• GilaMonster (8/31/2013)


    Snigdha Vartak (8/30/2013)


    Certification will definitely get you more money

    Not necessarily.

    As of last night, there are now 0 certifications that one can take that I will immediately respect. MCITP/MCTS/MCSA/MCSE tell me that either a person is interested in learning more, that they were required by their company to take the exams and did the absolute bare minimum memorisation or that they're a cheat, which it is I have to find in the interview.

    Exactly so. All an MS Certification (other than MCS or MCM, which no longer exist) tells me is that the person has, for some reason, taken the exam and is capable of retaining some stuff in memory for at least a few weeks. Whether they have actually learnt how to do anything useful, rather than just parrot some information , whether they will retain any of the information you learnt for long enough for it to be useful to me or forget it all within a fortnight of taking the exam, and whether they understood what the stuff they learnt means or just parroted it in the exam with no real understanding, is not something that the certification gives any indication of. It's even less reliable than a bachelor's degree from most universities in that respect (and that's a very high degree of unreliability).

    From people looking for a first technical post what I want to see is evidence of ability and willingness to learn; currently available levels of MS certification provides evidence of willingness to undertake a crammer course and pass an exam while the cramming is fresh, not of real learning ability, and someone with MCM (especially with MCA as well) is not going to be looking for an entry level post. For more senior people, I'm looking for track record - verifiable track record, preferably vouched for by people I know I can trust, but regard having recently been certified MCM as pretty solid evidence of competence and pretty deep understanding of the MS technology concerned and MCA as strengthening that evidence. The lower level qualifications are irrelevant. So it's a pity that the useful certs have been dropped.

    Tom