[sclug] BCS Membership

[Neil Haughton]

>
> I'm curious to find out how many people on the list are BCS members, 
> and whether it's worth becoming a member. Does it actually make a 
> difference?



I'm not a member (yet), but a colleague is: In his view it's like 
membership of any professional Institution (I'm a MIIE IEng etc etc) - 
it says something about your professional standards, your level of 
competence (but probably not your programming skill set).  When you're 
looking for a job or promotion it's one of those things that helps gets 
you in the interview room, amongst the wheat and ahead of the chaff, as 
it were. My professional memberships have certainly done that for me. 
The higher level of membership you can qualify for, the better in this 
respect. However don't expect BCS to represent you as if your trade 
union - not that sort of organisation.

As to whether it's worth the money - if ?15 or so a month gets you a job 
/ better job, can you argue?

HTH

Neil Haughton