[babarock]

You can see from the answers in this thread that certifications, if worthy of anything at all, are deeply looked down upon by the same kind of people who read HN. And more often than not, these are the kind of people you want to be working with/for.

Generally, certifications, however, are appreciated by the stereotype of the HR department and non-technical managers of large organizations. If you have a certification from a brand name stating that you know how to use a particular technology, then no one is going to be blame for hiring you, even if it doesn't work out. That's the stereotype and unfortunately, it is far from uncommon.

You were spot on that people "can just clear this certification program just by preparing through previous question dumps. Does this do any good to anyone", but that's a broader problem relative to standardized test. To a large extent the same could be said about your degree.

Finally, as mentioned globally in the comments, experience is far more interesting than certifications. However, I may add that, for programmers, nothing, absolutely nothing, beats a code portfolio.