charles.jacobus-765275 (9/11/2013)
I still don't see how this directly (or just) relates to Microsoft. "They [Microsoft] have too much incentive to cheat." I disagree. I would be interested in knowing how Microsoft's certification program -- which I've been through and find not perfect by any means but very good -- is different than Oracle's, Cisco's or any other such company. Besides making a profit, it seems to me that what they want is competent professionals eager to use and promote their technologies. And what we want is the opportunity to do so.
Getting enough professionals, or competent professionals, can be at odds. When the use of MS technologies exploded, as happened in the late 90s, there weren't enough people. The programs weren't designed to really prevent cheating/gaming, and resulted in lots of people being certified. Some of whom were qualified, some weren't, some learned on the job, some didn't. Companies didn't know much about computing infrastructures, and they often didn't realize how poorly their staffs were running systems because few of them had had good infrastructures in the past.
Now we have more complex systems, and the exams haven't done a good job measuring if people are ready to handle the systems, on which we are more dependent now. MS Learning has an incentive to get more people certified, which increases the perceptions that their software is easily supported and widely used. This doesn't mean they have an incentive to ensure these people are well trained.
Cisco has a similar problem, but there are just less people acting as network engineers. We need less of them than server admins/exchange admins/DBAs. The CNA is gamed, with the same bootcamp memorization, but the CCIE is more like the MCM with a lab exam.
No idea on Oracle, but I think they have a similar problem, but perhaps at the same scale. I have met plenty of Oracle DBAs that I suspected weren't as skilled as I'd have expected them to be.