The role of Certifications
Keith writes, of writing questions for MS Certification exams:
Boy, we sure fought a lot over those questions. Not sure why exactly: Those exams were pretty pointless anyway.
and relates a post by Jonathan Goodyear that defines certifications as "the annoying two-mile string everyone feels they must have on their email signature.", adding:
Plus ca change, plus ca mem chose.
Now perhaps I'm sensitive about this subject because it's a race I once had a horse in, but I find this attitude just a little condescending. No, I don't have the letters MCSD after my name anymore, but I used to, and I was pretty proud of it. Before I wrote any books, before I started speaking at conferences, before I even became a full-time programmer, I worked in the theatre, doing technical work such as building scenery, hanging lights, etc. for a variety of theatres in the Washington, DC area.
Now, given that this wasn't what one would call a lucrative field to be in, and given that I was interested in finding something a little more financially rewarding, I turned my interest to the computer field. The obvious question to me was "how do I get my foot in the door?". The answer, suggested by a relative already in the industry (you've probably already guessed it by now), was certification.
My very first cert. was in Windows 95, of all things, but it got me in the door to an actual job in the industry doing help desk work, which was followed a couple of weeks later with a job at the Pentagon doing end-user Windows 95 training. I followed the first cert. with the Networking Essentials cert., and then, having decided to move away from networking into development, by the VB 4 cert. Shortly thereafter, I got an entry-level programming job, thanks to those very certifications (and a good interview). To make a long story short, I didn't stop until I had my MCSD, not because I thought that certification would make me a better programmer, but rather because until I had more years of experience, I knew that it would matter less to some people whether I was a good programmer than that I had something that showed I had at least some baseline of competence, and that certifications might just give me an edge when applying for a better job or asking for a raise.
So I guess the point of all this rambling is that it is easy for those of us who are authors, speakers, etc., and who have years of experience under our belts to make light of the utility of certifications, and to be annoyed when we see the those 3- and 4-letter marks of the certified. But I try hard not to forget that absent certification, it's entirely possible that I would still be building scenery somewhere, and still struggling to pay my bills.
To paraphrase Garret Morris, "certification been berra, berra good to me." :-)