How to become a Professional Google Cloud Developer

How to become a Professional Google Cloud Developer

One of the great perks of working at Ackee is having a few hours each week dedicated to self-education. After finishing a book on functional programming, I began looking for a new topic to focus on, and my colleagues suggested pursuing a Google Cloud certification. It seemed like a great idea—since we primarily deploy and manage our apps on Google Cloud, deepening my knowledge of the tools we use felt like a natural next step.
Although I have been working with Google Cloud for more than 2 years, there is always something new I can learn - whether it is about tools we are not using (and maybe we should?) or learn about new features of the tools we are using.

Studying for Google Cloud certification

Ackee bought a course for studying for this certificate on an online learning platform. It sounded really good - many colleagues completed it and I really liked having a structured course where I can study and complete tasks. But here comes the biggest issue - the course was several years old. Everything was alright in the beginning, until it wasn't. You don't really want to complete tasks deploying an app to the App engine, when Google is pushing Cloud Run so much right now (even Cloud Functions just recently got renamed to Cloud Run functions). Although many of the materials were still relevant, and having a quiz after each topic was quite fun, it was time to move on.

Fortunately, Google provides its own course https://www.cloudskillsboost.google/paths/19. All of the resources on this course are free, with the exception of some labs. These labs are set up so you can just click on a button and an environment for the lab will be prepared for you. But if you don't want to pay, you can still do it, you just need to create your own Google Cloud project and do all the assignments here. Of course the results of your work won't be checked if they are correct as in the official lab environment, but I could live with that.

The Google Cloud certification exam format

The exam consisted of 50 questions with the overwhelming majority of them being a single choice. Maybe 3 of the questions were multiple choice. You are going through the questions 1 by 1 and you can check them for later review (you can still revisit all of the questions before you submit the answers)
You are given 2 hours to complete the exam and it took me around 1 hour.

Registration for the remote exam

Before you are able to take the exam, there are several steps you need to take.
You need to download a special browser for taking the exam. It also checks if your computer is running some banned apps. Turn off all the unnecessary apps and turn on DnD mode on your devices.
You also need to clean your desk area - only keyboard, mouse, computer and a monitor is allowed.
With all the things above ready, you can proceed to the registration - you need to take photos of different angles of your desk (including the space behind you) and then you will chat to a support person that will guide you through the registration process. You also need to provide photos of your ID.

##Tips for completing the exam

See the sample questions

Go through all the sample questions. It takes some time to complete, because there are around 50 questions and you can’t skip to the end. But after you submit your answers, you will see the correct answers with explanations why they are correct. These explanations really help with showing you how to think about the answers.

Review the Google products

I went through official documentation and looked at all the products and APIs that were in the scope of the exam - this gives you a good overview of Google products and helps you when they ask you which Google product you would choose for a given scenario.

Read questions carefully

It can happen that multiple answers for the questions will give you the desired result, but some of them won’t be optimal. The questions always specify if you need the solution with the least overhead, the cheapest solution or something else.

Topics that showed often in the questions

• Cloud run - Google really pushes the usage of Cloud run
• Cloud build - You should know how to deploy an app to Cloud run, GKE
• Artifact registry - know how to use it and what is Binary Authorization
• Storage options - know the difference between databases and
• Deployment strategies - see A/B Testing, Canary deployments, Blue-Green deployments

Good luck with your Google Cloud certification exam!