My Journey To Problem Setting

The National High School Programming Contest is an annual national-level programming contest aimed at school-going students. In December 2016, there was an announcement for NHSPC Mentors’ Camp 2017, which I learned about through a Facebook post. The camp lasted for two days and its objectives were to: teach university-level students how to set programming problems for contests, teach university-level students how to train school-going students for programming contests, and create new programming problems for the next season of NHSPC.

I applied to be a part of this camp and was selected. During the camp, I contributed the problem “Ram, Rem and Flower Picking”, which was utilized in the National High School Programming Contest, 2017 (Rajshahi Regional). After the camp, a senior from the University of Dhaka contacted me on Facebook Messenger regarding Mr. Shafaet Ashraf, who was employed at HackerRank at that time. He was looking for a female problem setter for HackerRank’s Women’s CodeSprint 3 contest, and I was asked to send Mr. Shafaet Ashraf an email if I was interested in the role.

I emailed Mr. Shafaet Ashraf, and he replied asking for drafts of problem ideas. I provided him with drafts of two problem ideas, both of which he liked. He then asked me to prepare the necessary problem statements, test cases, and editorials. We worked together on those problems, and they were featured in Women’s CodeSprint 3.

Later on, HackerRank was looking for remote Problem Setters for their enterprise-side product, HackerRank for Work. I learned about this through a Facebook group post, and I emailed Mr. Shafaet Ashraf expressing my interest to be a remote Problem Setter in HackerRank for Work. He recommended me, and this is how I became a regular problem setter in HackerRank.