6 ms·
9 Year Old Girl Becomes Microsoft Certified "Professional"
- gaius 18y agoWhat's remarkable is that grown adults become MCPs.
- jeroen 18y ago2 out of 4 previous employers (I'm a freelancer now) gave me a raise whenever I passed an MCP exam. That's enough motivation for me, since it's not very hard to pass MCP exams (at least MSCD related ones) when you have decent practical experience.
- ciscoriordan 18y agoDo you think the certifications have an impact on your freelancer rates?
- rbanffy 18y agoWell... I can tell I wouldn't pay more for one. Even if I used something Microsoft ;-)
- Tangurena 18y agoWell, MCP just means you've passed one or more certification exams. My current employer is a gold partner with MS, and as a result, we need to have 2+ people with "higher" certifications, such as MCSD, MCAD or MCPD. It saves our company about $50k/year in software licensing. And even though our company hands out a $500 bonus per test passed (plus reimbursement of test and prep materials, and another $1k-1500 for each certification level achieved), only 2 of us at the office are "bothering" to keep updating our certifications/credentials. The other guys say they're "interested" but I think they're holding out for more money.
- grouchyOldGuy 18y agoGee, it must be extraordinarily difficult to become a Mouse Certified Professional.
- liamQ 18y agothis proves that MCTS certifications are bullshit (btw - I have an exam scheduled for January)
- atourino 18y agoHow so?
- sabat 18y agoBecause what they're testing (memorized "knowledge") isn't relevant in the real world (where praxis rules).
- seshagiric 18y agoThe so called "Real World" consists of 80% cram jobs - that are plain routine even a robot could do. Not much of praxis needed/ used in real world. Not every programmer needs to be a LISP/EMACS hacker.
- kirubakaran 18y agoI wouldn't be surprised at all if she turns out to be a Lisp hacker who uses Emacs. Becoming MCP didn't close this avenue for her.
- wynand 18y agoShe might be unusually gifted. The article states that she has a fairly excellent memory. And it is conceivable that she has a fairly high IQ. We wouldn't have scoffed as much if she mastered a branch of Mathematics instead.
- mechanical_fish 18y agoWe also wouldn't have scoffed as much if she were merely three years older, and a boy, and working in PHP and Javascript instead of Microsoft technologies: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=156863 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=156863 Can't we just congratulate the kid and move on? I mean, vital as it is to teach her that credentials are bullshit, can't we let her turn ten before breaking the bad news? She's already much closer to figuring it out for herself than I was at that age.
- mixmax 18y agomaybe this says more about the certification than the girl.
- socratees 18y agoFor any Microsoft certification, there are dumps everywhere on the internet. I'd rather be happy if the girl became a SJCP.
- RavingGoat 18y agoMeh, dumps exist for SJCP too... just not the whole test. Years ago when I took it for an employer about 1/3 of the questions were in dumps at the time. A co-worker said almost all his questions were from dumps when he took the SJCP exam. Sun does a better job than Microsoft but not much better.
- maurycy 18y agoDoes it mean that if 15 mastered Python, it says more about Python than a guy? If so, what it precisely says?
- mcfunley 18y agoAt an old job, I interviewed a few hundred programmers for Windows jobs. Almost every single MSCP could recite .NET esoterica from the test, but could not write a for loop. I am not exaggerating. Eventually I started screening out MSCP's. That test is awful. Getting a MSC* cert is the weak last gasp of the failed professional programmer. It is Rock Bottom. There is nothing left after getting an MSCP, except possibly becoming a comment troll on Jeff Atwood's blog. Nothing makes me more pleased to have left Windows development than the fact that I will never have to have another awkward interview with a "certified professional." (I am guessing this girl is legitimately bright--you can't blame a 9 year old for not knowing these ugly facts.)
- seshagiric 18y agoWith all the exam dumps available it is no longer difficult to clear any certification exam. However still, if this 9 year old sits in front of a PC, I will be sure she knows what she is doing. That in itself is an achievement for her age.
- biohacker42 18y agoDuring the .COM 1.0 recession, back in the stone age, one of my fellow fresh faced and unemployed CS grads was considering getting MCTS certified in order to improve his job prospects. I used the then popular story about a 12 year old Pakistani girl who got the same certificate, to dissuade my friend. And so I encourage all of today's fresh faced and unemployed hackers to think of that 9 year old when the current recession is wearing them down. Do you really think that MCTS will help?
- nostrademons 18y agoI thought about getting a MCP when I was 15. Then everyone I knew in the computer field told me it was a waste of time. So I learned Perl instead, which honestly helped my career a whole lot more.
- sigh400 18y agoHow old are you now? When I was 14 there were no certs -- I got a job in a local PC shop as a stock boy. I am convinced I worked for Korean gangsters now; However back then I thought it was a kick ass job (Since nobody I knew was working.) I still own one fried 8088 mobo (black to black wha?) and the three surfboards I managed to buy whilst working. In reality it was one of the worst jobs I have ever had, as I had to work in an attic sorting PC parts and fetching orders in 100+ attic heat with a 4ft ceiling (I kid not) and had to get to work Sundays @ 5am to unload "orders" from Mexico from the meanest people I have ever met. I learned more about life in that year then I have in the last 20.
- nostrademons 18y ago27. This was about 1997. I was in kindergarten when people were still using 8088s.
- simpleenigma 18y agoI've always thought that these certification programs were more of a game of trivial pursuit then a good gage of abilities.
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- natch 18y agoScarred for life. Someone should call child protective services.
- DaniFong 18y agoYou know this how? Being threatened with being taken away from her family would be any better?
- Leon 18y agoI think it was a joke...
- Prrometheus 18y agoShe lives in something that still approximates a third world country. "Saved for life", by guaranteeing herself a solid future, would be a more apt description. It's not likely she was missing ballet practice and play dates in suburban parks to accomplish this.
- Eliezer 18y agoJeeblus, what's wrong with you people? If she'd gotten a high score on the SAT, would you be telling her how boring and useless the SAT is? High scores on adult tests at a young age, almost no matter the test, are something to congratulate her for. But instead you're dumping on her because of "Microsoft" in the title? If you're going to dump on someone, dump on Microsoft! And even that is a backhanded insult to her. There are just some very bright 9-year-olds out there.
- dcurtis 18y agoThis isn't always true. When I was 12, I became the youngest Apple certified tehcnician. And I can tell you very clearly: my parents did not force or encourage me to do that at all. I am an American and I was older than this girl, but I don't think you can totally discount the possibility that she just wanted to do it for herself.
- randomwalker 18y agoI assume you meant to reply to my comment above instead of to Eliezer. The article leaves out one important fact (I saw the same news on Engadget but it linked to a more detailed article.) Apparently, the girl broke a record when she was 3 years old by reciting a certain humungous 1300-verse, 1900-year old text written in an ancient version of Tamil. Recently there have been a number of kids doing it at younger and younger ages and getting on TV. That's what prompted my "dog show" comment and I stand by it.
- qqq 18y agoThe SAT is kinda boring and useless.
- mattmcknight 18y agoShouldn't the practical test consist of misconfigured ActiveDirectory permissions to fix,spyware uninstallation, and a registry to clean? The general tip to choose whichever option requires buying more Microsoft licenses worked when I took the test 10 years ago.
- kirubakaran 18y agoI always wondered why MS chose a title that abbreviates to MCP, which means Male Chauvinist Pig in the non-tech world. I once created an infamous 'Production Metrics Spreadsheet' which the female members of my team were justifiably referring to as PMS. Operation Iraqi Liberation comes to mind.
- trezor 18y agoI think I smell "bias" against Microsoft in the headline.
- known 18y agoAnd 11-Year-Old Becomes Network Admin for Alabama School http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/30/1443202 http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/30/1443202