Certs for me can be a net negative - if you have one, I expect you to know shit. An answer of “I don’t know, but here’s my take on it” is a good answer in my book, because we can’t all know everything and I’m generally more interested in attitude and thought process than pure knowledge. But that changes when you are certified and brag about it on your resume. That bar goes higher, for no apparent gain to be honest. Example: if you have “certified AWS Foo Bar” and you don’t know what a vpc is, that’s a red flag for me. It wouldn’t be otherwise, even if you had AWS experience listed, because maybe you were just working with ECS and didn’t need to know jack shit about vpcs.

About the only situation in which a cert is a plus is when you have close to zero relevant experience. But all of the above still applies.