
9 Year Old Girl Becomes Microsoft Certified "Professional" - ojbyrne
http://gizmodo.com/5116747/9-year-old-girl-becomes-the-youngest-microsoft-certified-professional
======
Eliezer
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.

~~~
randomwalker
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.

~~~
gruseom
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.

~~~
DaniFong
Actually, kids can be hyper-focused on credentials. That's why they're so
susceptible. The very same behavioral triggers can create obsessions in
videogames, especially RPG's. The nice thing about 'real-world' credentials is
that they have a path leading out of that mess, whereas videogames often
don't.

~~~
gruseom
I'm unconvinced. Sure, children can internalize anything very quickly - the
question is why this rather than that? I'm sure that little girl was very
focused on achieving her Microsoft certification. But I'll bet you the task
itself was originally handed to her by a parent, and that her motivation had
everything to do with pleasing that parent.

As for "a path leading out of that mess", the only path I know is growing as a
person. What's sad about these manufactured prodigies is that they end up
having to do a lot of that the hard way, if they do it at all.

~~~
DaniFong
I think you underestimate the agency that a nine year old can have, and the
influence of the extended family, friends, and role models. It's probable that
the specific task was handed to her, yes. And it's often true that parents
push their children too far. But I think it's also possible she decided to do
it on her own after reading or hearing some inspirational story.

I am _projecting_ my own experience as a child onto her, but when I was her
age I heard about Microsoft credentials. I considered trying for them, but my
mother's friend told me they were a distraction, and gave me a copy of Turbo
C++ instead. I can't remember ever thinking about pleasing my parents. It
never entered my conscious thought. I just knew I wanted to learn to program
computers, and I couldn't, in that time, be interested in computers as a kid
and envision Microsoft's credentials with the disdain that I do now. I suspect
it's the same now, in India.

It's true that the only way out of credentialism is growing oneself as a
person, and finding a way to develop a self-referent identity. The _advantage_
is that one grows while striving, and one can often find oneself in much
better place, with better social support, and deeper values. It's a lot more
difficult to see this in the construct of an RPG, or in most public high-
schools.

~~~
gruseom
Yes, I acknowledge what you're talking about is real
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=400286>), and the two phenomena are
quite different, though they may be difficult to distinguish from the outside.

------
biohacker42
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?

~~~
nostrademons
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
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.

~~~
nostrademons
27\. This was about 1997.

I was in kindergarten when people were still using 8088s.

------
mattmcknight
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.

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

------
mixmax
maybe this says more about the certification than the girl.

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

~~~
RavingGoat
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.

------
natch
Scarred for life. Someone should call child protective services.

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

~~~
Leon
I think it was a joke...

~~~
DaniFong
_nods_

Point taken. Some people actually do stuff like this, though, and I don't
think jokes like this should be propagated (or at least unopposed) on HN.

~~~
natch
Noted. I do try to hold back my silly humor somewhat on HN. Thanks for the
nudge back on course.

------
seshagiric
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.

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

~~~
wynand
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_fish
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.

~~~
blasdel
He did something creative, she just passed a helpdesk test.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Perhaps when she is _thirty-three percent older_ she'll be more creative, too!

Or, instead of showing off her chops, perhaps she'll prefer to quietly rake in
the cash as a Windows programmer. It's not like she'd be the only one to make
that choice.

~~~
tome
So your first argument is that he's "merely three years older", and then your
response to a rebuttal is that he's as much as "thirty-three percent older".

~~~
mechanical_fish
The sad thing is, I actually noticed this inconsistency. But I decided to
leave it in just to see who noticed. ;)

But if you want to be more serious about it: Sure, I concede the rebuttal.
Gaskin's a very creative programmer. He also works on stuff that I actually
care about. I agree that passing a Microsoft certification is not in the same
league as the _least_ thing that the guy has done. And I agree that cramming
for Microsoft tests is not an especially great activity to encourage a nine-
year-old to do.

None of which alters my initial reaction: Congratulate the girl and move on.
Just because she's no Gaskin doesn't mean she deserves to be the scapegoat for
things that are not her fault (the purported meaninglessness of her prized
credential; the bureaucratic, credentialist nature of the Microsoft IT
consulting ecosystem; the existence of cram schools and dominating parents;
the insecurity of Western IT folks about the rise of the Indian software
industry; and the fact that she is _nine years old_ and can't necessarily be
expected to understand any of this). She's a living, breathing kid who may be
reading this thread _right now_ \-- a kid with the potential to become
creative and talented, who may _already be_ creative and talented when she's
not being paraded in front of news cameras. She's not a hypothetical pawn in
our intellectual game.

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

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

------
kirubakaran
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.

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

------
gaius
What's remarkable is that grown adults become MCPs.

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

~~~
rbanffy
Well... I can tell I wouldn't pay more for one.

Even if I used something Microsoft ;-)

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

