We just finished the webshow last night, when one of our chatroom fellows – Nic Cain – told us that the MCM and MCA programs were dying. He almost immediately blogged the news: MS was canceling the Microsoft Certified Master and Microsoft Certified Architect programs, and it was all up as of October 1, 2013.
Hellfire.
There’s been a huge response from the SQL Server crowd, despite the timing of the email (the Friday eve of a three day weekend in the USA) including many blogs, tweets, and even a connect item pleading for reconsideration.
I took and passed the MCM Knowledge Exam late last year. (This is one half of achieving the MCM, so we joke around here that this makes me an “LM”.) I have 30 days, as of the announcement, to stop mucking about and just do the MCM lab. The good news is that I work well under clear, short deadlines. The bad news is, there’s no time for retakes.
Edit: The extra bad news is, I have to catch up on the three lower 2008 certs, too. Procrastination has a price, but…
Here we go.
-Jen
I find myself in exactly the same boat, thought I had more time.
Best of luck with it, one shot one kill!
Thanks! So are you going to go for it, then?
Darn! I feel for you!
Every time I consider getting a MS certification, they change the rules. Or expire what I’m studying on. Or switch frameworks. Or change the OS interfaces. Or drop TechNet. Or crank up the MSDN prices. Or piss off my clients CTOs with increased license costs.
Since I’m a jack-of-all trades, it’s difficult enough to pick up enough specific information about a particular OS, DB or programming language without study to pass a cert without a major time commitment. And there’s been enough WTF incidents out of Redmond the last couple of years to reconsider the time investment.
Chris
We’ve had multiple debates on the topic of certifications, and whether or not they’re worth it. The bottom line is, lower level MS certs might be worth it, but MCM/MCA are. I mean, were.
Good luck, though I’d ignore the 2008 ones for now. If you get through the lab, then do get them. PS, they’re fairly easy from what I remember. I took them cold and passed.
I really don’t understand the MS guys. Last year they increased the lower certification exams cost, while almost no one has any consideration for them. Now they’re killing the MCM certification, the only one that counts. This seems to be the “deep thinking” of some “brilliant” marketing clerk. Taking MS cert exams does not make sense, not anymore…
Yep, you’re not the first person that has posited this is a marketing decision…
I’ve read some blogs and I think this is a misguided effort to drive users to Azure, where everything is wonderful, painless and backed up by the NSA! 🙂
Well said…and the idea (apparently) has merit!
And – good luck 🙂
This bullshit (sorry) hits you hard. I’ve seen here
https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/799431/please-dont-get-rid-of-the-mcm-and-mca-programs#
a couple of comments from someone living in China saying that MCM is too expensive for them, etc, etc.
MCM is much too expensive at this moment for me too. But how could they kill a trustworthy cert program because some guys cannot make their way up(“bruler les etapes”) easier and cheaper? Shame, Microsoft.