I’ve had 9 of the then 10 AWS certifications at one point and right now I have 7.

There have always been “brain dumps” for certifications as far back as 2007 with Microsoft certs.

The AWS certificates are easy to cram and pass with no real world experience. I only got mine as a guided learning path with a goal at the end. In fact, I passed the first one in 2018 without ever logging into the console and got all three (at the time) associate level certs within 6 months after opening the console at my job at a startup and the two “Pro Certs”.

Even AWS Professional Services (AWS internal consulting department where the consultants work for AWS full time) doesn’t make certifications a requirement coming in. But you have to get a couple within 90 days (associate) and 6-9 months (pro cert) depending on your position. I’m no longer there.