At work, a biz discussion turned into a chit-chat this morning. A bit of surprise to me, my fellow IS engineer has decided to give up his SCJP4 certification prep and started to prep for GMAT instead. Being a CCNP & MCSE, he came to a painful conclusion that the certification path is too tiresome since they expire (in real term, as well as fading in your mind) before you can use it for work or for job hunting.
Over years of turmoils about to pursue certifications or not, I total agree. Unfortunately, I have a MS in MIS from a prominent school. A few years later, I still don't see a door opened for me to the management track. So, I'd say MS doesn't work, since it labels you as a techie more than anything else. A techie needs something else to package/wrap/color himself or herself in order to impress your future employer that he/she is biz/management material. Recently, a few of my techie friends spent a lot (tuition/time/energy) to get their MBA. That seemed to have paid off. All found positions that a techie would never have dreamed of getting.
