Brain Dumping And Its Impact On MCSE Certification
Your MCSE certification is an investment you're making in your future, in your career. Certification is cheap – it's only $125 per exam, and getting a full MCSE takes 4 to 7 successfully completed exams, depending on the configuration of an MCSE you'd like (Networking versus system support, for instance.)
Unfortunately, there are less than ethical people who sell copies of all the certification questions online, usually from countries like Pakistan or Qatar. (The reason why they moved overseas is because Microsoft successfully sued a US based braindump vendor and got him put into prison.) People buy these braindumps as a cramming tool; rather than actually know the subject under question, they're buying the answers to specific questions.
Now, from the perspective of you, a legitimate MCSE holder, this is a bad deal. That person is probably an incompetent idiot who still thinks computers come with cup holders. That person may become one of your coworkers, making YOUR life more difficult as they cause chaos and spread idiocy through the company you work for.
Even worse, people with "braindump" MCSEs can taint the value of MCSEs in the eyes of their employer. Even if they get fired quickly for incompetence (quite likely), they may have poisoned the well for other, honest MCSEs down the road.
The usual justifications for using a braindump site are that it's a "study aid" for someone who "already has the skills". In practice, that justification doesn't hold water at all. If the person knows the subject, then they can answer the questions without seeing them ahead of time. If they don't know it, they should actually study the course materials until they do understand it. Being an IT worker is generally frustrating enough. Being an IT worker who's blindingly, blinkingly incompetent is far worse.
The other justification is that the braindump helps overcome the "too difficult" questions that Microsoft and their training partners use in the exams, in particular, "difficult" questions that don't match up with any practical real world application. The fallacy of this argument is pretty obvious, but just in case it's not to you – it's in Microsoft's interest to make getting an MCSE as difficult as possible, because that keeps the value of the MCSE program high. If you're an honest MCSE holder, it means that you can command a better salary for your certification.
MCSE Certification
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