Hi all!

How are you?

I hope that you all good and healthy. By end of this year, I just want to share something great experience I’ve done from September until December 2022. Yup #RoadToGDE Mentorship Program.

That is an incredible journey, I thought. As long as 7 weeks, we as a mentee got opportunities to discuss all related technical and preparation to become a GDE with the real GDE directly and supported by Google.

GDE or Google Developer Expert is a program provided by Google for whoever has an interest and expert in their expertise. Not only experts but also actively contributing to the community and caring for each other. This is the part I am interested in. Sharing is caring. You can read more here.

I would like to say thousands of thanks , through this program, I’m able to meet Imre Nagi. My mentor during this mentorship. LinkedIn, GitHub, and Twitter.

Imre Nagi currently is a Tech Lead at Gojek, Indonesia. Besides that, he is also a GDE in Cloud Platform specialization. Match with the path I currently learn. He has lots of experience in technology he expertise, and also actively contributes to the communities. So inspiring me and making me keep moving, learning, and contributing too!

As I said, I got a lot of knowledge through mentoring, and through this journal, I would like to you all learn and get value too.

The mentoring is divided into seven-part from September to December. In each part, we will get a chance to 1o1 mentoring for around one hour with our mentor. Yup, each of the mentees will exclusively get a private mentor around the world.

I remember, my first mentoring was held on September 7th, 2022. One of the interesting things about my first mentoring is to always use the time as valuable as possible. Yup. The mentoring was only one hour, and it was a rare chance! For the first one hour, mas Imre shared about the GDE Program and his experience when becoming a GDE.

He had just goes back from study, at that time still a software engineer in a startup company in Indonesia, and at that time, he looking for a chance to become a GDE through a Google Developer Manager in Indonesia. He prepared the mock application, an gratefully, He accepted to become a GDE in Data. When mas Imre tells the story, I imagine how enthusiastic and incredible that moment was.

He asked me, with what media will I apply to a GDE Program? Youtube video, podcast, or technical blog? By the way, this media is important to whoever wants to apply GDE because it will be used as proof we actively contributing to the community.

These are the media Mas Imre used to actively contribute:

That was so huge and great. I preferred to choose my personal blog at misskecupbung.wordpress.com :). I showed him that, and he gave me a task to create a technical blog for the next mentoring and expected I could write at least four blogs through this mentoring.

At the mentoring, Mas Imre said, “your writing is good enough; the step-by-step you’ve written is well-prepared. But there is no unique opinion you give in. So, why other people as a reader will read your writing whether they can read it fully on the documentation directly?”

Yup. That’s the point I forgot all along when I wrote a blog or when I spoke at a live event. I’ve not mentioned my opinion, pros and cons about the tools, or something brave takeaways like the comparison between the tools. That so makes me think about it deeply.

It continued to the 2nd and 3rd mentoring held on September 22nd, 2022, and October 7th, 2022. We discussed how to write a good technical blog, something straightforward to write about the point; you’re not necessarily to write all the steps because it is already written in the documentation. If you have to write a code, paste it to GitHub or Gist GitHub and embed it on your blog. Don’t hesitate to put your opinion there. Something about your definition by your experience, pros, and cons when you use the tools or when you compare the tools with others (for example, GKE vs Kubernetes vs EKS).

In the 4th and 5th mentoring, we discussed the mock application to apply for the GDE program. The mock application is divided into several parts, each of which is explained by mas Imre carefully. First, about the bio, and then about the reason for applying, which tells about why you want to apply for a GDE? which part do you want to apply? because there are several options like Google Cloud Platform, Web Development, Mobile, etc. The ends are in-person impact I’ve done which is an activity I spoke about and content I created for at least three years long.

I always thought that GDE was a program I could use to contribute more actively to the community. But, why GDE? If you want to contribute to the community, would it be much more difficult without being a GDE? What’s the problem? What is the impact of GDE, or what can Google support so you can solve the issue? Asked by Mas Imre, and made me think along the day 🙂

Yup, the keypoint is WHY. It’s not just about the goal, but the reason also. Something like when we troubleshoot the issue. Find the root cause, and solve the problem.

On the 6th mentoring, which was held on November 22th 2022, we discussed mock interview. Actually, when we apply for GDE, there are two interviews. First interview with other GDEs, will discuss the community itself and a bit of technical knowledge. The second interview is with Googler/Noogler (Google’s employee with expertise in the category we chose).

But, in this mentorship, we just do mock interviews for the first interview, which is a community interview. There will be three parts. The first is an introduction, the second is about the community itself, and the third is about a bit of technical knowledge.

Mas Imre acted as an interviewer and asked me several questions. The result is not smooth as I want. The bad moment was when I answered the questions:

  • Why do you want to become a GDE?
  • What is the workflow, and what happens inside the infrastructure when we run kubectl apply -f deployment.yaml?
  • CRD inside of Kubernetes

Maybe at the moment, I’m too confident and not creating something like a cheat sheet. So when I get unexpected questions, I need more time to think about the question, find the answer, and translate it into English first in my head and then say it. Too long and wordy. Mas Imre said it because we, as Indonesian, use English, not the daily language. So, when we want to talk using English, we have to think about it in Indonesian first, and our brain has to translate it into English, and yes, there is a need for more time. It is normal, and we have to reduce the time to make it more smooth.

Mas Imre gave me advice like: do practically English every day in small cases; for example, when you are on the road and see a traffic sign, billboard, etc., Try to say that in English. Make you used to English. He gives me one chance to do it again at the next mentoring session.

The last mentoring was held this week, on 27th December 2022. Why was the gap between the previous mentoring one month? Because there were DevFest 2022 events held in several cities, we focused on there first, and mas Imre gave me more time to prepare the mock interview (thank you!).

The 2nd community interview was similar to the first interview, and I tried to be more fluent by creating a cheat sheet (I tried at home several times a day to achieve it :D). Mas Imre said that the second one is good enough with some advice. First, keep moving because we still learning (especially in English). He also gives me correctness in some questions to make my answer is more clear, and we take a photo 🙂

I would like to thanks to #RoadToGDE committee too. The Kits just arrived!

See you next on my journey! Thank you!