People saying certs aren't worth it are only looking at half the picture. EVERYONE knows most certs suck, and the few that are good are drowned out by the volume of half ass shitty certs that are just money grabs.
But certs are an unfortunate necessity in a world where fresh college graduates without a days worth of experience in IT or Security are pre-filtering resumes. Certs ARE worth it, to get past HR. I always tell everyone who wants to get into security that the first infosec job is the hardest to get, and for that, you need to play the HR game, and that means a couple certs. You need to sit down in front of the hiring manager for an interview to get the job, your hiring manager will know your cert means nothing, almost guaranteed he never even asks you about any of them.
Your resume means everything to get in front of the manager, then your resume means jack shit to the manager. It is stupid, but is the world we live in.
You can get hired into infosec without the certs though, and that's know the hiring manager or know someone on the team you are applying for. Hiring managers can tell HR "I want to interview Joe Somebody, he said he will apply this week", and in security, id say more than 50% of the hires are indeed that. So to do this, go to the local professional meetups that meet monthly, go out for beers with the people, go to the local conferences and make friends with many people already in the industry, maybe do a talk at the meetups or local conference. Then when a position opens up at a place where there is someone you know, you now can get an interview.
But you really should be doing both at once. Most competent developers or IT people can pass Sec+ blindfolded, you most certainly do not have to take the class, at MOST skim the study guide book once, and your almost guaranteed to pass. It is a joke, everyone in the industry knows it, yet if you could dramatically increase your chances of getting an interview while you are taking the time to develop those relationships, what idiot wouldn't?