21–30 of 99 posts
The CSPA thing is interesting to me because the founder/CEO was formerly the head of engineering at Crunchyroll, and interviewing at Crunchyroll was one of the worst interviewing experiences I've ever had. Let's just say I'm skeptical. I hope it works out, but... MacD looks interesting... but I'm kinda surprised YC would invest. A Mac n Cheese company? Very strange. I'm very excited about the biotech space, so lookin…
Can you elaborate?
The CSPA thing is interesting to me because the founder/CEO was formerly the head of engineering at Crunchyroll, and interviewing at Crunchyroll was one of the worst interviewing experiences I've ever had. Let's just say I'm skeptical. I hope it works out, but... MacD looks interesting... but I'm kinda surprised YC would invest. A Mac n Cheese company? Very strange. I'm very excited about the biotech space, so lookin…
Crunchyroll's interview process definitely was not consistent, which is why I spent my final two years there trying to improve our processes. I learned a lot from it, and that's why we're doing CSPA :)
- James Lin (james@cspa.io)
CSPA [1] sounded interesting, and is something similar to what I’ve been wanting to do, but after looking at the sample exam, I was pretty disappointed. I thought it would be about computer science and engineering fundamentals. It has some of that (e.g., representation of integers, memory access speeds, etc.) but I also noticed it’s full of completely inessential things, like escaping XHTML, identifying valid JSON pa…
We're constantly improving the CSPA questions, and our latest iteration has quite a few changes. Some of the examples you mentioned assess how detail-oriented the candidates are. We're interested in how this data correlates with how bug-prone someone is.
That said, we trimmed some of those down in our latest version and replaced it with more substantial questions.
- james
CSPA [1] sounded interesting, and is something similar to what I’ve been wanting to do, but after looking at the sample exam, I was pretty disappointed. I thought it would be about computer science and engineering fundamentals. It has some of that (e.g., representation of integers, memory access speeds, etc.) but I also noticed it’s full of completely inessential things, like escaping XHTML, identifying valid JSON pa…
Cool batch, particularly LemonBox which provides personalized vitamin packs to buyers in China. There's a huge user base right there, and I imagine the U.S. market is largely saturated / competitive already. I must respectfully express my concern over: "Grabb-it Inc. turns rideshare cars into digital billboards." There's probably a market for it as online advertisers face an uncertain future with possible regulation,…
I also wonder if they misunderstand the vitamin market in China. Whereas it is mostly bros looking to buff up in the states, in China, you buy them abroad to show your elderly parents/grandparents you care for them. But maybe my views are outdated?
CSPA [1] sounded interesting, and is something similar to what I’ve been wanting to do, but after looking at the sample exam, I was pretty disappointed. I thought it would be about computer science and engineering fundamentals. It has some of that (e.g., representation of integers, memory access speeds, etc.) but I also noticed it’s full of completely inessential things, like escaping XHTML, identifying valid JSON pa…
I would hope that the scoring differentiates between core CS knowledge and skills vs. details and trivia of web development, as well as any other categories of questions. That way, the exam is useful for multiple hiring philosophies, and the hiring manager can decide how much they care about specific types of questions. After all, different roles at different companies have different needs, and I'd hate to have a bia…
Adaptive scoring algorithms and ways to let employers create custom projections of our multidimensional data is something we're thinking about. If you have ideas on how to build this, I'd love to hear them! james@cspa.io
Yep...then the on-off switch jumps species and the only way to survive is to consume a particular (patent pending) brand of parsnip which can't be grown from seed.
Pretty much the only place I could reasonably be accused of being a luddite is in releasing GM organisms into the wild.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would hope that the scoring differentiates between core CS knowledge and skills vs. details and trivia of web development, as well as any other categories of questions. That way, the exam is useful for multiple hiring philosophies, and the hiring manager can decide how much they care about specific types of questions. After all, different roles at different companies have different needs, and I'd hate to have a bia…
Excellent points -- this is something we discuss extensively. After talking with so many employers, we found that each of them look for something different. Adaptive scoring algorithms and ways to let employers create custom projections of our multidimensional data is something we're thinking about. If you have ideas on how to build this, I'd love to hear them! james@cspa.io
The issue you're having is that you're trying to test over 7 dimensions, with the majority of those dimensions being irrelevant to an individual taking the test to signal mastery of 2-3 of them.
The standard method in testing to deal with issues of this nature is to provide people with the opportunity to test themselves on modules, rather than taking the omnibus test so that they can spend the majority of it signalling that they aren't good at things they don't care about. If they're good at everything, they can sit for all of the modules. If they aren't, they aren't wasting their time.
Additionally, this frees candidate time up to let you test people in more depth in the areas they're actually professing skill in. From that point, you're open to do interesting things; evaluate question difficulty/time to completion and adjust the questions provided as the test unfolds to match the expected skill of the applicant for instance.
As it is now, you're getting buy-in from corps that little have no skin in the game, but I don't see how the sample test you have provides more signalling value than an applicant having a CS degree or a list of github projects they can discuss.