[hpatel]

Certification is a form of social proof, and a shortcut to find people who might be qualified in some industries.

They are worth it if your 'customer' (employer, actual customer, other) cares. But, thinking about acquiring social proof rather than certifications leads to a more interesting set of ideas.

For eg., you can acquire Salesforce certification for their platform or you can build a Salesforce app that customers use and rate highly. In turn, you would use the app to generate revenue or give it away for free so you can get multi million consulting contracts(slight exaggeration).

If you are looking to be cool with the tech crowd, no they are never worth it. If you want to provide a service to customers, social proof matters.