Most certificates only matter to people who don’t know anything about your job - only one I know that is universally recognized as “damn this guy is good” is CCIE, and even that is starting to fall off with CCIE Enterprise being kind of a proprietary joke.
While this is true, generally the people you are selling to aren't that technical whether this be if you are working as a consultant in a big company going out to clients or at an interview which would include non technical staff. While I'm busy I don't think much about certificates, but if I had a lull in work I'd definitely consider doing the AWS and Azure cloud architect/developer ones just to have a basic knowledge of ALL the services, not just the ones I frequently use.
Every time I’m in Germany it astounds me how defeatist the German mindset is when it comes to taking risks, nobody wants to run a business or compete with the big guys because they just assume they will automatically lose.
