GCP DevOps Certification - Pomodoro One
Tags: googlecloud, devops, certification, sre
Published: 2020-09-26 12:46:56

# TL;DR

A CTO getting nervous about what people will think of him starting certification

Counting down from 5 and moving - [5 second rule](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Second-Rule-Surprisingly-Simple-Courage/dp/1682612384)

Day One of Google Cloud Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer


# Start of a journey

I've wavered back and forth as to whether to undertake certification or not. Working with cloud technologies for some time now and a big [DevOps](https://www.meetup.com/DevOps-Manchester/) advocate I've often wondered whether I "need" certification.

Also now being in a position of leadership, would it come across as somewhat fraudulent to only undertake certification whilst having worked in various DevOps roles in the past.

Fearful of others opinions I guess you could say I've been apprehensive of starting any form of assessment. 

> "Shouldn't he already be certified?"


> "If he's only getting certified now, what actual knowledge did he have before??"


> "Why's he bothering doing that?"


> "I always knew that he was guessing with things"

None of the above have EVER been said to me but in my head that is exactly what happens when I consider undertaking certification. That cycle of fear.

But this time, guided by Mel Robbins and inspired by the [Tech Returners](https://techreturners.com) I interact with on a daily basis - [I decided to count down from 5](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Second-Rule-Surprisingly-Simple-Courage/dp/1682612384) and do it anyway.


# Which cloud?

My first choice was which cloud certification should I go for. The title of the series probably gives away my choice but it wasn't an easy one.

On the [Tech Returners programme](https://www.techreturners.com/programmes/your-return-to-tech) we cover AWS. Making this decision down to it (currently) taking the largest market share so it made sense to refresh individuals skills with something that a lot of organisations utilise.

For myself though what did I want. I'm a big fan of Google Cloud - for no other reason than that I enjoy working with their stack. Making use of things like [Kubernetes](https://kubernetes.io/) (also available on other public clouds) and their [serverless](https://cloud.google.com/serverless)/PaaS items like [Firebase](https://firebase.google.com/) or [Cloud Functions](https://cloud.google.com/functions) etc I've really enjoyed the development experience.

Figured if I enjoy it then I'm more likely to stick with it and see it through.

# Which certificate?

The next question I had to answer was which certificate I wanted to go for.

Google have three different types

* Associate
* Professional 
* User

**User** certification is around usage of items within GSuite so that didn't fit my aspirations. **Associate** and **Professional** were more focused on Google Cloud.

**Associate** states the entry requirements as "recommended experience: 6+ months building on Google Cloud"

Having worked with GCP for longer than the 6 months this pushed me (I hope I don't regret it) towards the **Professional** certificates.

Within Professional certifications they have:

[Cloud Architect](https://cloud.google.com/certification/cloud-architect)
[Cloud Developer](https://cloud.google.com/certification/cloud-developer)
[Data Engineer](https://cloud.google.com/certification/data-engineer)
[Cloud Security Engineer](https://cloud.google.com/certification/cloud-security-engineer)
[Cloud Network Engineer](https://cloud.google.com/certification/cloud-network-engineer)
[Cloud DevOps Engineer](https://cloud.google.com/certification/cloud-devops-engineer)
[Machine Learning Engineer](https://cloud.google.com/certification/machine-learning-engineer)
[Collaboration Engineer](https://cloud.google.com/certification/collaboration-engineer)

Picking through those is tough!

I love DevOps and especially SRE practices so I initially anchored towards that. Well either that or the Architect element.

But...security and networking would probably re-enforce a bit more knowledge for me. 
Machine learning and data I find really interesting but more as an interested observer, choosing to listen and learn from those that focus on model analysis, algorithms and AI patterns rather than be one that hits the keys.

So I took to Google to find out more about the two I think I favoured most which were the **Cloud Devops Engineer** and the **Cloud Architect**.

Uncovering this great set of resources for both, [DevOps](https://github.com/sathishvj/awesome-gcp-certifications/blob/master/professional-cloud-devops-engineer.md) and [Architect](https://github.com/sathishvj/awesome-gcp-certifications/blob/master/professional-cloud-architect.md).

After watching various videos, hint sheets and reading content I've decided to go for the DevOps certification, partly due to my connection to [Site Reliability Engineering](https://landing.google.com/sre/) practices and [CI/CD](https://www.atlassian.com/continuous-delivery/principles/continuous-integration-vs-delivery-vs-deployment).

Wish me luck!