[b5n]

IME certs are good for two things, novices who lack fundamentals and vendor partnerships (discounts and/or feature access that requires N certified devs/admins/etc.).

There's also the case where documentation is poor/nonexistent, but the vendor charges customers for 'training' and all of a sudden useful resources become available. I've always felt it's a weird way to treat _already_ paying customers, but seems common in the networking world.

[acdha]

One other one: you work in an environment where that is required for some reason. I’ve known people who got certs because their company contracted for a client who paid more or required some fraction of the staff to be certified. If you work in that kind of area, not leaving money on the table is certainly understandable.

[pjmlp]

Quite common in enterprise space not only networking.