The AWS Associate certs are similar to what you describe, particularly the "Solutions Architect" which is IMO common sense for a systems admin. The "Developer" one, though, requires memorizing some trivia around APIs and limits (eg., SQS queue sizes and stuff like that).
However, the AWS Professional certs are said to be MUCH harder, and while multiple choice, require reading a lot of scenario information quickly, and then selecting more than one answer (sometimes not being told how many answers). I haven't taken it but I expect to take the DevOps Professional exam at some point. I could be wrong, but everything I've seen so far, including sample questions, suggests it requires a fair bit of hands-on experience.
However, where everything I said becomes false is around the culture of answer dumps. I'm pretty sure there are dumps sold out there for cheaters to purchase. It's a pretty silly thing to do, especially because you'll be fired if you demonstrate incompetence in the field, but it does undermine the multiple choice test mechanism for certifications.
I would never try to get a pure AWS job with just theoretical knowledge.
From what I can tell, AWS recently offloaded their certification program onto a third party, so I doubt it will improve anytime soon.
https://www.cncf.io/certification/training/
(Disclosure: I helped develop the exam.)
(Also heard your interview on Software Engineering Daily the other day, very informative)
And, thank you. I've been a listener of Jeff's for a while and enjoyed our chance to chat. https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2019/01/14/kubernetes-i...
So you're tested on your understanding of the platform but not on your actual competences on it.
I've seen this in other areas however: people getting LPIC certifications and failing to run a proper grep.
In my experience, Red Hat is one of the few tech companies that get the certification program right by using an hands-on approach: either you actually are capable of performing tasks at a certain level, or you get not certification at all.
There are many professionals certified on AWS that aren't really able to perform properly on that platform, for example. Add the fact that plain old system administration I'd dying (less and less needed with the cloud and things like ansible)... And here we are.