The — Google Cloud Professional Cloud Developer — Beta challenge
Hi all,
I managed to get my certification in the beta program and many people asked me to write an article about my impressions and including some training recommendations. So — here we go! P.S.: This article includes my personal impressions and my personal thoughts ;)
Beta:
The beta consists of 100 questions, for which you have 4 hours of time for clearing those. This gives you approx. 2,5 minutes for each question. I have heard many feedbacks that time is a challenging factor, but I did never had any time issues.
I went through all the questions as fast as possible and all the ones where I was feeling uncomfortable or I just wanted to have a little more dedicated time to evaluate, I marked for a later review. After 2 hours I finished going through all of them and solved around 65 of them with certainty — leaving me with arround 2 hours and 35 questions left.
At this point, I decided to take a break. The time is not stoppable, but it is definitely more important to have a clear head than time. So I went out, took some fresh air and brought some fresh coffee and coke again in the room.
Finally, I had approx. 5 questions left where I didn´t have any clue, but it is always important to make the best guess.
After the test you have to wait till the beta program finishes. For me this took about 1 month, before I got to know that I actually had passed it. What I really love is that you receive a Google Cloud Beta cap and an additional swag item like a Hoodiee, which is being sent to you. Will share pictures of them, as soon they arrive ;)
Impression:
The Cloud Developer cert was my first Google Cloud certification and I felt quite comfortable all the time. The questions differed from quite complex questions which needed dedicated thinking to answer those — up to questions which were just asking on technical expertise, which you either know or don´t know. (quite tough — e.g. Kubernetes config questions)
There were also some coding questions integrated, where you are given a small piece of code and need to review it with 4 possible action items as answers. That´s it. These may take some time and are not answerable without dedicated evaluation. e.g. you may give a recommendation on how to improve performance significantly.
Also, many of the questions are basic developing questions, which don´t even require dedicated Google Cloud know how. This might be questions around software deployment, coding best practices or realease pipelines.
Personally speaking, the Google Cloud Developer certification is definitely manageable and much easier than the Professional Architect. Keep though in mind that this evaluation is coming from a former software architect. Being a developer or having been developing not too long back, will definitely make it much easier for you to solve this certification.
What do you attestate with this cert?
Solving this certification demonstrates good developing skills having dedicated Google Cloud know and being able to set a good IaaC environment up. It is definitely not for everyone, as some questions are challenging your developing best practices.
If I would set up a training plan with the available certifications today, it would look like this:
- Associate (high learning curve) — optional
- Architect (very high learning curve — experience highly recommended)
Followed by specializations:
- Data Engineer
- Cloud Developer
- GSuite
The upcoming certifications in Networking and Security might also stick in the specializations part, but I will follow up on these as soon I have cleared them.
Training Recommendations:
Actually, you can follow my tutorial on how to solve the Google Cloud Professional Architect, despite not needing to learn all those use cases.
Available here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-pass-google-professional-cloud-architect-david-das-neves/
In addition, you should feel comfortable with the following topics:
- Kubernetes / GKE — coding and config
- Developing Best Practices / Deployment Types / SDLC
- Coding in general and being able to review code
- Google Cloud Fundamentals
- CLI commands / Google Cloud Console
- Automation technologies in Google Cloud
The following article provides also further trainings coming from Coursera and more:
