[mkoble11]

The IT industry is changing rapidly and we will continue to evaluate the certification and training needs of the industry to determine if there's a different certification needed for the pinnacle of our program.

Some of the thoughts/comments on Twitter towards this decision by Microsoft is based on the move towards the cloud. What are your thoughts, HN?

On another note: I respect anyone who's gone through the rigorous MCM process, but my next thoughts have to do more with certification in general.

Let's take software development for example. Microsoft has developer based certifications. Is the certification more for HR who doesn't understand how to evaluate someone's github account?

It's frustrating that corporations continually reinforce this notion that a piece of paper is more important than work product....which in turn creates more hamsters running inside the wheel instead of finding ways to break out of the cage.

That's why I'm thankful every day for the amazing HN community.

[mgkimsal]

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en-us/mcm-certification.as...

Good luck demonstrating all your Exchange administration skills in github.

Done well, certification can demonstrate/validate a level of understanding that's beyond what is currently able to be captured in code.

[incision]

">It's frustrating that corporations continually reinforce this notion that a piece of paper is more important than work product."

I can't speak to software development certs in particular, but I've worked in "enterprise" pretty much my entire career and I've done a fair amount of hiring over the years.

I've encountered vanishingly few people who truly put much, if any value on certs outside of the very top end.

Generally, I see them employed a simple filter, aimed more at preventing problems with "body shop" contractors/recruiters when posting entry to mid-level positions rather than direct hiring.

It's basically avoiding a torrent of wholly unqualified resumes at the expensive of some false negatives.

I've never seen certs as a hard and fast rule for higher level positions. In those cases, the requirements are going to be about accomplishments and demonstrated ability and potential hires necessarily drawn from a much smaller pool.

Personally, I didn't carry any certs until 2007 and it didn't seem to hurt me one bit. Eventually, I picked them up because my employer insisted, paid me for my class time and covered my exams.

One thing that's a bit frustrating is the prevalence of technology companies which require "official" course time to be eligible for their exams. It's a shameless money grab which works to exclude people who don't have the benefit of a employer footing the bill as I did.

[hrktb]

As for everything, it depends. It reminds me of a young office clerk who was helping in the IT department. After a few month she decided it was more interesting to do network administration, but she entered the company with a generic diploma and on the salary grid there is no path between office tasks and IT. She could have argued that she was already doing good enough in the IT job and thus was qualified for the position, but really from an HR point of view she could be BSing them as well, as there is no fast and simple measure of efficiency for IT administration.

The easiest path was to get a Microsoft certification and just apply internally for a job in IT. That went really smooth from the HR point of view, and she recognized earning a ton generic knowledge letting her understand better what she was doing.

[mhurron]

If you are going through the certification paths just for the paper, then yes, you will get nothing out of it except a piece of paper for HR.

Decent certification paths cover many things that you might not have used in your github. They can expose you to different parts of the system or API. If you treat it like a learning opportunity, you will learn something new and the certification at the end becomes more incidental.

[olegbl]

I'd say that evaluating someone's GitHub account is way more meaningless than evaluating their certifications. Not everybody open sources all their stuff, nor necessarily uses GitHub. And most of the work one does, is usually for a company and can't be shared anyway.

[PommeDeTerre]

What you say is very true. Furthermore, there's no guarantee that code associated with somebody's GitHub account was actually written by that individual. It's useless to gauge the ability of a developer based on code in his or her GitHub account that somebody else wrote.

[corresation]

As someone who acquired quite a number of Microsoft certifications over the years (MCSE, MCSD, MCDBA, among others, albeit a decade ago), I'll be a voice that speaks in favor of them, and in favor of mechanisms like them.

Not as a hiring tool; Not to evaluate talent; Not to prove knowledge of a domain to anyone else: For those goals they are absolutely miserable, and are why they earned such a poor reputation.

Instead as a personal target for learning things that you don't necessarily have to learn otherwise, and the truth is that in this industry you can be quite successful even if you're egregiously misusing and misunderstanding the platform that you're building on. If I'm going to be doing a project in Visual Studio, or deploying a database on SQL Server, or using the security services of Windows, it is in my interest to understand the platforms that I'm using, and those certifications provided a personal goal that I could shoot for to achieve those rudiments.

[300bps]

Instead as a personal target for learning things that you don't necessarily have to learn otherwise

Exactly how I look at it. My MCSD in VB6 from 12 years ago exposed me to parts of the language I would never known existed if I didn't pursue certification. My MCSD.NET in C# did the same thing.

My MCDBA made sure I knew about SQL Server administration, query optimization, client access and every other relevant skillset with SQL Server.

If someone has a lot of experience but no certification in a particular topic it's common to bring up something they've never heard of in regard to that topic. That rarely happens with someone who is certified. They might not be an expert on it but they've at least heard of it, studied it and evaluated whether it was an appropriate tool to use for them.

[dhughes]

Yes, I mean at worst you could say it's better than nothing but certifications do certainly light a fire under some people who otherwise wouldn't bother to learn. And yes certifications can be abused by some, some people have photographic memories (a surprisingly large number!).

I see some CompTIA certifications have implemented performance based testing which is more knowing than memorization, which I like. Passing scores were creeping up more every year maybe that was a response to people passing due to memorization or sheer luck?

[corresation]

who otherwise wouldn't bother to learn

This is worded, I think, a little bit pejoratively -- no one learns the entirety of the systems that they deal with (whether Windows, Linux, Solaris, mySQL, nodejs, HTML5, angularjs, etc. The universe of stuff to know is endless), but instead even the most diligent practitioners get a working knowledge and often don't realize the things they don't know. As a quick example, I've done projects with seeming SQL Server experts, for instance, who had no idea what ownership chaining is, and you can find exactly these sorts of fundamental knowledge gaps in virtually any technology.

These certifications make you step back and look at a breadth of information that you don't normally have to, but upon gaining that knowledge you now know the tools available to you.

And yes certifications can be abused by some, some people have photographic memories

The danger of taking certificates too seriously is that it creates a strong economic motivation for people to simply do what is necessary to get the certificate, with little interest in the practical ramifications or value of the things that they learned. This was absolutely endemic with MS certs with countless boot camps, etc, where you just pound in questions and answers for a week and then do the test. Boom, certificate achieved, now forget all of that abstract stuff you just learned.

I am absolutely and completely against such boot camps for that reason: If you aren't practically incorporating the things you learned day to day, it simply will not stick.

I would never hire someone or assume competency because they had these certificates. However if I interviewed someone who seemed competent, with good references and a solid track record, it would be a bonus if they had it, simply because it is decorations on success, and does not define success.

[seanmcdirmid]

I seriously thought certificates like this always meant the candidate was weak. I never realized that these courses could play a positive role in the developer's development. We have to be careful about what we include on our resumes given the bias of people like me.

[dhughes]

I typed out a long reply but realized I essentially agree with everything you said.

Well said.

[mgkimsal]

It has struck me that cert programs are a way for people in larger enterprise orgs to justify time spent diving in to stuff that they might not otherwise have had a chance to 'on the job'. The gained knowledge may be useful to the org later, but possibly not immediately.

[dchichkov]

I think that one of the sad things, is that kids wouldn't be able to go and try at a standard grown-up level tech knowledge test, that at least somewhat recognized in the industry. Microsoft certification was open for everyone...

As to the usefulness, by looking over some 10 (15? gosh...) years back, I've got a lot more use from effors required to get two MSSQL exams, if compared to a databases design class in college.

[RyJones]

To be a Microsoft Solutions Provider or similar a certain percentage of your people have to be certified. For smaller companies, it was an important marketing distinction.