I'm a "highly-motivated dropout" and I accumulated a few certs in a previous life because my employer paid for it and it was for areas in which I already had so

I'm a "highly-motivated dropout" and I accumulated a few certs in a previous life because my employer paid for it and it was for areas in which I already had some knowledge (mid-level CompTIA stuff, Agile, AWS). I'd typically buy the book, read through it in week or two and highlight it to shore up my weaknesses, take notes, then do the test. I never once failed via this method. As it turns out, however, this is a very niche approach. The vast majority of my peers looking to get such certs would go to a "bootcamp" and spend months memorizing test banks compiled by third parties. There's a gulf of difference between somebody that gets a cert to validate/enhance their knowledge and somebody that does so to get a piece of paper. The amount of people that fall into the latter category seems to dwarf those in the former as an industry has been built around prepping under-experienced people for these certifications in the hopes of advancing their career. This is all to say that the sentiment expressed in this article is unfortunately largely correct. I've since let all of mine lapse because the employers I now work for value demonstrable technical acumen over something that somebody likely bulldozed their way through four years ago and requires $200 annually to renew.