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Of course this type of qualification has a value to your employer too, especially if they want to be MS certified/Gold partner.
Adam
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That is the main motivation. Some employers ask for it because of this. Those employers are typically Gold Partners and/or consultancy-types. Other than that a cert may have value other things being equal, e.g., two candidates with equal experience and one with a cert as well. Employer may go for the cert, especially if it's an employer's market.
Kevin
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This is the reason that my employer has requested that our uncertified devs (myself included) get at least an MCTS cert. Good thing they're not requiring it, because after skimming the text and taking a practice exam I'm convinced that it's not worth my time to take seriously. Like someone else on here pointed out, it's like taking a test on how to take a multiple-choice test. You have to keep a bunch of rote information in your head, most of which you'll probably dump shortly after taking the exam. Having information in your head is nice and all, but when you're not blessed with a high-power memory it can be just as effective to crack open a reference, or better yet, just go on MSDN. I've gotten through a lot of programming projects not "knowing" much more than how to find the information I need.
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We had some guys coming in for job interviews last year. They had a CV with those nice little pictures of MCP on them, but luckily we ask them to do a small programming test. A lot of those so-called certified professionals got as far as writing 4 lines of code in 45 minutes. Google and MSDN enabled  .
It wasn't even that hard (read in a text file, do some string manipulation and write to textbox)
I even had one guy who answered "I don't know." to my question: "What does this certificate mean? What does it contain".
IMO, I'm not really impressed by MCP's or any other certificate, they'll have to prove it  .
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Having a certification may not prove much these days but it may help you get in the door. Much like a college degree.
My BSCS degree is 20 years old and has little relevance to the work I do but I think it allows for more opportunities. Back in 2001-2002 after the .com crashes, most developer positions required a college degree just to be considered. Hiring managers were getting 300 resumes just about any position. I have also seen architect positions that were looking for certifications.
Some of the colleges around Dallas offer long-term (6-12 month) certification programs that I expect would help retain the information better than a 1-2 week boot camp.
In any case, if you can get a certification and get someone else to pay for part or all of it, it can't hurt. If you have to pay for it all yourself it may not be worthwhile.
RTS
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I agree. I started to take a MCTS prep course but it was completely worthless. It only showed you how to do drag and drop stuff in VS - connect to a database and create all those inefficient MS objects and bind to a grid. Yippee.
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I agree with you. I think a lot of those certificates came to be in the early to mid 90s when there was (supposedly) a shortage of qualified programmers. I've heard that people were so desperate to hire someone, anyone, they would consider anyone who claimed to have programming experience.
So someone with a couple of college courses in programming or someone with certificate would be considered qualified back then. Now that the demand has gone down and there are a number of programmers with college degrees, the shortage of the certificate programs seems to come to light.
A certificate to me is equivalent to one or at the most two college classes. Obviously a decent college grad would most likely be much better programmer at someone with certificate only.
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I Agree, It is now not any use, May be in 90's it is good but now it is not. I have seen so many programmer who don't certified but can manage large(very large) Project with good coding standards.
Have certificate is good but it doesn't matter i think as finally it depend on you how you can implement your logic.
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Wow! That's really sad...
Then again, most of the people who rock the programming world are just those with a passion for what they do. Certification be damned!
They still have that old hacker spirit. Most are people you've never even heard of until they put together something really amazing. Then you find out it's just a bunch of kids tinkering in their spare time or old timers (no offense to you guys  much respect!) who got tired or bored and became inspired.
I doubt a lot of programmers have any of these certifications. Chances are they were programming in older languages before moving on to bigger and better things. Or maybe they just came across programming out of the blue, enjoyed it, and stayed in the field like people who discover they enjoy solving puzzles or mysteries.
We'll see if that hypothesis is true once the poll is over.
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I'm currently working my way towards MCTS in .Net and, having seen these results, I'm not sure if it's a good or bad thing now. Am I doing something that nobody else is interested in or am I doing something pretty exclusive that should set me apart from the crowd? I have a fair amount of programming experience and I thought that it would be a more specific qualification to add to my degree.
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I like you are working towards my MCTS then on to MCPD. I think its an important step to take as the more certificates / qualifications you have (And the MCTS / MCPD are highly regarded) the better chance you have of securing a new job in a senior role or getting that pay rise.
To be perfectly honest, With the current climate and insecurities, The more ammunition you have under your belt the better!. 
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I don't really regard the MCTS highly once I began to see what the course work entailed. Sure, .NET can open up some rapid application development tracks but a bunch of the developers that I know seem to be mesmerized by the drag-and-drop programming practices and don't really understand what's going on behind the scenes. IMHO, the MCTS cert. just perpetuates inefficient coding. But sometimes speed is valued higher than performance. So you can have 2 of the 3 - fast, cheap, good. A lot of managers are picking fast and cheap right now - so "good" swims with the fishes.
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I like how this vote is going so far: none is the big winner.
Certifications are utterly pointless with the sole exception of getting you an interview at the sort of place that takes certifications seriously hence being the sort of place you wouldn't want to work in the first place.
An ounce of experience is worth a metric ton of certifications.
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it."
-Sam Levenson
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I very much agree that experience is the most important thing you can have. I do however think that having certificates under your belt is very beneficial. Like you said its great for getting that job (or pay rise) but to disregard it as pointless is verging on the line of dangerous. Certifications mean that the programmer has in-depth knowledge of the framework and can promote best practices when developing applications. There are many developers out there that can do the job with years of experience but follow bad practices.
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I agree and disagree. Yes they are important for opening some doors (and as contractor I want as many doors open as possible). I don't hold any current qualifications and I regret it for that reason alone. And yes I thoroughly agree with your comments regarding experience.
However, to say ---
db7uk wrote: Certifications mean that the programmer has in-depth knowledge of the framework and can promote best practices when developing applications.
-- couldn't disagree more strongly. I've hired and let go quite a few certified sub contractors that have exactly the opposite. No real understanding of the underlying framework. As for best practices, that seemed to hinge on what ever solution hit the top of the Google listings (as a previous respondant has intimated). There are plenty of developers out there who are certified and have a good knowledge of the framework, just as there are plenty who are not certified.
Certification means "I passed the exams".
The only thing unpredictable about me is just how predictable I'm going to be.
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This is a funny one as I agree with your last statement. I guess we have both "Enjoyed" different swipes of the sword. I have (I have to admit) not that much experience with good contractors. The only ones I have had are not certificated and not really that much cop.
I am currently doing a certification whereby I hope to have "I passed my exams" next to my name.
So to conclude. Having a certificate is good although the real test to ones abilities in his / her code. If you can not code (like the contractors we have and have not experienced) you will be noticed.
Thanks for your reply. Its nice to get other perspectives which release me from narrow mindedness 
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LOL No worries. Actually, one thing I did note in my original post that I was implying that the certified developers I had employed were not that great. That's a generalisation as I have had some very good certified contractors. I suppose what I was trying to say was I don't see certification as a guarantee that all the right boxes will be ticked.
Good luck with the exams. I suppose I should get around to it myself one day
The only thing unpredictable about me is just how predictable I'm going to be.
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db7uk wrote: Certifications mean that the programmer has in-depth knowledge of the framework and can promote best practices when developing applications.
It most certainly and emphatically does *not* mean that at all. Over the years I've come to view certification as a giant red flag indicating a person to avoid at all costs when hiring.
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it."
-Sam Levenson
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Certifications?
We Don't Need Not Stinkin' Certifications!
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"How do you find out if you're unwanted if everyone you try to ask tells you to stop bothering them and just go away?" - Balboos HaGadol
"It's a sad state of affairs, indeed, when you start reading my tag lines for some sort of enlightenment?" - Balboos HaGadol
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I think the biggest relevance of a certification is for the employer. When the employer sell its products to the client, he can argue that he has Microsoft certified employees doing the job. It can make the client happy.
Nothing else.
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IMHO the biggest benefit of certs is what you learn while studying for them. These days, languages and frameworks come packed with lots of functionality. Studying for a cert is a way of forcing myself to find out what's available out-of-the-box.
Sometimes it'll save money - when you realize you can use the built in functionality instead of buying a 3rd party library.
Mostly I look at it as a way to make my job easier. Kind of like when you're working around the house doing something the hard way only to find out there's an inexpensive tool that does 95% of the work!
On the other hand I'm a pretty quick study. If studying for certs took more than a few weeks then I might be less inclined to bother... They're not the only way to learn about what's available.
------------------
MCAD.net, MSc (CS)
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Probably not, but it still counts towards a company's MS Gold Partner status.
xacc.ide - now with TabsToSpaces support IronScheme - 1.0 beta 1 - out now! ((lambda (x) `((lambda (x) ,x) ',x)) '`((lambda (x) ,x) ',x))
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