AskHN: Best, simplest platform to run a Technical Interview on? | Hacker News Reader

AskHN: Best, simplest platform to run a Technical Interview on?

5 pointsmarche1014 comments

Previously, we used ReplIt to run all of our technical interviews, but they seem insistent on pushing AI features now.

What I need is

- An online collaborative editor for most the common languages

- Code execution in the cloud

- Collaborative terminal windows

Everything else pushed by most interview platforms we don't need e.g. example questions, automations, AI, deployments, auto-grading, performance etc etc

We run 100-200 interviews a year, mostly for people who are pre-junior/learners so expecting them to have a full dev setup on their laptops is out of the question.

Anyone have any good options? We're happy to pay solid money for this - we're paying ReplIt $1500 now for a product we only use 10% of.

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1500/y for 100 interviews seems OK. Doesn't matter if you are not using 100% of features.

Or is that per month?

I am interested in uncovering the real problem. Most apps we buy especially at work have shit we put up with (like AI sparkles everywhere) because basically they do the job. So switching I imagine happens when the platform isn't doing what's needed or as a cost saving exercise. It may be in rare cases a personal bugbear thing or ethical reason.

I just wonder what is the real driving painful issue, if any?

It was already mentioned, have a look at coderpad.com. Though I am not using it for hiring- I know if because I'm long term fan of codingame.com which they bought. Codingame runs quaterly community events, that's where I used coderpad. I liked the IDE and report.

we're paying ReplIt $1500 now

In a lot of organizations, it is pretty easy to burn a significant multiple of $1500 switching systems you use 0% of because the business does not stick.

What I mean is the question reads (to me) as if the only motivations for switching are irritation with the marketing and not finding additional value in the new features.

That might not exhaust the list of actual problems, but those are the only ones I can suss from the question. If you were going to build rather than buy, maybe they might make a better business case. Good luck.

We've been in a similar spot — running ~150 interviews/year mostly for junior candidates. Like you, we just need a reliable, low-friction way to collaboratively code and run things in real time. Most of the "extra" stuff (AI, automated scoring, prebuilt questions) just gets in the way for us.

We ended up switching from Repl.it to CoderPad. It's not perfect, but it nails the basics:

Collaborative editor with syntax support for most major languages

Real-time execution in the cloud (including terminal-based ones like Python, Bash)

Solid multi-user support — you can watch what they’re typing and guide them easily

No fluff

Other options we evaluated:

Codeshare: decent for quick interviews but lacks execution support

CodeInterview.io: had potential but felt a bit janky UX-wise

Visual Studio Code Live Share: great experience but assumes the candidate has a local dev environment, which is a no-go for us

CoderPad is around the same price range as Replit, but at least we feel like we’re paying for what we actually use. Hope that helps!

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