| Hi HN! We're James and Angel, the founders of CSPA (https://cspa.io). The Computer Science Proficiency Assessment (CSPA) is a standardized assessment for software engineers. We find software engineers to take our exam, and then share the assessment results with employers, who can then hire these candidates for free. James was the founder of Crunchyroll and oversaw product and engineering. Angel also worked at Crunchyroll. We decided to start CSPA because: 1. There are many self-taught programmers out there who are really really good, but don't get a fair chance because they don’t have a degree. We want to give these people an equal opportunity to pursue their career. That's why there are no eligibility requirements to take the CSPA. You can come from any background, and if you get a high CSPA score, you’ll stand out. 2. As hiring managers at Crunchyroll, it was challenging to find great software developers. We wanted a service that quantitatively compares job applicants in an unbiased way, and ALSO did that assessment for us. In short, we wanted candidates to come to us pre-assessed. It would have saved us and the applicant a TON of time. 3. As software engineers, we hated applying for jobs. We did the same phone screens, the same coding challenges, and same whiteboard exercises over and over again, company after company. It's a huge waste of time. There has to be a better way. Why couldn't we just do it once, and then reuse the results at every company we apply to? Keep it DRY, right? If you want to take the CSPA, you can register here: https://cspa.io/winter-2018/register. The first 100 people to sign up can use code "LAUNCHHN" to waive the exam fee. If you're an employer looking to hire a pre-assessed candidate, sign up here: https://cspa.io/add-employer. We don't charge a recruiting fee. If you're interested in joining the Technical Steering Committee, apply here: https://cspa.io/tsc/apply |
Not the best.
There are two questions regarding denial-of-service attacks. One of them I found hard to answer (had a plausible answer and a plausible "none of the above"). The second one was clearer but still ambiguous. Weirdly, the ambiguity in both questions stemmed from the use of an HTTP POST login as the possible DOS vector --- why? Why use that confusing example?
The 2FA question I saw had two valid examples of 2FA (push notifications and chip-and-pin) but no "all-of-the-above". I'm curious which of those two the author has demoted.
The phishing question I'm just irritated at the superficiality of; everyone will get the right answer, but the right answer misses the point and the power of phishing attacks, which isn't "websites that look like real websites" but rather the lures (like targeted emails) that get people onto those sites. But, whatever.
The password management advice question asked for a "best" from several subjective answers.
The SMS 2FA question had two valid answers and no matching "these-two-answers" answer. I'm pretty sure the answer that wss being looked for was the social-engineering phone-porting one (which is weird, because the first answer is "SMS 2FA is considered secure by current industry standards", which is certainly true for most reasonable definitions of "industry standards"). But also: that's not even the biggest problem with SMS 2FA.
There was a blockchain question. Who is this for? I'll buy that every working programmer needs to know how a phishing attack works (though perhaps not what distinguishes, in the test author's mind, a DDoS attack from a DoS attack). How many working programmers know how blockchains work?
Similarly: there was a GAN question. Come on. What was the point of that?
Finally: it's a six hour test. You weren't kidding when you called it "the SAT for programmers". It's not an especially pleasant experience (I like the interface, though). This test is a very big ask of candidates, and I think a short ways through the test it becomes clear that there's not much intrinsic merit to it; it's just a hurdle.