Automatically fail the MCSD.NET? What a joke!!!
I think Mr. Adzic must have met some real bad MCSD.NET who passed all 5 exams solely by learning by heart the damn brain-dump stuffs from Test King or the similar when saying that he would automatically fail a candidate if s/he happens to have the word MCSD.NET in his/her CV. I do have an MCSD.NET and I think that is way too big a generalization that Mr. Adzic makes.
Look, I am not defending MCSD.NET, in particular, and certifications, in general, here, but while it is the truth that being certified does not necessarily mean someone is a good developer, it also does not mean that s/he is a BAD developer. In fact, I’ve seen many good as well as the very bad developers with certifications.
In addition, even though we can totally ignore any value of certifications (such as the knowledge gained through the self-pace studying books or even courses, and the dedication spent on studying something new during one’s extra time [i.e. out of work time, and take up some of the time should be spent with girlfriends]) (again, I’m not talking about those who cheat), at the very least, we can just simply ignore the certifications that we do not care about in the CVs of our interviewees, instead of using it as a reason for automatic failure. And that’s how I do it.
When interviewing candidates for my team, I do not care about the certifications (be them MCSD.NET, SCBCD, SCWCD, PMP, CJD, or CJA, or whatever), instead, all of the focus is on how good the candidate is to the vacant position in term of technical/managerial knowledge and the ability to blend with or improve the current team culture. (More discussion about this can be found in this post.) After all, what valuable is the knowledge gained through the process of studying for the exams, not the certifications themselves (which are a merely a bunch of recyclable papers).
Adzic’s post was mainly a joke – but more targeted to people who put their title as “John Smith, MCSD”, as if it were a PhD or something.
Haha, I’ve even seen CVs or email’s signatures such as “XXX, MCP.NET”. And while I do not think highly of many certifications, less as trivial as MCP.NET, I don’t think it’s a big deal as long as the candidates can prove to me that they can perform well in the expected position. I simply do not care about whatever title they put near their names since they may not think highly about it as well, and happen to put it there because they think that some stupid hiring managers would think highly of it
Yes, I totally agree with Brad. That fully explained why I don’t want to discuss on his topic here. I just don’t agree on one item in Buu’s post “Do not care about the MCSD.NET, SCBCD, SCWCD…” Certification somewhat has its value. At least the owner had to pass certain exams. Those exams obvious cannot cover all your expectations but portion. Or even they probably cover some criteria that you forgot to put in your filter.
Should not be distracted or overrate value of certification and should not ignore it.
Thanks for your comments, Phong. Certifications are only good when the people really go through the stringent process of studying for the knowledge required by the exams. In some cases, people do, in some other cases, people don’t – instead, they go for quick-fixes (brain-dump materials).
Besides, just as great and mediocre people can get out of college, great and mediocre people can be certified as well – and the problem is even worse in the certification arena since it is much easier for a mediocre developer to gain certification (a few exams, easily cheat [either via loose monitoring or via braindump materials], can fail and register another quickly) than getting graduated (a few dozens of exams, a 100+ assignments, and hardly cheat).
Having said that, I do not say certifications have no value, they do have, as long as people gain good knowledge through the process of studying for them, and they value that achieved knowledge more than a piece of paper (or title). By acknowledging that there are bad as well as good “certified professional”, you’d better off interviewing a candidate without looking at his certifications list.
And note that I myself have a bunch of certifications (e.g. MCSD.NET, CJD), but I do not care whether the interviewers think highly of them or not, since I can always prove my knowledge (and I’d like them to allow me to prove it – instead of assuming me at the same level of some mediocre “certified professionals”).
Buu,
By your argument :
“Look, I am not defending MCSD.NET, in particular, and certifications, in general, here, but while it is the truth that being certified does not necessarily mean someone is a good developer, it also does not mean that s/he is a BAD developer. In fact, I’ve seen many good as well as the very bad developers with certifications.”
My response is: Why even bother with those certifications anyway in the first place. I’m not very up-to-date with all those certifications being offered currently. But for a while, I know there are some with the word “Engineer” in the title. I used to know some, who just with high school diploma, and happened to pass one of those certification test, automatically claim to be an “engineer”. Very misleading and disturbing. My overall take on certifications:
1. Misleading and not a true measure.
2. Employers often do not care about them.
3. Real contributions to an organization are always worth more than those silly titles.
4. Go ahead and take the tests anyway. Just be judicious. When you’re good, respect will come no matter what.
Thanks for your comments, Kevin.
My personal reason is as simple as to gain knowledge. Usually each cert (CJP, CJD, MCSD.NET etc.) requires very specific objectives and that serves well for people who really want to learn about new things. Besides, for the MCSD.NET alone, which I start studying during my junior year, I did both want to learn about .NET (the university only has Java courses) as well as gain some advantages over other new graduates. On the other hand, I do know some people who take the certs because they just want to be certified (not to gain knowledge) and look good in the eyes of managers who could not assess their real capability. Because their goal is not to gain knowledge, but to be quickly certified, they take whatever quick-fixes they have a grasp of (brain-dump material produced by TestKing is an example)
That’s not the worst thing, though. I’ve even seen people with high-school diploma, without any certification, call themselves software engineer. Regardless, unless there are legal requirements for software engineering profession, I guess people can always call them software engineers if they think they are coding something.
It is only misleading if the interviewers who cannot assess a candidate’s real capability and have to rely on the certs. On the other hand, I agree that it is not a true measure, since people with the same cert can perform very differently But that is sometimes true for university degree though – you can see very high-GPA graduates perform badly in their professional roles. The only true measure, to a certain extend, can only be discovered by competent interviewers via a good interviewing process, not via looking at the cert or degree.
I don’t know. That maybe true. Even if some do not care about the certs because for the knowledge sake, they may care because that’s what a MS or Sun Partner is supposed to
.
Can’t agree with you more!!!
Hi Buu,
Why don’t let the candidates do a examination?
In my company, After candidates passed the CV check, we usually ask the candidate do one or more technical examination and evaluate them based on the result. In the interview, we only need to check the passion, the teamwork, the problem-solving and negotiate skill. Of course, we have to ask a few of technical questions.