HackerEarth

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Insights & Stories by Vishal Pathik Gupta

From hiring pipelines to collaboration rituals, Vishal Pathik Gupta maps out ways to design intentional, high-performing organizations—one post at a time.

Tech Assessment

Let’s create a better future

Say, you have a leadership role in a company, and it is up to you to take it to greater heights in terms of profitability and culture. That’s great.

But, what about your responsibility as a citizen of this planet to society? Do you strive as hard to make a difference? How committed are you to bettering lives with your know-how and resources? Most people would have heard the saying “with great power comes great responsibility,” but we have mostly perceived it in superheroes context. You are the hero in your story and your company and its function is your superpower.

How do we contribute to making a better world?

As a company that strongly believes in crowdsourcing for innovation, we started with the trend of hackathons for social good. Hackathons with the intent to solve real-world crises like “child abuse prevention,”Rural Development,” “Transparency, Governance, and Freedom of Press,” etc. We try by partnering with nonprofits and non-governmental organizations who have been constantly trying to push through the obstacles to bring a difference to people’s lives.

We realized these organizations have the potential to implement changes but are finding it hard in terms of manpower and resources. Meanwhile, there are developers who are capable of building solutions but have no means to implement them. When both these parties are brought together, that is where the magic happens. Passionate developers come up with creative solutions to tackle the problems and the non-profits go on and implement these solutions.

Sure, we understand we cannot solve all the bigger problems in the world but we can try not to ignore the ones we are able to address. You can make a difference not only by addressing the larger issues but also by not ignoring the smaller ones or the ones we are able to address.

How can you host a hackathon for social good?

Identify a problem you and your company can address: Identifying the problem is perhaps the most important part of the whole process. After you have identified the problem, you can decide how your organization and the product and services it offers fit into addressing the problems.
Identify non-profits and organizations which are working in that domain: These are organizations that lack the resources and need our help to fight these problems but they have the capability and need to implement the solutions that can help solve the problems better.
Assemble a team who can constantly work with the developers and non-profits: This team should be able to act as a bridge between the developers and the non-profits. The non-profits are short on resources and manpower and hence would require assistance in the adoption of the solution built by the developers.
Market the hackathon: It’s necessary to reach a large number of developers to get a good number of developers who are capable of building tangible solutions to address the given problem.
Judges and Prizes: Define clear judging criteria and identify the judges for the hackathon. The prizes are not a huge factor but they certainly motivate the participants to give their best.

How does hosting a social hackathon benefit your organization?

It sends a message to the world and community that you care. You care about the smiles of the people who can’t have them, you care about helping thousands of people you have never met, and you care about making the world a better place.

It brings your brand closer to people and improves the brand image as a company that cares about the society and the world.

You can always join us and be a part of our social hackathons. Reach out to us at community@hackerearth.com to setup a call.

Tech Assessment

How are communities fuelling growth in businesses?⁠⁠⁠⁠

If you think about it, your business is actually a community of sorts. And, if you do it right, your brand can create a community of ardent followers. If it thrives, you can expect tremendous business growth.

Creating a viral, self-sustaining strategy

Companies like Google and Facebook are open sourcing their core platform libraries for people on GitHub. Not only does GitHub, the largest open source community in the world, allow these companies to boost their tech credibility but it also fosters innovation by getting the best programmers to drive innovation.

Although open source may not be a business model on its own, it is great for improving user adoption and market value. Laurie Wurster, research director at Gartner, said, “Gaining a competitive advantage has emerged as a significant reason for adopting an OSS (open source software) solution, suggesting that users are beginning to look at OSS differently–if they can customize the code to make it unique to their company, they have created a competitive advantage.”

Let’s look at a few examples of how Google communities are changing the world while moving its business ahead. Google Product forums connect their product teams with actual users. The community conversations spawn new product features; they are also helping forums where participants ask questions and exchange advice. Google Translate Community invites polyglots to translate or validate existing translations; the company’s paid-version API is available to companies who require multi-lingual support. Contributors to Google Local Guides, a community-driven program, help others (and Google) by reviewing places they have been to. These guides impact navigation with the information and photos they share.

When it comes to new technologies, developer communities hold the key to enabling businesses. Google engages with the developer community via its developer programs—Google Developer Groups (to engage with a wide range of developers for new platform adoption and demand generation), Google Developers Experts (to identify people who are strong in a few technologies and make them engage with local communities rather than them putting Googlers all across the map), and Google Business Groups (to help SMEs).

Companies such as HackerEarth and HackerRank also nurture developer communities. They connect skilled programmers and tech companies looking to source top talent to drive product innovation. This translates into appreciable savings in terms of hiring efforts, time, and money, that is, better returns in the future for companies who sign up for their offerings. For example, HackerEarth has a community of over a million programmers. Their participation helps companies drive innovation and talent management on the platform.

Building a positive feedback loop

There is no better way to drive your business forward than happy customers who become advocates, helping you get more potential promoters. For example, studies show that glowing customer recommendations on Twitter can increase business for that brand by about 50%.

How do companies attract and retain customer loyalty, differentiate in a highly competitive market, and get customers to be brand advocates? Community! Their community teams focus on the customer. They listen to the customer. They create amazing social experiences that encourage customer interactions. And they know that quality, authenticity, and respect are the cornerstones of any successful community strategy.

You have mobile phone companies such as OnePlus and Xiaomi. They, leverage their community forums and social media to create a huge buzz during product launches, consequently investing much lesser, and sometimes even zero dollars, on advertising. These communities offer loads of product feedback as well. Their user communities do it all in exchange for product invites, merchandise, and invites to exclusive events. Building close-knit communities or tech evangelists have clearly propelled business for these Chinese companies.

Putting together a branded online community

A branded community is an example of co-creation where the company and the consumers create and find value. “A brand community is a community with a specific business objective lead by an executive sponsor, where a company creates a space for people with a common sense of identity to participate in ongoing, shared experiences.”

Why do companies need a branded online community?

Retention and customer satisfaction
Product feedback/ideation for the future/review beta products
Enhance brand awareness, credibility, and exposure
Generate revenue
Create a cost-effective, simple marketing channel
Support brand advocates
Less investment in support staff and call centers
Cross-promotion

An oft-quoted example of a branded community propelling business is Austria-based Red Bull through relevant social and digital campaigns. Synonymous with adventure, the energy drink company “got its wings” through strategic sponsorships (motor, alpine, and extreme sports) and celebrity endorsements, pull marketing strategies through interesting, emotional and authentic content, and attracting customers through quality merchandise. By glorifying everything that’s visible and not mainstream, Red Bull’s community of student entrepreneurs has fortified the brand’s perception by millennials through creative and daring initiatives across campuses. (Read how top community managers ensure that they have a thoroughly engaged audience via social platforms.)

Thriving on user-generated content

At times, a community of people creates the value while the business creates a platform. For example, Airbnb, Feastly, Lyft, and Duolingo, which have user-generated community strategies, are scaling rapidly. For instance, using amazing storytelling to “sell an experience” and great social campaigns driving fan engagement, Airbnb, an online marketplace, and hospitality service, set the sharing economy’s P2P marketplace model rolling. With more than 800,000 listings in about 200 countries, disruptive Airbnb could well ensure that the company will make $3.5 billion a year by 2020. With Duolingo, which is an online language-learning tool, the community helps in translation (that’s how it earns revenue), beta testing, and development of new course content via the Incubator.

Tools such as Jive and Higher Logic offer cloud-based community platforms for external engagement. Research shows that companies using online communities can expect 94% customer retention, 54% drive in revenue growth, and 88% increased web traffic. Whereas, Wells Fargo and NASA are keen on building internal communities for value creation; this is still in comparatively nascent stages.

Social has changed almost everything

According to 2014 study of online communities by Demand Metric and DNN, close to 20% of the participants reported that their online branded community impacted over 30% of the company revenues. And, data revealed these additional insights — in online communities that influence 16% or more of revenue, 64% have strong community engagement, 54% use intermediate or advanced metrics, and 69% have executive teams that are highly involved in the community.

Community engagement is a key ROI metric. Social platforms such as Instagram, Imgur, and others have strong community teams that work on engagements with users over and outside their platform. Instagram Co-founder Mike Krieger said, “What distinguishes us is a community. Staying tuned in is really the key. From the beginning, our very first hire – this is, like, against every business textbook [and everyone else in the business world’s advice] of hiring engineers, [and] like, maybe hir[ing] some designers and PMs. We hired a community manager first…” He attributes much of the photo-sharing platform’s stupendous success to the community. Imgur is an another platform completely driven by viral images which are again contributed by its community.

Product discovery platforms, such as Wooplr, Product Hunt, and Influenster, help businesses grow through community-driven curation; a close-knit community hunts for and reviews products to up sales and brand awareness. This is the sole form of content Product Hunt generates. (Ryan, the CEO of the company, has shared some thoughts here.)

According to CMX, the SPACE model defines how businesses can drive value through communities.

CMX Hub : Space Model http://cmxhub.com/article/the-space-model/

If you are customer-facing business, you need a community. You need to continuously nurture that connection with your consumers. This you do for gathering feedback on products or services (e.g. UserVoice), acting as support forums for queries/complaints (e.g. Uber uses Zendesk), and designing effective customer acquisitions and retention campaigns (e.g. HootSuite uses Influitive). Or, the community is your business. Either way, they are inextricably connected.

Conclusion

Businesses can’t sustain without connections. And what is a community but a bunch of valuable connections? For smaller businesses, especially, the decentralized, sustainable, and scalable concept of “community” can build trusted relationships with people who share their goals, thereby boosting business.

Community members soldier on, fueled by passion, to build new things and create an impact for people and organizations. There’s a reason community of fans such as Lego Ideas, HOG, and Made Unboxed flourish. They are indisputable social engines to power business growth; perhaps a community is one of the most vital corporate assets to help create lifetime value.

Hope you enjoyed reading, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section down below. More content to follow around building great community, so stay tuned!

DEI Hiring

Women in tech: Do the numbers add up?

When you read about famous women in tech talking about their experiences, you’ll have an anecdote about how she was the only woman in the male-dominated room of tech wizards. At times ignored, women had a tough time getting their voices heard and opinions valued, and that’s putting it mildly. Many of their stories have a common thread of growing up battling stereotypes at the workplace, parental pressure at home, and a myriad unconscious biases.

Well, that’s how it was. Things must have changed. Surely. We are living in such a progressive age, for heaven’s sake.

But have they?

Reading about the recent gender discrimination fiasco at Uber, you can’t be faulted for being skeptical. Uber’s tech teams have very few women—an appalling 15.1%. And to make matters worse, the “underrepresentation” came under public scrutiny only after Susan Fowler, a reliability engineer at Uber, published a traumatizing post about sexual harassment.

It is just more proof of how many battles women have to fight, to couch in nonchalant smiles...

Statistics paint a dismal picture.

In the tech world, sexism seems to be taking much longer (than one would like) to disappear. Elevating their voices is a struggle. The awareness is there. There’s enough talk about lack of gender diversity at workplaces. But where is the conversation, huh? This post is not a feminist rant. We’ll just look at what the numbers are telling us.

Data says that women don’t really enjoy equal representation.

Source: Fortune.com (February, 2017)

In 2014, women added up to only 17% of tech workers at Google, 15% at Facebook, and 10% at Twitter according to the American Association of University Women.
In 2014, 11 global software giants published data that only 30% of the IT workforce is female.
In 2015, professional computing occupations in the US workforce held by women was 25%. This was the same number in 2008, whereas in 1991, it was 36%.
In the UK, a 2014 study showed that only 1 in 21 IT job applications were women.
In the US, 25% of the women with IT roles “feel stalled in their careers;” in India it is 45% percent and the UK it is 37%.
In the US, a 2014 study said that “unfriendly” policies, poor pay, unfair promotion, and a bro-grammer culture resulted in 45% of women leaving their tech jobs after a year.
Women hold only 26% of digital industry jobs; it is 16% in IT, and 13% in STEM.
A Stack Overflow survey says that only 8% of the software developers are women.
Women constitute just 5% of the programmers in the video game industry. However, IGDA’s survey shows an 11% increase since 2009.
Catalyst, a nonprofit organization focused on expanding opportunities for women, reported that "women in business roles within tech companies are more likely to start at the entry level compared with men.”
In Silicon Valley, women earn significantly lesser than men in similar roles.

Look at the findings of another study validating much of the stats above.A Study by the Center for Talent Innovation (U.S.): The Athena Factor: Reversing the Brain Drain in Science, Engineering, and Technology (2013)

There’s a reason it’s a boy’s club, and should be.No, there really isn’t.

After surveying leaders in the IT industry, a Nominet-commissioned report, Closing the Gender Gap, revealed that the UK economy could find itself richer by £2.6 billion if it gave more IT jobs to women.
In 2015, this is what research found while analyzing code approved by GitHub: “Women’s acceptance rates dominate over men’s for every programming language in the top 10, to various degrees.” Unfortunately, this finding held true only when the women did not disclose their gender.
CodeFights found that women and men do almost equally well in coding challenges. Look at this infographic.
Stats show that in specialized coding academies, women students comprise 35%.
A McKinsey study showed that companies with over 15% of the women in top management roles had noticeably higher debt-to-equity ratios and payout ratios.
McKinsey says that the annual global GDP could go up to 26% in 2025 if women participated equally in the economy.
The Peterson Institute for International Economics surveyed 21,980 firms from 91 countries to conclude that increasing the representation of women to 30% in a company that had none to begin with could lead to a 15%-increase in revenue.

Getting back to the original question, no, the numbers don’t quite add up, at least not in Uncle Sam’s country. It is getting worse.

With 57% of the workforce being made up of women, women account for only 5% of tech leadership jobs, 19% of developers, and less than 30% of IT jobs. Microsoft reported in 2015 that women comprise 29.1 percent of its workforce, with only 16.6 percent in technical positions and 23 percent in leadership roles. Only 21% hold leadership positions in the already poor representation of women at Twitter. Only 21% of women in its 17% women workforce have managerial roles.

Except in the UK, US, and Canada, girls do better than boys in science and math at school. But somewhere along the way, this phenomenon gets buried under layers of stereotypes and circumstances, and now we have only 3 of the Fortune 500 tech companies with women as leaders.

3 out of Fortune 500 companies with women as leaders

And you thought scaling Mount Everest was tough.

In the U.S., the percentage of women majoring in computer science fell from 36% in 1985 to 18% in 2012. Girls hold themselves back for so many reasons. Self-perception is often skewed. They are even told that looking geeky with their noses in books is a major turn off for the boys.

Data shows that a whopping share of girls are interested in the problem-solving aspects and the creativity STEM offers. But they typically pick medicine or healthcare as a career choice over computers and engineering. These girls are conscious of the pervasive bias against women; they fear the isolation, sexism, and the lack of recognition they could face at the university or workplace. Some women also find programming boring. Some others believe that programming serves a male master. And stories of a viciously misogynistic Silicon Valley can’t be helping matters.

Women don’t seem to have enough role models. If they could interact or look up to more women playing starring roles in STEM related careers, it will encourage persistence. Who is going to tell them that their contribution will make a difference in the world?

However, we are in an age where fighting for their piece of the pie has been much easier for women than ever before. And, there’s mounting evidence proving how successful skilled women can be and how the world economy can only grow with more women at all levels.

Fairness is not about statistic quality —John Bercow

Fairness is about cleaning out the closet filled with centuries’ old prejudices and fears.

It is about boys at school knowing that smart girls are not intimidating or ugly; it is about girls at school knowing that the world is as much theirs; it is about parents encouraging their daughters to bravely storm male bastions; it is about skilled young women in universities believing in themselves, dreaming, and taking for granted the opportunities that will come their way; it is about women employees knowing that they can work in a safe environment unaffected by sexism, unequal recognition, and condescension; it is about not making men feel guilty for no reason; and it is about companies recognizing that gender disparity has far-reaching consequences and making a conscious effort to mitigate them.

For female programmers, HackerEarth’s International Women’s Hackathon is an opportunity to compete with other skilled developers in an algo-intensive challenge on March 8. So, get your coding hats on and get ready to save the world. (Maybe that’s a bit much. Still.)