> Your time is better spent working on side projects, contributing to open source, writing a blog, etc. I.e. do real-world stuff

Just FYI that at some companies, collecting certificates is indeed real world stuff. Some companies use it for marketing (“we have the most certifications in the industry”) and some need to to satisfy vendor partner requirements (“AWS Premier Partners are required to have X number of certificates”). It doesn’t seem fair to penalize a candidate just because they did what their company asked for.