A new book for preparing for Google´s Associate Engineer Certified exam has been released. It belongs to the series All-In-One from McGraw Hill, which it´s one of my favourites; usually, the books are excellent.
This one is not an exception; I think it covers all the topics in the official exam guide. Even a section maps the objectives on the official guide with the chapters in the book, which is really useful. At the time of writing this post – December of 2020 -, both are almost identical:
- Managing users in Cloud Identity (manually and automated) has replaced Linking users to G Suite Identities.
- Deploying an application that receives Google Cloud events (e.g., Cloud Pub/Sub events, Cloud Storage object change notification events) has replaced Deploying a Cloud Function …
Ensure you check out the official guide for changes because Google updates it occasionally.
About the changes, Cloud Identity it’s a big topic in the Security Certification and an exciting one, I have to say – so don’t miss it out.
Objetives
The book covers the complete official guide in eleven chapters. All the topics are up-to-date, including Anthos and Cloud Run. But remember, this is just a guide to prepare for the exam. That means that you have to expand each section, depending on your knowledge and experience about the subject, to be successful.
For instance, the chapter on Kubernetes Engine is quite good and covers many topics. But you are not going to learn Kubernetes just by reading the chapter, so I’d recommend reading the docs, and books, getting real experience, or taking a course because if you are a beginner, you will be confused about the subject. And the chances are that you will find advanced questions on the subject – the exam is heavy on Kubernetes, as a matter of fact.
Or have a look at the chapter on App Engine. It’s a topic well covered and probably enough to answer many of the questions you may find on the exam. But you need to go deeper, create apps, and get real experience if you don’t have it.
Review and practice questions
Every chapter has a handful of review questions, from ten to fifteen, which are in a test format similar to the ones you would find in the exam – but on the more accessible side.
Don’t forget to check the sample questions from Google, but again most questions are a bit easier than the ones you may find on the exam – but they are an excellent guide to check your knowledge and gauge your readiness to take the exam.
The book also provides, for free, online content comprising one hundred practice questions.
Once you have registered on the Total Seminars Training Hub site, you can access the Custom Test screen, where you can customize the testing experience: duration, number of questions, exam objectives and assistance.
Works well enough, simple but functional. The assistance and the explanations given about the topics are short but enough.
The questions are similar to those you’d encounter on the exam, topics and format, so it’s good practice. I’d say the actual questions are lengthier and a bit more complicated.
Conclusion
This is a good guide that can help you with the preparation for the exam. But you need to expand every topic, depending on your experience and knowledge.
My advice is to use the guide – there is another guide from Google, but it’s a bit outdated – as a starting point and use the documentation, labs, videos and real-life experience not only to pass the exam but to round and up-to-date your knowledge so that you can validate your professional experience.
After all, this is not a college exam but a professional one!
