I'm about to say negative things. I don't like saying negative things, particularly because someone could misread them as having personal animus behind them, which I don't have.
There's a particular type of college student who is not ready to work in a real job. They believe themselves incapable of working in real jobs, they signal this incapability, and employers generally hate working with them because they're needy and unprofessional. They don't thrive unless they have someone telling them "Do X then Y then Z" and then providing constant positive feedback ("100 points for X!"), which is a teacher-student relationship, not an employer-employee relationship.
Someone getting a certification is signaling a desire to continue being a student. Someone desiring to be an employee signals this desire by putting down the books and getting a job.
Whatever marginal value they have as a signal of commitment is swamped by their negative signaling. Top caliber talent won't usually be certified; why waste the time getting "certified" by organizations that are probably less competent than you?
Successive rounds of adverse selection produce a "certified" pool of candidates who are unwilling or unable to achieve a basic level of facility in their field on their own, which is its own negative signal.
I agree with that basically. I've spent the last 10 years kinda being a "fixer" but mostly a network engineer. I haven't had time for any certs, I'm too busy working... When I have time for certs, who knows what'll be going on.
There's a particular type of college student who is not ready to work in a real job. They believe themselves incapable of working in real jobs, they signal this incapability, and employers generally hate working with them because they're needy and unprofessional. They don't thrive unless they have someone telling them "Do X then Y then Z" and then providing constant positive feedback ("100 points for X!"), which is a teacher-student relationship, not an employer-employee relationship.
Someone getting a certification is signaling a desire to continue being a student. Someone desiring to be an employee signals this desire by putting down the books and getting a job.