This heavily depends on the technology involved and on what your preferred career path is. There are technology stacks where in corporate sectors you will only

This heavily depends on the technology involved and on what your preferred career path is. There are technology stacks where in corporate sectors you will only find "paper tigers", with Cisco and MS certifications being the most significant example (although the Cisco's certicication system is surprisingly sane in the sense that it is not gradual). I somehow thing that I mostly built most of my reputation by mostly ignoring both vendor certifications and academic qualifications, or to frame it better by not ever using such things to land a job or gig.