9 Year Old Girl Becomes Microsoft Certified "Professional"

http://gizmodo.com/5116747/9-year-old-girl-becomes-the-youngest-microsoft-certified-professional

by ojbyrne • 18 years ago

53 56 18 years ago

gaius• 18 years ago

What's remarkable is that grown adults become MCPs.

jeroen• 18 years ago

2 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• 18 years ago

Do you think the certifications have an impact on your freelancer rates?

Tangurena• 18 years ago

Well, 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• 18 years ago

Gee, it must be extraordinarily difficult to become a Mouse Certified Professional.

liamQ2• 18 years ago

this proves that MCTS certifications are bullshit (btw - I have an exam scheduled for January)

atourino• 18 years ago

How so?

sabat• 18 years ago

Because what they're testing (memorized "knowledge") isn't relevant in the real world (where praxis rules).

wynand• 18 years ago

She 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_fish3• 18 years ago

We 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

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.

jodrellblank• 18 years ago

If it really was proof, you would cancel your exam.

liamQ2• 18 years ago

it is proof - and I won't cancel my exam 'cause it's in my 'goals' for the year

mixmax• 18 years ago

maybe this says more about the certification than the girl.

socratees• 18 years ago

For any Microsoft certification, there are dumps everywhere on the internet. I'd rather be happy if the girl became a SJCP.

RavingGoat• 18 years ago

Meh, 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.

maurycy2• 18 years ago

Does it mean that if 15 mastered Python, it says more about Python than a guy? If so, what it precisely says?

mcfunley• 18 years ago

At 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.)

seshagiric2• 18 years ago

With 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• 18 years ago

During 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?

nostrademons2• 18 years ago

I 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• 18 years ago

How 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.

simpleenigma• 18 years ago

I've always thought that these certification programs were more of a game of trivial pursuit then a good gage of abilities.

natch2• 18 years ago

Scarred for life. Someone should call child protective services.

DaniFong5• 18 years ago

You know this how? Being threatened with being taken away from her family would be any better?

Leon• 18 years ago

I think it was a joke...

Prrometheus• 18 years ago

She 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• 18 years ago

Jeeblus, 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.

qqq• 18 years ago

The SAT is kinda boring and useless.

maurycy2• 18 years ago

All tests resulting in credentials are kinda boring and useless.

randomwalker2• 18 years ago

I'm from the same part of India that this girl is. This kind of crap is very common there. The kids who do this are not necessarily intelligent, they usually just crammed for years. Nor do they have a say in the matter. Everything is orchestrated by the parents. It's like a dog show -- the parents compete using their kids. Needless to say, the kid's childhood and normal development are completely derailed (I've seen it in person). The parents aren't evil; it's just a facet of the hyper-competitive society. The best way to describe it is that it's India's version of the contest in Little Miss Sunshine.

The negative comments here don't come close to capturing how messed up this is.

gruseom3• 18 years ago

I've seen this kind of thing a lot - it's not limited to India - and completely agree with you that it's almost always the parent(s) pushing the kid, and very sad. Every now and then you see some 11-year-old or 13-year-old finishing an undergraduate degree, paraded in front of foolish journalists who dutifully put out the next "genius" story. Same thing with most musical prodigies - the 9-year old performing with the local philharmonic or what have you.

Kids don't care about super-achievement of credentials. Mostly they just want to know their parents love them and to be like other kids. It's parents who perversely put their children through this, to fill their own ego needs. Your dog show analogy is unfortunately apt.

kashif• 18 years ago

The difference between you and her is that she did it and you dismissed her accomplishment no matter how little.

SingAlong• 18 years ago

I would upvote you a 1000 times if I could.

I read such stories almost every week in India. X kid doing that or this. All crap.

your point: the parents compete using their kids it's right.

We don't see any of these kids in the newspapers when they are grown up. Why? Because these kids aren't born for what they are forced to do. Once they start using their brains, they change and begin to pursue what they want.

senthil_rajasek• 18 years ago

"This kind of crap is very common there"... well the article definitely says that she broke a world record. How can that be a common feat?

The way I look at it, her parents are trying to show her the best path possible and use her skills (memorizing thirukkural when you are 3 is awesome, 1330 couplets ).

It certainly did not turn out so bad in Tiger Wood's case...

dcurtis• 18 years ago

This 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.

randomwalker2• 18 years ago

I 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.

mattmcknight• 18 years ago

Shouldn'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.

kirubakaran2• 18 years ago

I 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• 18 years ago

I think I smell "bias" against Microsoft in the headline.

known• 18 years ago

And 11-Year-Old Becomes Network Admin for Alabama School

http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/30/1443202

9 Year Old Girl Becomes Microsoft Certified "Professional"

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