[DaiPlusPlus]

> Introduce a certification, thus increasing the gap between developers who (had their employee) pay Microsoft and developers that didn't.

Did anyone ever take Microsoft's "Microsoft Certified Application Developer" or "Microsoft Certified Solutions Architect" titles seriously?

I was still in high-school when I heard about it. I asked some SWE friends of mine who told me that they didn't take it seriously due to the wide prevalence of _brain dumps_ all over the Internet. A few said having it on your resume may actually hurt their careers or job-seeking because potential employers who were on-the-ball took a dim view of them because they were so easy to obtain, so and automatically assumed anyone who advertised the fact they had one when they already had a degree in CS and/or good industrial experience at the very least had misplaced priorities (so I guess if you have it as a single line-item on your resume in 9pt text buried at the bottom that's okay, just don't make it a heading).

What's amusing to me is that after working at Microsoft in Redmond for a few years at the start of my career as an FTE SE in DevDiv - I didn't know anyone who had such a certificate. If no-one needed one to work at Microsoft on the very tools these certificates are for, what's the point?

[dagw]

Did anyone ever take Microsoft's "Microsoft Certified Application Developer" or "Microsoft Certified Solutions Architect" titles seriously?

Most developers generally didn't, but certainly back in the early 2000s I heard lots of managers and other people responsible for hiring being impressed by it. To be blunt, if you where a mediocre developer with a mediocre resume, it was for a while a pretty efficient way to stand out among other mediocre developers.

Microsoft also used to offer some nice goodies and discounts to Microsoft Certified Professionals that could make it worth having, financially, if you where a freelance developer or worked for a smaller company.

[qz2]

I got an MCAD once because my employer was offering it for free. This was so they could secure a "partner" status and get a license discount.

That's mostly why people bothered with it.

It was completely no use whatsoever. In fact looking back the contents were stupid and dangerous.

[goatinaboat]

got an MCAD once because my employer was offering it for free. This was so they could secure a "partner" status and get a license discount.

Same here, but MCSE used to come with all sorts of goodies like a free TechNet subscription. That ceased long ago however.

[qz2]

Indeed. Although now I just fire up an instance in AWS for a bit if we need to play with something. But I rarely if ever touch windows now past using it as a shell for some electron apps and terminals :)

[3np]

> dangerous

Curious to hear more.

[dmitriid]

At one point they seemed to be bona fide certifications of actual high skill levels (or at least in-depth knowledge of related products). But then their value degraded, and quite rapidly.

Can't point you to dates and blog posts on this though, this all comes from my vague memories.

[kerng]

The people that have it are Microsoft consultants, incl. Microsofts internal consulting crews. They like these certs, and take as many as possible and nowadays LinkedIn shows tons of Microsoft employees (outside internal engineering) who brag about the xth number of some random cert.

But Amazon is no different.

[closeparen]

For some OEMs - access to purchasing, support, manuals, firmware images, configuration tools, etc. is gated behind "Certified Partner" programs. For an organization to be a Certified Partner at a certain tier, it must have some number of FTEs holding a specific cert.

A good certified partner won't hire you just because you have the cert, but it saves them the trouble of having to get it for you.

This kind of thing is uncommon in Github world, but very common in Microsoft/Azure world.

[DaiPlusPlus]

> This kind of thing is uncommon in Github world, but very common in Microsoft/Azure world.

What exclusive materials or advantages do Microsoft "Partner" companies have thesedays? MS is very good at making available their documentation, and almost all of their modern stuff (.NET Core, etc) is developed openly on GitHub.

But other companies that aren't as engineering-driven like SAP, Oracle, yeah - I can see them doing that.

The only advantage I can think of is one of cross-promotion or referrals from Microsoft's own consulting division. (I'll admit I have no idea who MS's Consulting customers are - I thought everyone went with Accenture, IBM, Capita or Atos).