Today we are celebrating!
Not only we have Christmas Snowdog Party tonight, but also 6 guys made a big step forward in their Magento education. We are very happy and extremely proud to announce that:
- Darek and Marek are now Magento Certified Developers Plus
- Bartek, Paweł and Paweł are now Magento Certified Frontend Developers
- Michał is now Magento Certified Solution Specialist
Longlasting preparation hours, thousands of code lines and plenty of intensive projects brought experience and knowledge needed to pass exams.
What is the certification all about?
Being certified developer is not only to have another diploma. Certification program was created to build a structured system to highlight Magento exceptional specialists. Each certificate proves the highest skills and wide knowledge about a specific Magento part (frontend/backend/etc.). For our clients, it is important to know that only very experienced people work on the technical aspects of their online businesses.
Heros of the day
We have asked our heros how they perceive the exam, if it was difficult, what the most tricky part was and how much time they needed to prepare. Here are their thoughts.
Marek Jasiukiewicz: At the very beginning of my work in Snowdog, Kuba told me that he wanted to have certified developers, because this is the highest confirmation of team’s skills and quality of the code we deliver. I wanted to pass the exam after one year but I didn’t have much time to prepare myself as we worked in a very intense way on several projects. At that time Kuba’s expectations moved forward to “Developer Plus” which includes Enterprise elements. I heard a lot about this exam – mostly that is extremely difficult. I knew it was inevitable and would require a lot of work from me. This year, Magento offered a free retake in case of failure and it motivated me to try. Magento is a huge system so I knew the learning process would be complex and I wasn’t sure if I was able to cover everything. I was quite surprised how the questions were formulated. They were difficult and tricky. I was even a bit disappointed, because I think that such test should verify your knowledge and not your ability to recognize the trickery. So I approached this challenge as a warm up before the retake. But my collegues were sure (more than myself) that it’s going to be OK. I know I was expected to pass it and I did not fail. None of us did. It is very important.
Michał Unolt: As you can read over the Internet, Magento Solution Specialist exam is prepared in a way to confuse you as much as possible. Often, you need to go deep into a question and avaialble answears to figure out which is the right choice. Contrary to that, some questions are so easy, that you need to read them even more times to get rid of the feeling that your’re being tricked. Anyway, I’ve been involved in ap. 40 Magento projects over the last year which gave me the needed experience. On top of that, I’ve found both Magento (CC and EE) manuals helpful as I studied them for a few long evenings before the exam. When reading them, I realised there’s a lot of elements I normally don’t know by heart but I can check in 2-3 clicks which was totally OK. The exam, however, is when you actually need to keep the details in your memory.
Paweł Szafrański: Generally I was really stressed before the exam and started to prepare myself a month before. Not really studying every night, but searching online for information, analyzing code elements, reading blogs, tutorials and opinions online. As I am the “youngest” in Snowdog, I wanted to do the best I could. And I made it! Only two mistakes in the test: not only it is my personal victory, but also Snowdog’s best score. Questions were sometimes very tricky, you had to think twice to make sure you were choosing the right answer. My experience with Magento was the most important part of preparations; only reading blogs and manuals would not be enough to pass it. It is difficult to tell if the level of difficulty was high. I would say it was accurate to the certificate we are rewarded with.
