Becoming a Mobile Web Specialist
By: Gábor Kriston
Tags: Google, Web Development, Mobile Web Development, Pwa, Certification

When we hear the name Google in the developer world, we know that the standards are high and most of us have at least played with the thought if we would be skillful enough to jump the bar to land a job with them. While I am happy freelancing on my own terms, when I became aware that they have launched a program letting you validate your skills in front-end web development and even receive a certificate which you can use to highlight your expertise upon passing, I’ve jumped on the opportunity to put my skills to the test.

To receive the certificate you have to do a 4 hour coding challenge which consists of around 20 various coding tasks in a real remote environment where you need to solve everyday coding challenges ranging from responsive web design, progressive web apps, accessibility, efficient form handling, performance optimization and advanced JavaScript knowledge.

Some may say a GitHub account tells more about your skills than passing such an exam, but from an employer point of view it can be a really good sign that you are able to switch between various problems and solve them in a time-limited situation. Plus you’ve got the big G’s stamp on it that you are battle tested. We all know the situation when you are looking at your code for hours and just can’t find the syntax error which makes you app fail. With this exam it can mean that you won’t pass if you can’t get unstuck, but luckily enough you’ve got Chrome DevTools full arsenal to debug your app so being skillful in it can raise your chances of passing greatly.

To talk about how high the bar was I have to tell that Google will need you to be aware about today’s cutting edge front-end solutions such as service workers to handle request caching through IndexedDB and the Cache API and with web workers to be able to work with parallel threads. Performance optimization is also a big focus as website bloat and blocking resources have a high impact on user experience and in the end on the website owner’s business profitability. You also have to be able to code your app in such a manner that it will reflect the best usability practices and it should be highly accessible meaning people with disabilities such as only being able to use websites through screen readers can still access them without a problem.

While the standards are high Google will help you through your preparation with it’s study guide which points you to great resources on MDN, Google CodeLabs, and some amazing Udacity courses where you can learn directly from the front-end world’s leading advocates like Jake Archibald (it is an experience on it’s own, I’ve laughed a lot :) ).

All in all if you want to ensure that you are up-to-speed with the latest front-end web development techniques and want to brush up on your skills to let them cover all aspects of today’s front-end technologies this is a great opportunity which you shouldn’t miss. You will learn things that will make your knowledge up-to-date for the coming years. With progressive web apps becoming a standard a whole new world opens up for us web developers and staying on the forefront never meant a bad thing :)