HackerRank lays off 53 employees amid economic uncertainty

NEW DELHI: HackerRank, a leading technology hiring platform, has laid off 53 employees globally amid the ongoing economic uncertainty.

Vivek Ravisankar, Co-founder and CEO of HackerRank, sent an email to employees last week, seen by IANS, saying “we notified 53 people today that we are going to be parting ways”.

Ravisankar wrote that the company’s financial performance “has not been good for quite some time” and “every one of us is trying super hard to turn it around and it's been a frustrating endeavour”.

“Given the uncertainty, the only reasonable financial plan is to disproportionately shift investing dollars to protecting our customers vs new business, while continuing to innovate to capture the upside when the market does come back up,” said Ravisankar.

The company is providing severance, which includes 12 weeks of base pay along with 1 week for every full year of tenure for those who have been with the company for less than 4 years, or 2 weeks for every full year of tenure for those who have been with them for more than 4 years.

The package includes six-months of COBRA health insurance for employees in the US and an extension of up to 6 months to exercise vested options.

“We want to support them in their job search. Therefore, we are asking them for permission to disclose their names and we will compile a list,” Ravisankar wrote in the email.

Since the launch in 2022, the platform has helped 2,000 customers transform their hiring process, assessed more than 7 million developers worldwide and “10 per cent of the developers who changed jobs went through our platform” just last year, according to Ravisankar’s LinkedIn profile.

The company has re-designed the organisation “from a blank slate”.

“This resulted in new roles being added, roles being eliminated, and some changes to the reporting structure. As a result of that, we had to, unfortunately, part ways with some of our colleagues today. To the people who were impacted It is not their fault. Every one of them has contributed to our mission and has worked very hard,” said the Co-founder.

HackerRank was founded as InterviewStreet Inc. by NIT Trichy alumni, Ravisankar and Hari Karunanidhi. HackerRank is a Y Combinator-backed company, and was the first Indian company accepted into Y Combinator.

Last year, HackerRank raised $60 million led by Susquehanna Growth Equity. HackerRank has raised over $115 million in funding till date.

In December 2019, HackerRank acquired Mimir, a cloud-based service that provides tools for teaching computer science courses.