Honestly if I see a cert I run the other direction. To me it speaks to the type of person, I would much rather see open source or just experience
I have certs because my boss asked me to get them, as they play a part in his business' ability to obtain partner status with the various cloud vendors.
It is confusing to me that this chain of events would lead you to dismiss me out of hand, or make value judgements about what type of person I am.
I think it's really hard to get started in tech, and you can of course get benefit from actually studying the technologies and tools you'll be using in your job ;-) A certification is really good if you have a very specific use case and you need someone for a narrow type of work. I almost never want to hire someone for a narrow use case though. But if I was hiring contractors to fix something very specific on only aws say, then maybe it would be useful.
Of course I'm just some random person on the internet; getting a few certs might help at the start, listing things on your resume that you worked on is much better as an aid to getting interviewed and hired.
So generally I'm looking for creative problem solvers that do open source work and learn as they go on their own. I've just seen over my career that people who play the cert game are usually on the other end of this spectrum. I'm obviously painting in broad strokes here
How I build teams has worked really well for me, but there are lots of great ways of building teams that create value which are likely very different from mine.
I don't think he's making value judgements based on the fact that you have certs, but rather based on the fact that you choose to put certs on your resume over something else, like an open source project. When people write their resumes they usually need to cut out things and include only the most important qualifications and experience for the job. So he's making the value judgement based on how you think about those certifications. They signal "this paper that anyone can get with a bunch of memorization and studying is the best I have"
I share a similar opinion. I wouldn't reject someone who put certs on their resume just based on that, but to me it's a negative signal. The same goes for people who put MOOCs on their resume.
Sometimes people don't have the pedigree or the opportunity to prove themselves in a high value position, so certs is the only thing available to signal competence.
The fact that many people (in this thread) look down on it is directly responsible for putting a glass ceiling over some people and reducing upward mobility. It's just bad judgment.
I mean it's one thing to require them to do a skill test, but to outright filter them or toss their resumes in the bin is unequivocally shitty.
I have read tons of tech books (many of them way better than certificates on the same topics). I do not list them on my Linkedin/CV.
I hope hiring orgs don't run away from candidates simply because they undertook a certification. But I understand the caution - my org has had bad experiences with coursework-only MS in computer science career changers who turned out to not have any real skills and maybe not even any desire to learn any real skills.
Every member of a software team does not need to super star autodidact. In a lot of cases it would actually be counterproductive to have such a composition.