Yes, I understand that and it's good to have different viewpoints; and many companies these days make the same mistake of hiring based on "certs" because they are too lazy to do the due diligence to property check credentials, references and projects of employees; so they think they have some "legal protection" from hiring "certs".

This supports my earlier point, in my view, that people and organizations often look for "short cuts" for health (as I mentioned in the context of "multivitamins" and the same is true for "certs"); however, my experience is that top tech companies (and myself as a hiring manager / director level before) do not care.

Google, for example, does not seem to care if people have certs. It was not long ago Google contacted many forum members (here) some interviewed and shared their experiences; Google did not care about "certs".. they cared about "show me your skills".. not "show me your certs".

In fact, if I was in an interview and people asked about "certs" I would politely say "thanks but this interview is over" as I would never work for a company which places an emphasis on such superficial things.

If I want evidence of "certain body of knowledge" (wearing the hat of a hiring manager) I will ask them to "show me" via the interview process, their portfolio, prior projects, social networks, references and the like. If they show me a cert, I'll just laugh (inside) personally, and I've done a lot of interviews over the years as a part of the hiring process.

However, I do understand the "multivitamin" culture of short cuts, CYA, etc; but I have talked to a lot of hiring managers over the years; and some even say "I will not hire junior or lower mid level person until they have participated in an open source type of project" like Apache2, Hadoop, or something substantial.. None look for certs, not one.

Having said that, it's always good we share different views and we certainly don't need to agree on everything, all the time; so please continue to share your ideas, pro and con, if you have strong feelings either way. After all, it's good we have different points of view and experiences to share with others.