Even degrees don't mean much. It's not like you get to skip the fizzbuzz and trivia/whiteboard gauntlet by virtue of a fancy CS degree from Yale. Obviously certifications are worth less than Ivy League degrees, so that should give some idea what certifications are worth.
The basic issue is that there are plenty of people with certifications and degrees that can't produce, they are completely helpless. And there are plenty of people with no certifications or degrees that are top notch producers. There's no correlation. You have to test each person, you can't rely on the paperwork from some third party to mean anything.
A related issue is it is not uncommon at all to find people creating certification sets and teaching university classes who have no experience doing design or development of real projects. Their experience is non-existent, also known as academic knowledge. It's not surprising that many students doing well grade-wise in these programs can not do real world work, other than perhaps pursue the PhD and join a university themselves to pass on their academic perspective, devoid of real world capability, to the next generation of academics.
On the other hand, a portfolio of their own work and past creations is a pretty good indicator of actual talent. People know what John Carmack, Larry Wall, and Linus Torvald's skills are, and it has nothing to do with any degrees they may or may not have.
I would guess that there is a very high correlation between CS degrees and programming or problem solving ability. I've worked in a pretty good lab full of grad students and their average skill level was dramatically higher than what you find at an average company (or at least, what I've seen working at half a dozen or so places), let alone what you see from average job applicants. Upon graduation most of these people easily found jobs at places like Google. They didn't get stumped on FizzBuzz because they had spent their time on abstract academic problems without real-world application.
There are definitely some people with CS degrees who cannot code, and you don't want to hire those people. The existence of these exceptions however doesn't mean that degrees aren't a strong positive signal when you are looking to hire somebody competent.
I think there's at least some reactionary bias against formal qualifications in the software industry and in startups. Some of the old professions like law or medicine do go too far the other way, but it's just as wrong to fetishize "real world experience".
The basic issue is that there are plenty of people with certifications and degrees that can't produce, they are completely helpless. And there are plenty of people with no certifications or degrees that are top notch producers. There's no correlation. You have to test each person, you can't rely on the paperwork from some third party to mean anything.
A related issue is it is not uncommon at all to find people creating certification sets and teaching university classes who have no experience doing design or development of real projects. Their experience is non-existent, also known as academic knowledge. It's not surprising that many students doing well grade-wise in these programs can not do real world work, other than perhaps pursue the PhD and join a university themselves to pass on their academic perspective, devoid of real world capability, to the next generation of academics.
On the other hand, a portfolio of their own work and past creations is a pretty good indicator of actual talent. People know what John Carmack, Larry Wall, and Linus Torvald's skills are, and it has nothing to do with any degrees they may or may not have.