We're an MVC/C#/.Net/MS SQL Server shop. We do corporate internal web development. Responsive design, Bootstrap/JQuery. Pretty generic stuff.
So the business has an odd pay bonus. If we earn a qualification that they consider helpful to our day work then we get a pay bump ($1Kish forever), if we do a harder tier of qualification then we get a larger bump ($1.5Kish forever). We have to pay for the qualifications ourselves.
The only one I know of is Microsoft's MCSD. I need alternatives. The concern/issue I have with Microsoft's MCSD is two fold:
- It is legitimately hard. Deals with obscure memorisation. Would take months per exam. Which is fine for learning, but bad when I am losing money every month it isn't done (literally almost $100/month). That's a lot of pressure.
- Due to the structure of the MCSD and work's pay thingy, I am rewarded only for the first exam ($1Kish) and third exam ($1.5Kish) but nothing for the middle exam. I'd like to find a two exam qualification where the second one is considered a fully realised qualification.
Assuming I didn't pay a cent for training and passed the first time, I am looking at $495 for the MCSD. That's do-able. But given the nature of the exams, they're almost designed to be failed. They bring up the most obscure parts of the most up to date spec for JavaScript/CSS/HTML/etc. Without Microsoft's official training materials you don't stand a chance, and frankly I don't feel that learning a spec in such intricate detail is a good use of my time (that's what Google is for).
I'd definitely consider qualifications only loosely related, like project management. It just has to be something I can sell to work as a legitimate value.
