jameslin

We view this closer to CFA, where it's not required (I don't think we'd ever get to this point anyway), but we want a world where many employers do recognize CSPA.

> Software Engineering is good right now because anyone, absolutely anyone, can dive in.

Yes, I wholeheartedly agree! CSPA actually bolsters this because there are no eligibility requirements to take the test. We believe there are a ton of great engineers WITHOUT a college degree and we want to surface them.

We're making it MORE accessible, not less. There's no real barrier to taking the CSPA, except the time commitment. Just register and take it.

Our initial goal is to replace the technical phone screen. We are asking companies to guarantee an interview (or skip the phone screen), if they score above a certain threshold.

Long term, we hope to replace as much of the onsite as possible. But we do acknowledge we can never fully replace it.

Thanks for the feedback! We try to have a good mix of trivial, novice, intermediate, and advanced questions.

Some of the multiple choice questions are fact-based and just require a Google search -- this is intentional, since proper Googling skills are still needed for the job :)

Problem solving questions are better formatted as open-response essay questions, which we do have.

Thanks for the tip! Can you elaborate? Do you mean teaching to the test, or something else? There's a whole research field for large scale assessment and evaluation methodologies.

Our third party proctoring service handles the KYC, as well as the LogMeIn. We did some vetting, and they are used by some well-known MOOCs and universities' online courses. It's a concern of ours as well, which is why we try to offer in-person proctored tests or appointments.

Currently the Core Exam is 50/50. It's designed for career-readiness. Our Technical Steering Committee is composed of majority of hiring managers, so it's intended to be useful for them -- that is, what are the qualifications desired in an entry level software engineer?

We are debating having a Core general exam, and separate per-subject tests, similar to SAT I vs SAT II.

Thanks!

(1) When we retire old exam questions, we will make them available for practice. We're working on creating more study materials! I can't promise anything before April though.

(2) Ah the 440 FE is a typo. We updated the scoring algorithm a few months back and didn't update those examples. Most people try completing all 6 subject sections. It's up to you, but we do discourage optimizing this kind of test taking strategy, and "teaching to the test" ;P

That's a bug, thanks for reporting it. We don't have it in our bug tracker -- I don't recall CSPA having a Show HN post o_O.

Yep I agree! In fact, about 50% of the people who take the CSPA, do it more for self-evaluation than for employment purposes.

You're right, so far most of the test takers are entry-level or changing careers. To accurately assess specialities like ops/IT, we'll need separate, dedicated subject tests (or adaptive tests).

That said, no one has yet gotten a perfect 1600 :) . The highest is something like 1380.