That is very nice of your company to pay for the workers' certifications. Do you think it is useful to your work?

It's useful for both me and the company, I work in consulting and these certs are an easy metric for clients to understand. The bonus structure was setup so that we can go to market with "X people certified in Y" as a feather in our hat. A certification by itself doesn't say much but when backed with a few years of project experience it's a powerful combination. So I take these tests for the bonus but they're also valuable to my firm and to me too, i'm always learning something new about a technology i thought i knew like the back of my hand.

/i've replied to every comment, i know this isn't an AMA and I hope it's not too off topic.