The Microsoft TechRewards Program will close on January 6, 2017. (ref) All challenges have cleaned up now (Oct-06-2016).

Really don’t have any hard feeling about this. The only reward attracted me was the AppToCerts, which rewarded you the MS certificate if passed two challenges. Other than it, to achieve a $2 reward, you have to complete at least 3 challenges, and the rewards are all donations.

So here I will list the reasons why I think it is going to fail:

Low Profit Rewards

For some usable rewards, like Skype credit, you have to complete more than 10 challenges, and each challenges takes around half hour to finish. Five hours for a $25 USD, it even not matches the basic salaries.

Outdated instruction

I followed instruction to complete a challenge, which takes around an hour to fix an issue because of the wrong description. The challenge is re-listed each month, but no one tries to correct it.

Slow website performance

The layout of website likes 5 years ago, and felt lagged when loading content.

Lack of Popular Techniques

Microsoft wants to advertise its own products (C#, WPF, ect.), so there is rarely Java/Ruby/Python challenges (I couldn’t say no because I don’t use it very often).

Not Fun at All

Every challenges like ADs, promoting Microsoft latest tools or techniques, but not fun at all. It likes reading a textbook while go through its description.

No Feedback

If follows the instruction, most of the challenges will be passed, however, if it failed, you couldn’t get any feedbacks to point out the problems. You even couldn’t retry the challenge.

Redundant Challenges

Because the challenges re-list every month, and not a lot of new ones added. Moreover, you couldn’t retake any challenges no matter you passed or failed. Although the challenges repeated each month, for people who take them, those are redundant.

All in all, goodbye Microsoft TechRewards.

~ EOF ~