I disagree. Cert studying is a good way of learning and validating your knowledge of a certain providers tool stack and way of doing things. My company provided

I disagree. Cert studying is a good way of learning and validating your knowledge of a certain providers tool stack and way of doing things. My company provided the learning time for me as a junior so that I could get up to speed with how they operate. I work with people who have a LOT more experience with Linux and enterprise networking, but they are understandably stumped if they have to deal with a cloud platform. It’s pretty confusing since everything has a ”name” and there are dependencies that aren’t obvious. Calling it purely marketing content is cynical because even documentation or tech talks could be interpreted as marketing if you are cynical enough. You can always choose not to go through their hoops and just study learning content but not book an exam. Learning platforms don’t really care.