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Getting Google Cloud Platform certified

What to really expect from the latest Google Cloud Platform Data Engineering Certification…

(…and how to pass it successfully without getting as stressed out as we* did 😝)

Niklas Fürderer

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(We won’t put a caption here 😶; photo by Morning Brew on Unsplash)

If you are reading this you are probably either thinking about registering for the official GCP Data Engineering certification or you are already registered and counting the days until your (remote or on-site) exam (whoop whoop 🎊, nice move already!).

In case neither applies to you, please direct your eyes to the now following little intro paragraph (which you can skip otherwise).

Why the heck should I do this Google certification and spend both money and time on this (I don’t have neither🤷🏻‍♀️)?

→ GCP is one of the biggest and most successful cloud providers in the world. An official certification offers you both, a huge knowledge boost and the most official recognition and accreditation.

→ GCP has grown enormously over the last years, is planning to do so in the future, and is constantly adding new and improving available services and components. This leads to a growing demand for specialized data engineers who can then fully utilize their knowledge and expertise with the available solutions. The following very simple Google Trends screenshot shows the global (at least search) demand for data engineers and the google cloud platform in the last 5 years.

A very simple Google Trends screenshot: data engineer (red) + google cloud platform (blue) = ⭐️

→ It’s a great way to force yourself to stay on top of the latest GCP trends, products, and services.

→ It’s a perfect example of setting yourself a learning goal or objective which in return can be used for your daily work and/or your career 🤓 .

→ If you for any reason are stuck at home for several weeks while reading this, this is another great candidate for productively filling your time.

→ If you pass (which you will 💪!) you will get a voucher for the official Google merchandise shop which can be used for a 🧥 or 🎒(another great way of showing off offline afterwards).

→ As of the beginning of 2020, you can do several Google certifications online 🌎and remote (which comes with greater flexibility and comfort).

→ Currently, only a few people around the world hold one of the 10 different Google certifications (https://cloud.google.com/certification), according to their official Google Credential Holder Directory @https://googlecloudcertified.credential.net/.

→ “Nothing great should be easy.” (Gary Vaynerchuk) — Create your own next challenge!

(The mentioned little intro paragraph is hereby over, please continue reading.)

This whole article is written in the we-form as we Tomas Šostak (https://medium.com/@tomasostak & https://github.com/tomcis) and https://www.linkedin.com/in/manuel-cadarso-salamanca/ teamed up and used each others strengths, experiences and energy to prepare and study for this exam together!

1) So how did we prepare for this beautiful little piece of paper?

There are many great (Medium) articles out there already so the aim of this article is not to summarize them once again but rather to give you some more (hopefully) useful insights about the actual exam (and its preparation), to help you set your expectations right, and to give you several checklists which help you to determine your readiness 💪. Besides, we want to show you additional useful links, videos, and other content that might help you during your preparation.

We are immensely interested in and happy about feedback so feel free to hit us up with a message 🙏!

a) Methodology

  1. To start right away with the most beneficial and useful tip: prepare for the exam together! Ask some friends, colleagues, team members, or other interested and interesting connections of yours if they’d like to team and power up for this challenge.
    It’s time to give you some context: We are 3 young (and agile) professionals with slightly different work experiences across different fields (a mix of data science, machine learning, and actual real data engineering) which definitely helped along the way. The recommended number of years of GCP work experience of 3 years (as stated on the exam preparation page) is a bit ambitious. Our prior GCP experience ranged from first-time usages until heavy usage basically every day.
  2. After deciding to get this certification, we had an at least weekly crisp (mostly Monday early morning!) sync call in order to discuss good material, the study agenda for the upcoming week, and all kinds of open questions. Besides we shared more material on a [REPLACE WITH YOUR FAVORITE MESSENGER APP] group and kept them in sync via a shared drive folder in [REPLACE WITH YOUR FAVORITE FILE STORAGE AND SYNCHRONIZATION CLOUD SERVICE].
  3. We signed up for the remote exam around 4 weeks before (sometimes quite some slots are taken already ⚠️) and aimed for doing it simultaneously (check different time zones).
    Signing up as early as possible puts on a healthy pressure that kicks your ass every day to continue studying, as doomsday is approaching rapidly. We recommend picking to take the exam either on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon as it might get stressful or late during the week.
  4. We teamed up for longer calls/meetings the days and the weekend before the exam to be 100% in sync. Discussing the material and follow-up on tricky questions was a huge learning booster compared to sitting in front of your little laptop screen in a boring and underexposed room for hours.
  5. Many online courses offer practice exams with a similar focus, content, and questioning scheme. Make the most out of those and try to particularly learn with their provided answering and reasonings (more info ⬇️). Try not to focus on which answers are correct and why but also which answers are incorrect and why (in the exam you occasionally will have to bet on your best choice/intuition — you will be rejecting those which are least likely).

Overall, always try to challenge each other’s knowledge, keep up with structured and prepared discussions, and aim for collaborative learning (win-win situation). Learn from and with each other!

b) Content (which might actually help 😊)

  1. A definitely good start and often stop are the various official GCP best practices documents for the individual cloud services (as well as the tutorials).
  2. YouTube offers some nice content as well (especially if you are new to the GCP world).
  3. Besides these sources of material we (as many others) tried to find the best online learning courses and lectures and, of course, also want to share them with you!
    Many of them offer real-free trials and depending on your current work or study situation there are also rumors that you can even finish them within the trial periods (however, they are really intense and we don’t recommend trading a free online certificate against missed concepts and knowledge). The following list represents the courses we followed and completed as a preparation for the certification including a little summary each, ordered chronologically (no worries, no affiliate links included 🆓).
  4. Use the mentioned drive to temporarily store screenshots of tricky (preparation) exams and good slides etc. Set yourself several reminders to cancel the trial periods of the courses which you don’t wish to continue!

a) Coursera — https://www.coursera.org/professional-certificates/gcp-data-engineering : requires ~1 month for completion while having a full-time job (besides watching the videos on 2x speed already), possible to enroll for free for the first week (or even months sometimes), later ~$50 per month, a very generic overview, covers a lot of topics, the best hands-on labs experience we had, too much content focused on Google’s 👶 BigQuery and promotion of it. The course, in general, was too long relative to the value it provided.

b) Linux Academy — https://linuxacademy.com/course/google-cloud-certified-professional-data-engineer/ : Really great course, very focused on the exam, again first week free (easily manageable to finish it in the first week), labs are not mandatory and nothing new after the Coursera one, great and changing final exam (be sure to pass them several times with at least 95% before ending), very focused on preparing for the exam, amazing summary dossier (be sure to save it in time).

c) Cloud Academy — https://cloudacademy.com/learning-paths/data-engineer-professional-certification-preparation-for-google-83/ : Another great course, great overview, looking from a slightly different perspective than the two previous courses, introduces new and relevant GCP components (first modules focus more on the Cloud Architecture, very beneficial if you want to nail that certification later too!).

d) Whizlabs — https://www.whizlabs.com/google-cloud-certified-professional-data-engineer/ (we focused on the practice tests, didn’t try out the optional online course): Really amazing value — great for practicing together just before the exam (solve as many exams as possible, get some rest overnight (let it all sink in) and nail the exam the next day 💪).

e) Two Udemy courses we wanted to take towards the end but didn’t (but seem to be in-line with the exam and were recommended by others already): https://www.udemy.com/course/learn-gcp-become-a-certified-data-engineer-express-course/ and https://www.udemy.com/course/gcp-data-engineer-and-cloud-architect/

Well, what should we say? That’s basically it! No more big 🧝‍♂️, no super-duper tricks, and no secret and insanely expensive private coaching courses🍡!

We summarized all our actually used material and resources in this nice and neat GitHub repo (feel free to have a👀, give a⭐, or even🍴 it)!

2) Tips, tricks, and (actual) exam hacks

As we are not allowed to forward or describe any specific question or point you directly to referring GCP documentation pages (which we won’t 🙈), we still want to give you helpful information and insights which might help to set your expectations right.

But enough hot air, let’s get into it:

2.1. Before the exam (and until the moment you hit “Start Exam”)

  • Very kindly ask your current employer, a generous and rich friend, or a stranger if they want to participate in the investment (sponsor) costs for the certification (which currently is 200$ excl. tax)
  • Very obvious but still: check the official exam preparation guidelines, FAQs, etc. : https://cloud.google.com/certification/data-engineer (if you never have seen this page before, you should stop reading this article and def. consider rescheduling your exam date in case you already booked it 😛)
  • Be sure to go through all the official instructions (videos) before!
  • Already when signing up for the exam and while installing the testing software (given it is still Webassessor by Kryterion), you will realize that the whole user experience with the remote version of this exam is far below average (sorry Google Cloud 😢). Don’t expect anything better during the whole exam-taking experience, that’s just how it is #feelsLike1995
  • Go outside and have a🚶🏻‍♂️ before the exam.
  • Restart your Wi-Fi-router a few hours before (just to be sure).
  • Pro tip: clear your browser’s caches before starting the Webassessor application (as you otherwise might get asked to do so after starting the verification process which would delay the start of your exam).
  • Don’t let any Windows update superpower take over control during your exam!
  • Get a coffee and something to eat before (not too much sugar 🙏).
  • Get your ID (or other identification documents) and place it on your exam desk.
  • Tell your flatmates, friends, partners, pets, and cleaning robots to be quiet (and don’t sync their local 15TB storage with the ☁️ during your exam).
  • Have your laptop charger plugged in (you won’t be able to see any notifications/percentage of your battery since the software completely takes over your computer screen).
  • Turn on the lights in your room before starting the exam.
  • Remove everything from your table. Your table shouldn’t look like this at all:
Looks very nice and tempting but is strictly forbidden (unfortunately); photo by Arnel Hasanovic on Unsplash
  • Close the windows in your exam room (to avoid any noises which can disturb the session or raise suspicion).
  • Mute your smartphone and open a hotspot (to which your laptop doesn’t connect automatically yet) ready to connect, just in case…
  • Go to the 🚽 right before the exam, you won’t be able to take any breaks!
  • As mentioned in the system requirements, check that your local ports are open them if they are not ↗️
  • Be on time, log in to your web portal 15min before and wait until the Launch (not lunch) button appears.
  • After 🖱️ that, be prepared to get stuck in the “Pan the room” window. Don’t get stressed here (for some of us it took as long as 25–30min seeing that stuck “Pan the room” screen). Someone will connect with you as soon as they become available (depends on the workload) and start the remote environment check and identification process (which only takes 2–3 minutes).

2.2. During the exam

  • Reading questions and answers takes time, don’t freak out, read longer and more complex questions twice (you have the ⏱️!).
  • Answer easy questions first, mark the ones where you have a doubt.
  • Manage your time: reserve time for the marked questions and keep the pace.
  • Go through the questions in iterations: In the first iteration try to answer questions about which you are 95% certain. In the next iteration lower your confidence threshold and try to get rid of more (each of us did around 5 iterations when solving the exam, spending the last ~30 mins only on the subset of the most difficult 5–7 questions).
  • After you are done with the first iteration, it may help you to go through the remaining ones in a more random order (tricks your 🧠 a little bit).
  • As mentioned in other blog posts, you may see very random and new questions that are used by Google to test out new questions so don’t freak out if you see one (or some) of them.
    (And even though those questions seem very new to you, many of them are solvable by using transfer learning of all the great content and material you already studied).
  • Remember that your 📺, your 💬, and your 📷is being recorded constantly!

2.3. After the exam

  • Directly after submitting the results you might be asked to complete a ~12-question-survey providing feedback about your experiences and feedback (for remote exams only).
  • After that, your Webassessor software will simply show nothing: no more text, no next step and will stay open. Don’t freak out, you can close the software now.
  • Login to the exam platform again and check your results immediately (after having a 🍺 first). This result will only show you if you passed the exam based on the questions, after that all the recordings still need to be evaluated 😴
  • It will take up to 10 days until your exam recording (📺 + 🎙️ + 📷) is finally evaluated.
  • Call your learning squad with who you studied. Have a brief discussion. Make sure everyone has passed (if not, identify the most uncertain and weakest spots in the exam and take 📒).
  • Turn on your firewall(s) again and delete the Webassessor application.
  • Unsubscribe from all the learning platforms you might have used during your preparation (double-check that point)!
  • Delete all the preparation apps from your mobile phone, iPad, etc.
  • Organize and clean up your local notes and files (and upload missing documents to the ☁️ drive).
  • Optional: write a Medium blog post about your personal experience and greatest tips 😏
  • Wait for the final certificate confirmation and hoodie voucher (and buy one!).
  • Share the great news with people all around, add the certificate to your LinkedIn profile, and register for the official Google Credential Holder Directory @https://googlecloudcertified.credential.net/.
  • Celebrate 🎉 (for instructions see picture below).
Additionally, you can wear a party hat!

Optional again: sign up for other GCP correlated exams (there are rumors about slight advantages of taking the Cloud Architecture certification after the Data Engineer one 💡, especially if you have taken the Cloud Academy course referred above ^^).

4) Things we would do differently next time:

  1. After all, our biggest “regret” was the fact that freaked out way too much. Keep calm, know your strengths, and simply discuss all unclear points the days and the week before with your learning squad! It feels way better to be in one 🚣‍♂️ with other exam-takers rather than taking it alone!
  2. Start having more focused and in-depth group discussions even earlier. We started doing that only in the last days (+ last week) before the exam. Staring ahead of time will generate more confidence and your in-depth knowledge.
  3. If you don’t plan to extend the free trial online preparation courses, aim for their completion in time and download any material (incl. a final certificate) before you cancel the (free) subscription (and as long as this is part of the terms and conditions)!
  4. Don’t reach a point close to the exam where you catch yourself thinking “Oh, this one database question was tricky, I’m still a little confused when to use which database”. If you know the core topics and “Selection”-based questions by heart it helps you to boost your confidence even more.
  5. Don’t stress out about newly introduced Beta functionalities in various GCP components 😌. We tried to contact them to be sure that the current exam will not include any of them but unfortunately didn’t get any wiser. After the exam, we could conclude at least for ourselves that all asked questions were not targeting any new Beta functions or their advantages (at least as far as we can remember and of course to the best of our knowledge).
  6. Google started to offer a free GCP-based so-called learning path, check that out: https://inthecloud.withgoogle.com/certification-preparation/register.html?utm_source=google&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=FY20-Q2-global-demandgen-operational-wd-dev_cert_prep_2020&utm_content=data-engineer
  7. Also, make more usage of and get our 👐 even dirtier with the free trier (~300$ worth credit) of GCP (several individual accounts give you even more credit and you also share accounts with each other 😉)!
  8. We spent quite some time discussing different GCP services and their abilities so it might be very useful to study several core concepts in depth individually and thoroughly to keep group discussions crisp and constructive. Some areas which fell under that category for us were the following (please note that those are not conclusions from taking the exam but rather our very own opinions and biggest knowledge gaps compared to the exam syllabus):
  • Stackdriver and it’s connection and integration possibilities
  • BigQuery query result sharing options
  • Dataflow (and Dataprep) pipeline workflows
  • Bigtable performance troubleshooting and optimization

5) Leftover notes and everything else we want to mention

This is basically a list of the (at least in our 🧠) most interesting links which might help you understand the whole GCP ecosystem and components even better:

As mentioned in the very beginning: don’t stress out, make usage of each other's strengths, skills, and experiences, and get your next career and personal development booster 💪!

Once more: our conclusion

In case you stopped reading and scrolled to this section directly (or if you are asking yourself what — once again — the main content of this article was or is) we would summarize it as:

Don’t stress yourself too much, utilize the power of a team-based preparation and study phase (aka learn from and with each other), and try to learn as many insightful (and) new things as possible!

Those words are said easily — we know — but we really mean it. Us three realized that we had not been in an actual exam situation for quite a while which, combined with the remote approach, led to even more unnecessary stress and chaos (which could have been avoided). Don’t do the same mistakes as we did, prepare accordingly, and get your well-deserved certificate 💪.

And once again: feel free to have a look at our summarized chill’n’grill GitHub repo ⭐!

Thanks for reading, all the best with your preparation and exam and don’t forget to get some fresh 🌬️ every now and then!

Have a kick-ass day 🤘

Gcp
Google Cloud Platform
Machine Learning
Data Engineering
Certification

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Niklas Fürderer

Written by Niklas Fürderer

8 Followers

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