I plan to take it every 6 months to quantify my progress.
I've posted about it before:
"The reasoning goes: the reasons why we need degrees are certification and reputation. By certification I mean that we only let people who we all trust practice medicine, as that kills people directly otherwise. So we restrict the people who can to those with the appropriate degrees.
The second point is more relevant to most other careers. A degree is nothing but a more reputable institution 'lending' reputation to its graduates. The reason this is necessary is because nobody's got the time to verify whether every person knows Computer Science - we're better off just knowing that people from University of X know CS if UoX says so. Even if you're going to personally interview every candidate for a job opening, still relying on degrees helps you filter candidates.
The thing is our interactions are recorded to the level that we can now reason about individuals in a way that was not possible before. Why do I need to trust UoX if I can mine your entire internet presence with reasonably comparable effort?"
I still think we (broadly, the folks who seem to be the core audience of HN) are the ones most likely to make this transition first.
CSPA looks like a step in the complete opposite direction.
Personally, I too hope it fails as I think that if it ever becomes the norm the best case scenario is no better on my end; and in the worst case scenario, it can be a living nightmare.
Basically, whether or not people filter on degree, or even this cspa thing, they're still going to have to do all the tests they did before. I guess the hope is that they'll have a higher apply-to-hire ratio? But I think that'll only last as long as it takes people to figure out how to specialize to pass this test.
Having hired a few software engineers, a question I am asked a lot (not by the engineers themselves, but a lot of other, some even non-tech friends) is that why do I use college and degree as a filtering criteria. My explanation is that, one we do not have the resources of Google to access the candidate in that depth. Two, even if we were to do that, it would mean a candidate going through 7-8-10 rounds, given the kind of things that need to be tested. If you could end up in a good program/college, it tells me that you have some ability and saves me on a few tests. Then, I can take 2-3 tests/interviews and make the decision quickly. This is not to say that other person without the degree is less talented, but that the talent isnt demonstrated yet and it would take more tests to maybe see that. Moreover, its not an exact process, we are as likely to fail with a good degree hire as we are with not so good degree. So, does not seem fair to take a candidate through 8-10 tests. (it also has a cost for us, given we are a small team and everyone's time is important)
If you need 7-8-10 rounds you got something very wrong.
We currently take 3 rounds - one initial interview, one assignment, and then a final interview for the fit. Hence given the weightage to the college.
You want food products tested and certified?
You want bridge engineering to be verified safe?
You want medicine to be tested thoroughly before injecting?
Why not try to create a brand of tested software engineering practices?
Clearly it would create a public distinction with online gigs, people expecting xYears of experience with crap pay.
I think there can be positives found.
I agree with the GP. But to not sound too negative, I hope they pivot to more legitimate and beneficial business model that does not perpetuate a problem and succeed only with this pivot :)
There will always be verification of skill from employers no matter what you’d prefer.
What about the fairness of this evaluation? Over a period of time, questions may be published in the public domain and then the scores of candidates are rendered meaningless. How do you assess whether the person truly solved a problem or merely recalled a solution they had read before?
Over a period of time, the score will be given too much weightage and we will not be able to get a wholistic picture of the candidate.
Ultimately, this is going to end up to be as damaging as automatic resume scanners. Used as a tool to filter good candidates but mainly to reduce the workload of hiring candidates.
People find a way to work around these scanners by dumping keywords even if they are not very familiar with certain skills. Similarly, people will find a way to game the new system as well.
Whiteboarding sessions, despite being more time consuming, seems to be more effective at what it has been designed to gauge.
Students pay to take the tests and have their results shared with the over 60 companies that are now accepting the results when considering new candidates.
The idea that they will insert themselves as a bureaucracy/testing service to "gauge" software engineers is simply offensive to me. This is typical bureaucrat thinking, and not what Silicon Valley is all about. They want to collect a toll tax on every programmer going forward. So frankly I hope they truly fail quickly and miserably.
I hate whiteboard interviews with a passion, but I don't hate them more than "certification processes", like what this group of people is trying to do.