit card the timing of the consumption of the food and the agony of the payment occur at different points in time, and this separation allows us to experience a higher level of enjoyment (at least until we get the bill).

Many companies offer joining bonuses to an employee. But there are some which attract candidates using gifts like. For example, Hike, a company taking part in our Android Hiring Challenge, offers all of it’s new recruits the computer and phone of their choice. The cost of this could be equivalent to the exorbitant joining bonuses that some companies offer, but the prospect of having an iPhone 5s and a Macbook on joining a company seems more attractive to me at least.

So the next time you’re handing out that cash prize for being an exceptional perform, you might actually not be making a person as happy as he/she can be. Give them a gift that matches the same cost, and you might just have a happier employee.

The last twenty years or so have shown how individuals or small teams can challenge the status quo by saying, “I can’t believe we still do it this way. We’ve got to change that!”

Take ex-investment banker Bobby Youakim. He found the process of inserting coins into parking meters outdated. Why couldn’t people pay for parking using their mobile phones? Bobby teamed up with his cousin Charlie Youakim and developed a mobile app, Passport Parking, that allows commuters to pay for their parking slots via a mobile app.

The app is gaining traction in the US and recently raised $6 million in funding for scaling. Passport Parking also has a development office in India, which is hiring Android developers through the HackerEarth Android Hiring Challenge.

We spoke to Charlie Youakim about what it's like to work as a mobile developer at Passport Parking. If you’re overwhelmed by the number of great companies in the Android Hiring Challenge, here’s why you should consider Passport Parking.

Q1) Tell us about your company. What problem are you solving?

Passport Parking is the leading provider of integrated cloud-based parking solutions. We offer an enterprise suite of advanced technology and equipment that enables parking providers to manage their operations more effectively and efficiently. Our solutions are deployable on both gated and ungated properties through our Parking as a Service (PaaS) model.

Q2) From a technology standpoint, what’s most exciting about working at Passport?

Developers at Passport have the flexibility to explore and implement new technologies. Every team member contributes meaningfully and learns continuously as we improve and expand our parking solutions.

Q3) Describe your engineering culture. What excites you about candidates?

We believe people work hard when they believe in what they’re building. Our office is vibrant—our dev team even programmed a keg that works with our app! We seek passionate technologists who love to build and innovate. If you enjoy exploring new tech and bringing your ideas to life, you’ll thrive here.

Q4) What is the most challenging part of working at Passport?

The challenge lies in constant learning and adapting. Our clients have diverse requirements, which means developers must continuously research and implement new technologies. We also pride ourselves on product support—bugs are addressed quickly, and we maintain excellent communication with users.

Q5) What does a typical day look like for an engineer?

There’s no “average” day at Passport. Every day brings new challenges. Engineers collaborate closely to deliver user-friendly solutions. Our India team works closely with the US team, providing great opportunities for knowledge sharing and exposure to cutting-edge tech.

Q6) Is it all work and no play?

Definitely not! We prioritize team bonding—exploring Bangalore’s eateries, vintage bike rides, cook-offs, gaming contests—you name it. Our developers enjoy challenges so much, they often consider it a favorite pastime.

Q7) How quickly do new recruits adapt? How big is the team in India?

We prioritize team cohesion and ensure new members feel welcome. Currently, our Indian team has 6 members, and we aim to grow to 15 by June 2014. The US team also has about 15 members.

Q8) What’s your cultural vision for Passport?

We want people who love what they do. Self-motivation, strong opinions, adaptability, trustworthiness, and communication are key traits. Our culture is collaborative and supportive—everyone helps one another achieve shared goals.

Q9) In one sentence, why is working at Passport amazing for Android devs?

Passport gives Android developers hands-on experience with the full Android stack, including hardware integrations like Bluetooth printers, card readers, and custom cameras—plus recognition, growth, and unmatched learning opportunities.

Q10) Any final thoughts?

This challenge gives you a glimpse of the kind of impactful work you’ll do at Passport—building real-world solutions that simplify parking for thousands of users every day.

Want to work at Passport Parking? Just ace this challenge.

Without being a sexist, if I were to ask you the number of intelligent women programmers that you know of, how many do you think that would be. Of course you can argue that more men work at IT companies, so the number will be obviously low. You can also argue that more man get educated than women, so more men make it to IT jobs.

No matter what your argument is, the data on this issue says another story. A story, which is a real concern

• In the U.S. in 2009, women earned 57% of all undergraduate degrees, 52% of all math and science degrees, 59% of the undergraduate degrees in biology and 42% of mathematics degrees, but only 18% of all computer and information sciences undergraduate degrees.

• Women’s quit rate in technology exceeds that in other science and engineering fields; 56% of women in technology companies leave their organizations at the mid-level point (10-20 years) in their careers.

• 57% of the professional occupations were held by women in the workforce, but 25% of the computing workforce were women in 2011

• In Stanford, in 2011, 56% of test-takers were female, 46% of Calculus test-takers were female, and only 19% of Computer Science test-takers were female.

The last point is particularly worrying, because there is a direct correlation between mathematical ability and proficiency in computer science. Why are there so few women in technology?

Surveys by various agencies brought the following points to light

• 74% of girls were interested in STEM fields and subjects.

• About half of all girls feel that STEM isn’t a typical career path for girls. 57% of girls say that if they went into a STEM career, they’d have to work harder than a man just to be taken seriously.

• 81% of STEM girls are interested in pursuing STEM career, but only 13% say it is their first choice.

So there are few inferences from the above data

• Women can do everything that it takes to be awesome at coding.

• Even if they do become awesome at it, most of them quit half way.

• Over time, careers in computer sciences have become less interesting to women.

• However, STEM is still interesting to women; they only don’t want to work on it.

• Male dominated workplaces seem to be a contributing factor to this.

So what do the women who have made it big in technology have to say about this? I interviewed Lynn Langit, who’s one of the first Google Cloud engineers, and had been an exec at Microsoft as well, and she said something shocking -

“My parents were farmers and they discouraged me from further pursuing it. They’d say ‘honey girls don’t do maths’. This has changed drastically over the years and I am quite old, but I believe that to a large extent the belief still exists.”

One of Sheryl Sandberg’s greatest lines on the issue was - “We don’t raise our daughters to be as ambitious as our sons. Last month, there were t-shirts sold [at Gymboree] that said 'Smart like Daddy' for the boys and 'Pretty like Mommy.' Not in 1951. Last month.”

So, it’s cultural.

It has been carried forward, generation after generation, and I think we can arrive at a consensus that women in general have not been encouraged to take their careers seriously. They were expected to lead on the family front, where they would build homes, as the patriarch would be the breadwinner, hence taking their profession more seriously.

Newsflash - this has changed!

Men and women are equally independent and the society presents both genders with the same opportunities when it comes to building a career. But the systems that run the society haven't changed.

I think it's coded into a woman's DNA to not take their careers as seriously as a man and the change of that mindset starts at home. Treating children of both genders in the same way with respect to academics and career can change that. Make the girl child feel that they must earn a living for themselves by doing something that they love to do. And IT being the lucrative industry that it is, will automatically attract woman talent.

Also talent is created at school. Schools must teach children the art of picking up subjects on their own. Education must lay emphasis on creativity and innovation, and not so much on grades. Getting good grades and learning a subject well is slowly losing correlation, as it is easy to mug up answers to a theoretical question. We must teach our children to apply what they've learnt and children will innovate; male and female alike.

Of course, the points that people like Lynn and Sheryl raise are true for people who are already a product of this system. But it is difficult to change. If there is any hope for an equal representation of genders in IT, it has got to change from the grass roots level.

If you've reached this point, some of you are probably thinking, what difference will women bring to technology. Well, I don't know about difference, but there will be more developers, which is always a good thing. But on a larger level, equal representation of genders is a sign of how evolved a society is. An evolved society empowers everyone with the choice to do whatever they want to. And if 81% of women in education are interested in pursuing a career in STEM, then they should be empowered with the right conditions to do exactly that.

Until we can do that, we will never evolve as a society.

Data source - http://sheplusplus.stanford.edu/sheStatistics.pdf

When services like Codeacademy launched, its implications to the world of computer education was quite immense. There was now, a code editor on the Internet, which allowed you to learn and practice programming, without having to worry about cumbersome installations and system compatibilities.

The schools particularly loved it. Installing software on all machines wasn't something that pleased the IT admins, but a website solved many of the problems that permissions posed. In fact, the concept of coding on a browser was so popular, that people and companies started launching full fledged IDEs on browsers; some of them clock many hours of usage.

Soon, products like our own, at HackerEarth, and others like Codechef and HackerRank took this concept a step forward, by building a competitive platform, where the best programmers in the world get together to keep their skills sharp.

However, we're seeing another revolution in the realm of personal computing and how the world interacts with the internet on the whole. Devices are becoming smaller and tablet and mobile devices are becoming more powerful. At the same time, the world is interacting with the web through applications as well, and the trend is growing quite rapidly across various ecosystems.

At this juncture, we at HackerEarth have chosen to enable this ecosystem with some of our technology that we have spent a good few years building. We have made our code checking engine available to use as an API to a small group of beta champions, who have gone on to build apps on which you can compile code on the go.

We've got 3 apps, 2 for Android and one for (surprise surprise!) for Mozilla's Gecko platform, which allows you to code on your mobile devices on the go. Some of our awesome beta users have even gone on to build a VIM plugin using our API. Check them out -

1. Online compiler (Android)

2. Codeaway (Android)

3. CodeIt (Mozilla)

4. VIM plugin (GitHub)

Quite a few in the community said that exposing such an API wouldn't see much traction, as it was ambitious to think that people would code on their mobile phones. While they weren't completely wrong, we saw cumilatively, close to 50000 downloads and over 100000 compilations using these apps. We think that it's a start ;)

We urge more people to make use of this API and help in building a future, where personal devices like mobile phones and tablets can also be used to build software. It isn't there yet, but it will get there eventually. How fast it gets there, is completely up to you; the developer community.

If you wish to make apps using our awesome API, checkout our developer page or give vivek@hackerearth.com a shout, and he will help you out.