AskHN: Best, simplest platform to run a Technical Interview on?
3 marche101 3 5/23/2025, 12:12:01 AM
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.
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!
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.