The Spark

If you’re reading this post, you might be interested in getting an AWS Certification. If so, then read on! If no, that’s ok. Hopefully you can find my blog post entertaining and insightful.

Let me start from the beginning. It was back in late 2020 when I started a new job search. I saw this recurring pattern popping up in the software engineer job postings. This recurring pattern was cloud experience.

Up until then, I didn’t have that much cloud experience. I’ve heard of Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). However, I’ve never had hands on experience with them. During that period of job search, I felt bad for saying “I didn’t have any experience with any Cloud technlogies”. Sometimes, recruiters would just end the conversation there, like it was a deal breaker.

At my last company, I was asked by someone from DevOps to upgrade some AWS Relational Database Service (RDS) instances. I felt like a fish out of water. Here I was, having no AWS experience, asked to perform a task involving AWS. At the same time, I was excited. This was going to be my first hands on experience with AWS.

I immediately devoted myself to reading the AWS documentation on AWS RDS. After deciding I knew enough to do the job, I shared the plan with a DevOps engineer on my team and after getting his blessing, I proceeded with the task.

Following my first encounter with AWS, I would always hear tid bits of other AWS technologies being used at that company. For example, Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS), Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS), and Amazon API Gateway, just to name a few.

I felt out of the loop when these topics were discussed. There was a part of me that said “I should know this”. With that, I started my journey onto getting the AWS Certified Developer Associate certification.

The Process

Udemy is a website for online classes. In the past, I’ve tried both Pluralsight and Udemy. I tend to prefer Udemy more because I think the quality of the content is better and I tend to find more materials that are kept up to date. This is extrememly true in technology since things can get out of date very quickly.

I did some research and found a recommended course, Ultimate AWS Certified Developer Associate 2023, taught by Stephane Maarek. This course is 31 hours and features 427 lectures as well as a practice test.

Normally, if you just watch these videos one after another you can finish them in a reasonable amount of time. However, I’m a big fan of taking notes so I actually hand wrote the notes from the slides. That ended up pretty much doubling the amount of time I had to spend to go through all of the slides.

At the end of the course, there was a practice exam of 65 questions. My first attempt I got a paltry 60% and you need a 72% to pass. I remembered Stephane mentioning that practice exams are the way to go to help you pass.

With that in mind, I went and purchased another Udemy course, _Practice Exams

AWS Certified Developer Associate 2022_ with 6 practice exams total. This course is authored by both Stephane Maarek and Abhishek Sigh.

Below are my scores for those 6 practice exams (if you are curious):

1. 64%
2. 70%
3. 78%
4. 81%
5. 78%
6. 84%

I was happy that for the most part, I kept improving, with my final score being 84%.

Here is what I did after each exam. I went through all of the questions, and for the questions that I got wrong, I would takes notes on the answer along with the explanation. In addition, if I found an answer that I got right but I actually guessed on, I would also take notes on the explanation to make sure I fully understand the reasoning.

Unfortunately, during this period, I actually lost my job due to a lay off. I just tried to keep this positive and was happy in that I now have more time to devote to studying.

With the unexpected increase in free time, I purchased yet another set of practice exams. This time, it was AWS Certified Developer Associate Practice Exam Questions by Neal Davis.

Below are my scores for those 6 practice exams (if you are curious):

1. 73%
2. 72%
3. 70%
4. 75%
5. 86%
6. 92%

I was actually getting frustrated after the first three practice exams because my score kept going down. But I understand that this is another instructor and he actually has his own AWS course which I didn’t take. In addition, he had a lot of questions from just random AWS docs that I didn’t go over with Stephane. However, I had really happy with my final practice exam grade of 92%.

With that, I felt confident to go into my exam on 2/1/23.

The Result

I remember going into my exam very nervous. The fact that I was jobless at the time just brought extra pressure. I felt like failure was not an option.

On that morning, my exam was at 9am, I cleared my desk so it only has a lamp, a laptop, my cup of water, and my drivers license. The exam is proctored by Pearson Vue.

During the exam, I was really happy that they have a feature where you can flag questions to come back later to. I answered the questions that I knew the answers to and flagged the questions that were iffy.

After the exam, I felt like it was definitely challenging and I guessed on a lot of questions.

Thursday morning, I remember waking up and took my phone to do my daily Duolingo and I saw an email from Credly. I thought that was a recruitment email or something until I saw the subject line:

Mark! You just earned a badge from Amazon Web Services Training and Certification 🎉

I was so overtaken with joy that I woke up my wife just to share this and it was around 6 in the morning.

Now that I have this certification under my belt, I think I’m definitely open to for other certifications, including the Solutions Architect since I can build on my existing knowledge of AWS.

Thanks for reading and keep on learning!