UPDATE small feedback I wrote : I passed the Google Cloud Associate Exam 6 months ago

I just passed the Google Cloud Certification Associate Cloud Engineer in France. Here some thoughts about the exams for others who will attemps it.

Learning History

This is a quick overview of the exam learning history. The exam was passed on the 7 june.

Since Mid-Mars, I almost study on the exam every day. This mean almost 3 months to prepare the certification. I had 3 weeks off in may, but I have a newly born chlid. This is alomost 6 months from the opened tiers account and the exam.

Almost every day commitment even if it mean read some documentation before sleep or early morning. I can’t say how many times I went througt Coursera downloaded content.

24 December 2018, free tiers access

Mid-Mars, getting serious about the exam, started the Coursera specialization

22 April, Coursera specialization passed. Each module’s documentation download to review them a lot.

May, O’Reilly GCP associate exam bootcamp (8+ hours long, very nice, account needed) Linux Academy associate cloud engineer and cloud architect. (videos not so nice, practice exam is a good practice) Some qwiklab, free credits with Coursera, free month subscription found here.

About the exam

I took the english version of the exam, even if it says that french is available for two reasons. All training you can find is in english (check learning history below) so I thought it would be easier as keyword I learned ring me some bells. I couldn’t find the french version anyway.

Questions are thought, 1h15 to answer 50 questions, 0h40 to review the ones marked for reviews. 4 minutes left at the submission of the exam. I have done the process twice, it took 25 minutes to review them, and 10 minutes for the 4 most difficult questions (to me). Dont waste your 120 minutes.

I had no idea during the exam if I will pass or fail it, I even thought i would failed it. I had the answer right after the submission, it’s said temporary in bold and red as they will submit the result to google, mainly to check that you followed the rules (no search on internet, no phone, no notes).

Stress… I guess it depends on people. My boss was kind enough to paid for the train, the exam, and gave me the day off. It took me the day for 2h of exam.Your boss knowing about the exam definitely add to the stress.

This was some studies, I couldn’t do like the guy who passed 3 exams in 3 weeks. I knew I would try it again in case I would not pass the exam.