Howdy -- wow -- that article was AWFUL (what it said, anyway). That's just ridiculous and probably *evil* to ask someone *with experience* to work for free. Some companies would do it the other way 'round and say, "If we're going to spend the money to train you, then we expect you to stay with us for one year..." or something like that, which is often quite reasonable. But these folks are saying, "We'll train you, but you have to pay for it by working for free..."
OK, anyway, I wanted to address your other question. We don't have enough statistics to know if the SCBCD is going to *directly* translate into a job. It might help if the employer is choosing between otherwise *equally-experienced* candidates, to be the one with the cert. Some employers pay a great deal of attention to certifications, while others do not care at ALL about certifications, and instead care only about real work experience.
In general, though, the certification *can* help you answer many interview questions correctly -- perhaps on topics that another candidate who did NOT prepare for the exam would not be able to answer, even if that candidate had a lot of real world experience. Most of us tend to *learn* only the things we need for our current projects. At Sun, we see a lot of people fail exams -- despite a lot of practical experience -- because they knew ONLY the things that they used in their projects. They may have known those things REALLY well, but they had too many other gaping holes in their knowledge. And it's the same with EJB. Someone may have a ton of experience... on a 1.0 server! Which means they may never have used entity beans, or someone else may have experience with BMP and will view the EJB world only from a BMP perspective even though *now* with EJB 2.0 it makes much more sense to use only CMP (with a 2.0-compliant server).
So, if the question is "does preparing for the exam help?" I would say YES. Does actually going through with it and getting the certification help? Maybe. Maybe not. We tend to think that it's usually worth it, but it is certainly no guarantee, especially today. But again, it can help you have the edge if you are competing with someone who has equal experience.
And yes, the exam was designed to reflect the experience level of someone who had been working with the technology for six months. Now, in a real-world environment, with six months experience you would probably have spent a great DEAL of that time on administrative/configuration/work-around issues, etc. related to your particular app server. But that experience will help you ONLY if you are applying for a job that uses that same server. In other words, if someone wants to hire someone who knows the particular quirks, problems, work-arounds for a particular vendor's server, then it may be worth it to them to find someone who knows THAT server, even if their overall EJB knowledge is weak. That might not be a smart choice, though, because we see people make terrible mistakes in their code because while they DID know how to get their server working and deploy beans to it, they didn't have enough deep understanding of how things worked to be able to write smart, portable code (knowing both what to write and also where and when to put it).
Now, as for the PRICE of the exam, I, too wish they were a little lower. But I can tell you *something* about that. Sun is under a tremendous legal (and ethical/moral) obligation to make the exams as fair as possible. That means extensive analysis is done by a separate "psychometric" vendor whose job it is to evaluate the beta results and carefully prepare the exam in such a way that whoever takes it will have an exam that is exactly equivalent to everyone else, even though exam candidates do NOT all see the same questions!
For example, your exam will contain questions that are different from what another candidate might see, but both of your exams are statistically proven to be equivalent in difficulty level, and both will be drawn from the same objective areas. (e.g. you won't get 15
thread questions while someone else gets only 2, for instance).
Also, the exams are edited and reviewed by the psychometricians who ensure, for example, that while native English speakers have an advantage, obviously, the exam can still be as clear as possible to non-native speakers. They also check the wording to be absolutely certain that we are not using ambiguous terms.
If you've been on javaranch cert forums for long, you'll know that we are always saying things like, "Yes, that's a problem with that mock exam question, but don't worry because the real exam does NOT have ambiguous questions like that..." That's because none of us are able to put our mock exams through that process.
Also, some exam takers have threatend Sun with lawsuits because they did not pass the exam. Part of my job with Sun certification is to review the exams of people who have not passed, in order to verify that there was not a mistake and that they indeed answered the questions incorrectly. So legal and administrative work to deal with people who simply didn't study enough and now want to complain ("I can't POSSIBLY have failed the exam... I'm a Java expert!" is something I hear a lot from people who wouldn't know a thread if it hit them in the face) is another part of the overhead that Sun incurs.
So it isn't just the initial development of the exam that is expensive, but also having the exam in process is another ongoing expense -- there are a lot of people who have to do work all the time, to administer the vouchers, maintain the exams, etc.
Remember, certification is *not* the business that Sun is in -- it is simply an industry standard certification that Sun does only because customers ask for it. This is definitely *not* some big money-making machine, and the people who work in that department and struggle with their budgets (and see co-workers laid off) would fall on the floor laughing to hear that people think it is bringing in huge amounts of money.
That said, I do wish there were a way for them to be more affordable. But unless Prometric and all of the other partners involved reduced what *they* charge Sun for the exam, it would probably be difficult. My recommendation is to choose your certifications wisely, and you can always go through the process of *preparing* for a certification, but hold off on actually taking the exam until you think it will be a benefit or when the expense is worth it to you.
But hey, javaranch is free
The main reason I started javaranch in the first place was to make it easier and friendlier for people to prepare for the SCJP exam.
cheers,
Kathy
The next time I am going to take the exam, I am going to tell Sun in their customer survey , that the exam is EXPENSIVE 
and not all Java programmers can afford it. Sun certification does improve one's knowledge but does not guarantee anything in the job's prospects. In fact, most of the times it does not help at all. It can be used as a marketing spree to woo some of the recruitment agencies, and if you are lucky, they may fall for it, and you may have ur CV shortlisted......and in the technical interview, it is YOU(your experience and knowledge) and ONLY YOU, and not ur CERTIFICATION, who will be answering the holy technical questions.
