NYCPHP Meetup

[Kristina Anderson]

Mike --

I passed on the opportunity to take the Microsoft certs (back in my 
ASP/VB days).  I thought the questions were assinine because the tests 
had nothing to do with real world programming tasks and were more rote 
memorization of factoids.  Also I was convinced that those testing 
centers had quite a racket going charging 100 bucks a pop for each 
test, and 4 tests required for the cert!!!  

I think I'm pretty safe in saying that that is NOT where we want to go 
with any cert we may be discussing here.  We want it to have relevance 
and value to the marketplace.

-Kristina

> Hello Kristina,
> 
> You are right.
> 
> > --Kristina (B.A., 1985) :)
> 
> My B.A. was in 1986.
> 
> I am still a little suspicious about certification programs in general
> from what I have encountered as a Software Engineering manager even 
when
> I was at Microsoft. I frequently interviewed people with 
certifications
> on their resume that you would have expected that they were
> fairly knowledgeable about the area of the certification but in
> practice I often found they were not.
> 
> Some of this stuff gets ugly. When I went from the East Coast to the
> West Coast, I was shocked to discover, for example that certificate
> courses were being offered in Quality Engineering that taught only how
> to get through an interview with little or no course work in quality
> assurance or testing, much like the degree spam you see today.
> 
> Proposing a certification process for PHP developers is not a trivial
> undertaking and getting a "standard" by which to measure success is a
> huge problem, I think. Like the Webmaster thread here in the past few
> weeks, its an octopus that will require a significant effort to get a
> clear set of boundaries and requirements. Hope it works out but I am
> a bit skeptical about it for sure based on other historical factors.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Best regards,
>  mikesz                            mailto:mikesz at qualityadvantages.com
> 
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