As a consumer of them, I love them: a company with an influential, widely-used technology or platform spends a ton of money signaling to the industry exactly what's important to know about it, creating training curriculum for it, and a whole infrastructure to verify when someone knows it, I'm going to take them up on all of that, especially in the cases where the investment is like $100, a little bit of studying (the likes of which I'd want to do anyway if I'm learning something new, and I'm happy to have their structured, prioritized list of topics and/or guided curriculum) and a couple hours taking an online-proctored exam. From that perspective, I don't have a good reason not to have a certification in something that's super relevant to my role.

In interview/hiring situations where they're not expected or effectively required, they make for great chat fodder and a really good opportunity to exhibit awareness about yourself, the industry, and how the person on the other side of the table might perceive certifications given the context.

God I hatelove this type of comment. You're totally right, but it's a complete repudiation of my initial reflex, which is to make a mockery of this.

Great perspective. I'm going to do this. Haha.