Are the Microsoft courses worth while doing?

Question

What are your thoughts on the Microsoft courses – things like the MCSD, MCSE

Answer 1

You will certainly learn some things.

Depends on your occupation whether those things will mean anything to you.

However, it is something to put on your resume. Some companies check for those letters. Maybe you even want to work for such a company?

Answer 2

See as-a-net-developer-what-exams-other-than-the-microsoft-ones-are-worthwhile.

In answer to your question, though, having done several of the MS exams earlier in my career (the MCSD and MCDBA tracks), they did help me land jobs.

One the other hand, if I were to interview someone who had an MS certification, I wouldn't be that impressed.

Solid experience will always trump an MS cert in an interview in my opinion - and rightly so.

Answer 3

If you extensively use the MS controls, maybe.

I've always found even the 'advanced' ones to be a bit slow-going - nothing I couldn't have learned with a good book and google.

The exams are a bit different, some companies seem to regard them as proof of development. Having ran through some dummy tests, they are pretty tough, and require you to know the MS controls inside out. What properties, methods are available etc - OFF THE TOP OF YOUR HEAD.

Now I don't know any realistic working environment that doesn't have MSDN available, and there are cheat-sheets available for these exams, so I would be surprised and disappointed if a potential future employer showed any real regard for these qualifications.

The flipside is that for each employee with MS certification, the organisation gets points, which they maybe require to maintain their MS Partner status. This policy could prevent higher-quality engineers being employed because they haven't sat these exams, but it is necessary for them and you could lose out.

Answer 4

No matter how popular languages such as Ruby, PHP, Python become there will always be a wealth of companies building applications with Microsoft programming environments.

.NET languages such as C# and VB plus of course the database language MS SQL will be in demand for a long time to come.

Experience is valuable too, however you may need a MS qualification to get you into a job which will provide such experience.

Answer 5

The upside to MS certification exams is that they do at least teach something, and if your company thinks they're worthwhile, studying for the exams is a good way for new programmers to learn on their own (even if what they're learning is mundane and easy to look up). In my opinion, it's better for new programmers to learn how to find out the things they need to know on their own rather than working through a single large prepared book (like the exam practice guides), but whatever. At least it's better training than, say, a web site somewhere where they can just ask questions and get the answers.

The downside is that upon completion of the exams, both the new programmer and your company will think they're fully-qualified to start creating good software (they won't be). My favorite experience with this was a few years ago when a co-worker successfully completed his MS cert in Visual Basic, got assigned to my Visual Basic-using team, and then had to ask me how to create a function that would execute when a button was clicked (for the VB-impaired, this was an easy task).

Answer 6

Don't confuse courses with certifications. My thoughts are:

• Microsoft certifications (MCSD, MCSE, etc) are certainly worth while taking because they are essential for landing many jobs.

• Microsoft courses are not worth while unless you're a very slow learner.