It depends on the market you're after. Sophisticated buyers won't ask for certifications. They can look at your work and understand your value. Those are the cl

It depends on the market you're after. Sophisticated buyers won't ask for certifications. They can look at your work and understand your value. Those are the clients my firm is after. Leads that ask for certifications drop out of our sales process, and I refer them elsewhere. Part of the problem with certifications is that lots of students look at them as a means to an end. This is wrong and counterproductive. Learning to pass a certification is the laziness, most counterproductive exercise you can do to learn security. Yet this is common. Learn by doing. Then get a cert if someone demands it or offers you more money for one. If more people approached certification that way, there would be less industry-wide pushback about it.