Are certifications worth it?

Short answer: No.

Longer answer: No 99% of the time. There is that 1% of cases where a job will hard-require certain certifications, but those are generally pretty rare. I've been on 1,000+ hiring loops across my career across top companies like Meta, Robinhood, and more, and I have literally never seen a certification make a difference in whether we gave a candidate an interview.

A much better use of your time would be doing side projects, contributing to open-source, and of course, following the advice in Taro 😛

Certificates don't hurt but they're also not very impressive. You should not rely on courses to get you interviews on their own.

The question to ask yourself is, "what shows achievement"? Describe your certificate in a way that shows achievement if possible. Enrolling in a course to get a cert is easy, but being in the top 10% of your course is hard.

I left some thoughts here: Do Coursera/MOOC certs or tech certifications reflect badly on your resume?

Also some great answers here: Are certifications worth the time?