[twalla]

Cop out answer: It depends.

I've never cared about certs when hiring and have never really had it come up or be a big deal when interviewing - it's only ever gotten the attention of recruiters or old school companies that I never really had an interest in to begin with. The real purpose of the certs is for consultancies to say "we have x number of AWS certified engineers available for your task" and then depending on the number of certs associated with that entity, AWS will send them more/bigger leads.

I'd take the time you would spend cramming for the cert and study pretty much anything else that interested you and take the money and buy yourself a nice bottle of wine or a fancy dinner.