Microsoft Certification Pins

Which ever one is being hyped at the moment.

Done differently? Taken the most recent one, always....

To answer your question, I'd have to believe certs were necessary to the job in and of themselves. I don't. They are only necessary for the certification industry, other than that their real value is to the ignorant, like HR people and other numpties, wh insist on cya for decsision made in ignorance.

I'm not knocking the knowledge they impart, that's valuable, if you impart it to someone who knows how to use it...

If they were limited to that audience though, that would be people who could gain as much or more some other way, and a lot less of them. So some big boys would be seriously out of pocket, a lot of people who already paid for them would feel like eejits, and HR types would still have no clue how to separate could and can do from couldn't and can't.

My career path was no certs or academic qualifications, just desire and ability coupled with am opportunity. On opportunity the current cert industry has a vested interest in denying us.

The latter tells me all I need to know about them.

My employers have put me up for a few, but I've never taken one off my own bat and cannot forsee any need to do so, unless I went back to admin, which is truly unlikely.

Had I integrated my graphics arts career (pre-digital when the IBM Selectric was still king) rather than totally migrate to networking computers I would be working in my pajamas today, tweaking and tweening

Anything with a normal schedule without on call, nights, and weekends. Maybe project management certs would be the way to go.