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Who Moved My MCSE Cheese? Part 1
Part 1: The Microsoft Certified Professional – from humble beginnings
Apologies to Spencer Johnson for the little bit of wordplay on the title of his famous motivational book that describes the constant changes in peoples’ workplaces, jobs and their lives along with the four typical reactions to those changes.
In this multipart series of articles, I will review the recent history of the Microsoft Certification Program from the NT4 days right through to its current revamp with the releases of Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. Additionally, we’ll review some of the corporate and political atmosphere in which the certifications both flourished and were hamstrung at the same time.
Part 1 – The Microsoft Certified Professional – from humble beginnings will take a look at a little bit of the back history of the MCP program and where it goes from here, as well as a small look at the environment which for better or worse impacted the value and growth of the Microsoft Certification programs.
Back specifically in the NT4 day, having a Microsoft Certification meant many different things depending on who you were, which certification you held, and the hiring personnel’s ability to understand what the certification meant.
[NOTES FROM THE FIELD] – The real meaning of “who you were” stems from what your experience level in the field was at the time and the last couple of jobs you held. In the late 90s into the early 2000’s, the more job positions you held, either internally in one company or having consulted for a number of different companies, made all the difference in how well you were received by the next perspective employer or even during a promotional review.
In the mid to late 90s Novell still reigned as king in the certification world as its Netware Network Operating System (NOS) was THE predominately used architecture even in shops where the primary desktop operating system was from Microsoft. Despite releasing Windows NT, many businesses still maintained at the time that Microsoft Windows (of any flavor) was not enterprise ready especially on the server back end and they kept their Novell Directory Service (NDS) in place as they moved many of their desktop operating systems away from one of the many flavors of DOS / Windows for Workgroups and from Windows 95 to Windows NT.
Some business that either saw the “down the road / long term” handwriting on the wall or were otherwise looking to cut costs decided that it didn’t make sense to pay licensing fees to both Microsoft and Novell (that was often a primary argument). Despite the fact that Novell directory services was more mature and robust at the time, these organizations decided that they could get by on (or would otherwise take a calculated risk moving to) the Microsoft domain configuration.
This was one of the main catalysts in the ramp up of the Microsoft certification program at that time. As help desk admins and level two desktop troubleshooters did their thing day in and day out, they were looking for ways to set themselves apart from their peers. Many looked to the CompTIA vendor neutral program for hardware and networking certifications and others made their way over to the Microsoft Certified Professional program.
[NOTES FROM THE FIELD] – The CompTIA (Computing Technology Industry Association) organization today has evolved a long way from its humble roots of offering the A+ and Network+ certifications as the world’s largest developer of vendor-neutral IT certification exams. As time and demand permits I may be able to follow up with a separate series on CompTIA certifications. If you think it’s relevant to you and something you’d like to see please drop me a note and let me know what you think.
The decisions next were pretty fundamental once the Microsoft choice was made – “which exam should I take?”
The Microsoft Certified Professional credential was gained by taking any single exam and passing it and it is still the same today. Whether someone at the time wanted to gain their MCP by taking Exam 70-064 Implementing and Supporting Microsoft Windows 95 or Exam 70-073 Implementing and Supporting Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 4.0 it was really up to them and there were a few other options to choose from as well.
[NOTES FROM THE FIELD] – The listing of many of those exams from days gone by remain on the Discontinued Microsoft Certification Exams page at http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcpexams/status/examsretired.mspx
Taking and passing the exam was required to obtain that base credential but there were often some value propositions that were either lost on the employer, the employee, or both especially in the early days of the MCP certification.
From the employee side there was planning and thought process – why were you taking the exam(s)? If it was for your own edification you were moving along as you wanted but was it relevant for the work you were doing? If you decided to take 70-064 because you were most familiar with Windows 95 and felt it would be an easier exam to pass that’s all well and good but it meant little to your employer if they were rolling out Windows NT Workstation to business desktops. Exam 70-073 would have made much more sense.
[NOTES FROM THE FIELD] – Much of this is relevant today. I get many questions from folks asking me “which certification track(s) and exam(s) make the most sense for me to focus on” and I always follow up with “what is your end goal?” If it is to just get certified on something then go with what you know the most – those will be the easiest exams for you to pass. If you’re looking to add value within your current employer and move up in the company then study up and test out on what they have in current operation. Additionally, if you know that beyond the next 12 months the company will upgrade then you should too at that time to show that you are willing and capable to learn the new technology as it rolls out.
On the flip side of that, I often caution new folks to the certification realm that you need to establish and upgrade. Many newcomers feel “why would I certify on Windows XP as that technology is going away when I could concentrate on Vista.” It’s not flawed thinking but the reality is, despite Windows 7 sitting at the next stop, many businesses are still running XP – effectively, you are not going to get much leverage out of Vista based certifications in an enterprise that is running XP unless you can prove that you have XP experience to go with that Vista certification.
From the employer side there was the unfamiliarity with the Microsoft certifications in general and in some cases the desire to subtly keep the employee from getting along too far too fast. When that happened it often meant that the employee, who now had a lot more theoretical knowledge but little practical experience, was dissatisfied with their “same old” job duties and would often be courted by competitors offering higher salaries and the opportunity to put that theoretical knowledge to actual use.
Additionally with respect to the general unfamiliarity with the Microsoft certification program, there were some employers that would use the certification as a job goal or a metric for a given position to which it wasn’t really relative. This eventually fed into part of the devaluation of the base MCP certification.
[NOTES FROM THE FIELD] – When an employer, as an example, would deem that a help desk person’s job requirements and / or their performance accountability for their job role must include that they obtain the MCP, the reality was that many of the job skills listed for most of the MCP exams exceeded their relevant job experience and day to day activities. In many cases, the only thing those IT workers could do in order to pass the exams and meet their metrics was to “less than honestly” get through the exam process or to otherwise just barely pass. Often those workers would never leverage that learned knowledge again in that role which further diminished the value of the certification overall.
There were additional trials for employers trying to get a full handle on the value of these certifications within their companies. The testing candidates that took the exams as well encountered issues of their own. The MCP certification quickly grew from its humble beginnings headfirst into Y2K and the Windows 2000 tracks.
Employers exiting from Y2K expenditures and into the long summer of 2000 were looking at a slowing economy and the wreck of the DOTCOM businesses from the spring. They needed to cut cost and more than ever in the past they were shipping help desk and level 1 work overseas and other coding and programming work off shore. They needed to show the value of their remaining employees to their corporate management but were not clear how to do so especially in light of some newer hires that didn’t have a ton of tenure at the company but were desperately needed to remain as other jobs were consolidated.
From the technology worker side there was a complete saturation of the market. There were people who were laid off from their jobs as those positions were being outsourced. There were less than desirable, less than model workers that were just “certing up” (passing exams with extremely little theoretical knowledge and no practical experience) so as to have that extra leg to use in a job interview which only served to devalue the certification even further.
Microsoft was keenly aware of these certification issues in the marketplace and the knowledge space of the IT workers as they worked to upgrade their exam processes into the 21st century. With the advent of Active Directory as part of the Windows 2000 architecture, Microsoft completely supplanted Novell Directory Services (NDS) as customers rolled out Windows 2000 in place of NT4 configurations and as other legacy systems reached their end of life.
Microsoft decided as well that some pieces of their certifications should reach an end of life as well, from the certifications themselves to the testing processes.
In Part 2 – Microsoft Certified Professionals – still relevant after all these years I will detail some of the false starts from the Windows 2000 certification program changes and how the final outcomes of that started to change the way the program moved forward and how it began to branch outward from that point in time.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this article and I am looking forward to any feedback you have on it. Additionally, I would welcome any topics of interest that you would like to see and based on demand and column space we’ll do what we can to deliver them to you.
Best of luck in your studies.
Read Part 2 of Who Moved My MCSE Cheese:
Microsoft Certified Professionals – Still relevant after all these yearsRead Part 3 of Who Moved My MCSE Cheese:
Microsoft Certified Professionals – Study now for the future
Related Posts:
- Who Moved My MCSE Cheese? Part 2
- Who Moved My MCSE Cheese? Part 3
- Windows Server 2008 Certifications – Death to the MCSE
- Whatever Happened to MCSE? And What’s This MCITP?
- Windows Server 2008 (codename Longhorn) Certification Update
- Get a Second Chance on Your Microsoft Cert Exam – Free!
- Microsoft’s Performance-Based Testing Pilot & Certification Stats
7 Responses to “Who Moved My MCSE Cheese? Part 1”
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Paul Says:
December 19th, 2008 at 11:48 am
“Microsoft completely supplanted Novell Directory Services (NDS) as customers rolled out Windows 2000….”
Really?? I must tell the 28000 customers, with a few hundred million seats between them, of Novell’s that run NDS (now called eDirectory) :)
To be fair I am actually assuming that you meant in your terms of your standard small or medium business.
Jason Zandri Says:
December 19th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
So perhaps a little more context should have been built around that comment I wrote.
The whole section reads:
Microsoft was keenly aware of these certification issues in the marketplace and the knowledge space of the IT workers as they worked to upgrade their exam processes into the 21st century. With the advent of Active Directory as part of the Windows 2000 architecture, Microsoft completely supplanted Novell Directory Services (NDS) as customers rolled out Windows 2000 in place of NT4 configurations and as other legacy systems reached their end of life.
The intention of what I wrote was to convey that Novell went from the market leader at the time to second tier and in many organizations, large and small, they have been totally supplanted.
Active Directory has supplanted the NT4 domain structure as well.
I wasn’t explicit enough but hopefully the meaning was there.
David P. Rovaldi Says:
December 19th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
Dear Sir:
Your article on the chronology of the market and the certification process was enlightening. I was one of those workers who was the recipient of the “off shoring” of tech jobs. I returned to school in 1999 to 2001 to earn an AS Degree in Network Engineering as part of a career change. I spent 20K+ in a private tech school and after and during my program worked in the market at $10 to $12 per hour in Florida. I moved up to Washington, DC Metro area in 2002 and had a job only for 6 months when the IT market was going through its crash period for entry-level jobs. I became certified in Workstation, Server 2Kand Network+ but competing against all the heavyweights in the DC area after the DotCom and telecom bubbles burst was fruitless. I returned to my previous career and am satisified to have a job that is in demand in today’s market. I have thought of continuing my certs but have a new appreciation for vendor neutral certifications. It is my belief that CompTIA certs give a broader range of challenges to the test taker. Although they do not specifically target the MS products one will be able to navigate these products with reasonable proficiency after a vendor neutral certification. I personally believe that one who has a vendor neutral certification has a better overall background in the area of study than does a MS tested person. I also believe that even though MS is the big dog in the yard, Linux, Novell and others still have a loyal following and will continue to do so into the future. I also would seriously consider the vendor neutral track as far as it will go toward a MCSE should I continue my certification process again in the future.
Remember this high tech job market was “supposed to be the new industrial revolution”, the only problem was the revolution turned out to be jumping ship to other countries! Another case of corporate America screwing the American Worker as they have done and will continue to do every time the opportunity presents itself to the corporate hierarchy as a way to save money. A recent example of this greed and self-centered attitude is the current level of disaster our financial system has undergone based on those principles of greed, excesses and the “bottom line” syndrome. There are certain jobs they cannot off shore and fortunately mine is one of those, so at least for the immediate term I seem to be covered. The future however is another question as corporate America continues to provide the American Worker with a head start in a race to the bottom of the wage scale inside the US in an attempt to remain “competitive” in the world job market. We are now being told that we have to compete in a global economy with third world countries but I certainly don’t see this reflected in the corporate salaries. If this mentality continues we are going to be the next latin-America. I don’t know about you but I certainly don’t want to win that race!
David Rovaldi
montangnard@netzero.net
Jason Zandri Says:
December 19th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
Hi David,
Thank you for your comments and while I’ve never been impacted directly by off shoring (I was indirectly impacted once and that’s a story for another day) I do have an understanding of some of what has happened and is still happening today.
There will be at least one other segment to “Who Moved My MCSE Cheese” (I am writing some of it now and it may be that I need a part 3) so hopefully you’ll return for it.
Thank you too for your feedback on the vendor neutral certifications – I’ve made a note to try to do some follow up on those in a future series of articles. I’ll try to figure out when I could put some time to it after I get the chance to run it past Kasia our editor in chief.
You are correct on all your points:
“CompTIA certs give a broader range of challenges to the test taker”.
“One who has a vendor neutral certification has a better overall background in the area of study than does a MS tested person.”
“Even though MS is the big dog in the yard, Linux, Novell and others still have a loyal following and will continue to do so into the future.”
On that one point it isn’t even just the loyal following part, in some places and particular uses Microsoft is not always the leader. As an example, Microsoft has come a long way in the virtualization space but VMWare was there first and has their foothold.
Probably the best advice that I could give is to consider where you are in the field and where you want to go. If you want to be a network person Network+ is a great base to start from and then move to a vendor based network certification such as the Cisco tracks if that’s the way you feel you want to go. If you should decide you want to become more of a VoIP guru then you’d go a different way and down a specialized track.
Chasing the dollar is never going to make you happy – chasing your passion will.
Yeah, I know you have to eat, I do too, but I like to think back over my day at dinner time a little more satisfied sometimes and you don’t get there when over 1/3 of your day (the work portion of the day) is not satisfying to you.
Just my thoughts – your mileage may vary.
Stay in touch and good luck in your future studies.
David P. Rovaldi Says:
December 20th, 2008 at 11:52 am
Dear Jason:
Yes I will follow this article to its fruition via this site. As stated [with you in agreement] I firmly believe the vendor neutral track is the way to go. I have found MS methodologies in testing to be somewhat cheesy. My area of interest would be in the area of command line products such as Cisco, although they are moving to the point and click method of system maintenance. I continue to insist that there will always be a market for command line education as point and click can never replace going into the registry and making changes, particularly if the GUI is disabled or not working. I believe that Cisco will be an avenue that is viable as a good paying position in the job market. I would have been in the IT market now if the circumstances had been different in 2002 and the fallout that followed. My current position is comfortable, in demand and good paying. It has nothing to do with the IT market but my experience and education has put me head and shoulders above the majority of those in my profession. Perhaps as I proceed toward retirement I may continue or even supplement my current professional training with some further exploits into the vendor neutral testing arena but at this point that venue is on the back burner.
I have always enjoyed attending seminars, classes and training wherever I can find it. It has done nothing but enhance my position in the job market in whatever area I have entered. This is probably the single item I could stress to your audience, train, train and train some more. Never think you know it all because the job market will run over you. Even within the academic arena, select a degree program and slowly work toward your goal one course per semester, per year every other year or whenever you have the time to take a course. A young person in their 20’s could have a degree in 15 to 20 years [sounds like a long time but] and before you know it as time quickly passes, you’ll have a degree along with the 15 to 20 years of real world experience. This puts the candidate far above the average job candidate and more diverse in their actual working background. I’ll be keeping an eye on the follow up articles and best of luck in your research. Thanks
David Rovaldi
montangnard@netzero.net
Olajide Oluwaseun Says:
December 22nd, 2008 at 2:15 am
Hi David,
this article is an exciting one and an eye opener as well. I would have been among the first to be certified in MSCE in Nigeria but I did not think it was necessary then. Because I feklt experience will speak before certification. But as it is now, before your CV is even consider it must be full of “Logos”.
I found it interesting as well that Microsoft has changed certification path in the line of MCITP and MCTS, I prefer this to the general MCSE, because it gives you that credence that you are an authority in this particular product. Although it has it’s own disadvantages but on the long run like david said, It all depends on what you want.
Looking forward to part2
David P. Rovaldi Says:
December 23rd, 2008 at 10:52 am
Dear Olajide:
I am afraid you are experiencing what began in the US many years ago. Hiring managers found out quickly by hiring personnel that had the “logos” did not necessarily mean the person had the practical experience to perform the tasks they were hired to do. This became known as “paper certified” in whatever discipline [MCSE, Novell, A+] and led to hiring manager’s making up their own practical tests, verbal or written, to test an applicants ability to think and analyze a problem. This allowed a manager to see how the person thought through the process of practical problem solving. Unfortunately some companies still employ the method of weeding out resumes [CVs] without regard to the person’s parctical experience. This sounds like what you are experiencing. Until these folks realize what they are doing you might want to consider applying to another company that will appreciate your practical as well as educational [certifications] experiences. Good luck.
David Rovaldi