Exactly. If someone wants to demonstrate that they can use Github the best way is for their personal Github to be full of well-structured projects.

What if you have both certifications and skills?

Being difficult != good. It can take years to prep and pass a CCIE as well but it’s not really a good indicator of being a good network engineer, despite the esoteric protocol details you have to memorize.

I spent some time last year getting some "beginner" AWS certifications and those are definitely worth it; I spent a few dozen hours following online courses (A Cloud Guru is pretty good, and if you have the time you only need to subscribe for a month or so) and feel like I went from superficial knowledge (like sorta knowing what AWS, EC2, RDS etc are) to having err, certified superficial knowledge. TL;DR I know more about AWS now without actually having worked in it.

That said, I wouldn't go for any of the other certifications without actually working / having worked professionally in AWS. Or anything you can get certified for, for that matter.

I mean iirc I've got some cisco certifications as well but I and everyone else cheated on the exam and don't remember anything of it.