Right or wrong, I take those mc* email sigs as a negative signal every time I see them.

Me too, but that's why folks are up in arms about these cents being discontinued. They were the first credible cents Microsoft ever had, and now MS is saying they're discontinued due to low adoption. MS wanted to see more MCSEs upgrade to an MCM. Well, duh, they can't, because the vast majority of MCSEs don't actually have skills.