Not to terribly echo Newman's response, but there was a good portion of the response that was very much the same on my end - it was like finishing one thing (a major personal goal of mine, in fact), only to see other challenges that I want to tackle.
Professionally, it's had a few minor effects at the office - while I wish I could say that it's brought about a salary increase (it hasn't), I have been consulted more often about architecting solutions, and I'm finding that I'm questioned less when I do the architecting for my own apps, which I suspect falls into the 'respect' category. By and large, though, certification for myself has been a self-enlightenment and self-improvement matter more than one of professional advancement.
Theodore Jonathan Casser
SCJP/SCSNI/SCBCD/SCWCD/SCDJWS/SCMAD/SCEA/MCTS/MCPD... and so many more letters than you can shake a stick at!
I don't think and don't expect I can get any finacial benefit or promotion from SCEA. The force pushing me to go for SCEA is just self-imporvement, nothing more.
I think that sallary increases can happen, but it 's difficult to get one in the same company. But it gets easier to get a new job with a better sallary, i think.... The best thing are more job opportunities, a better curriculum vitae, knowledge recognition, self learning, etc. []s Fabiano G. Souza SCWCD/SCBCD/SCPJ2/SCJA/MSCD.NET/MCAD.NET/MCP+SB