They're useless if you want to work for a small company filled with talented developers (a startup for instance). Most of those people will actually consider it

They're useless if you want to work for a small company filled with talented developers (a startup for instance). Most of those people will actually consider it a knock against you. If you want to work for a big company, certifications are still a plus. In my experience though, having the right combination of skills is probably more important for corporate work. I got my first job at MasterCard because I'd used vi, perl, and mysql. Nobody cared that I wasn't great at any of them, just that I could hit the ground running.