“Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.” -Theodore Roosevelt
That quote from Theodore Roosevelt sums up rather well the VCDX certification. The VCDX certification takes a great deal of effort, pain and difficulty to accomplish. My personal journey included multiple defense attempts — much to my dismay and benefit. Fortunately, it was all worth it!
I am VCDX #257!
The VCDX certification requires a significant amount of time to earn. If I had to estimate it, I would say I spent between 200+ hours working on my design documentation, defense presentation, mock defenses, Q&A sessions and just general research. The submitted design was also an actual work project, so some of that time investment was for my job — an added benefit not all candidates have.
The one lesson I would share with others thinking about or pursuing their own VCDX certification is the following — be careful who you ask advice of or take advice from. If they have not been a panelist in the past, their view into what to do (or not to do) is going to be mostly opinion. The VCDX program held a Q&A call the Friday before the defenses began in May.
On the call were Joe Silvagi, Simon Long and Karl Childs — all three are heavily involved in the program. The most frequent questions asked by the candidates started with the phrase, “My mentor says” or “The community says”. In nearly every instance the response from Joe was along of the lines of that isn’t right.
Attend one (or more) VCDX workshops prior to submitting so that you can ask questions and reach out to the people running the workshops to get trustworthy responses.
That’s all the advice I have to give.
There is an African Proverb, and the quote is outside one of the VMware conference rooms, that says:
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
This is true of the VCDX certification. I got to this point not because I went alone, but because I went with others.
My wife – No one on this earth has supported me more. The countless hours over the past two decades of late nights as I strived to advance my career. This is as much her certification as it is my own.
Rich Steck (Adobe) – He mentored me during one of the most difficult years in my career. He challenged me to figure out where I wanted to go and to find paths to get there. Most importantly, he listened.
Frans van Rooyen (Adobe) – Already a brilliant cloud architect in his own right, he mentored me in my role as a Compute Platform Engineer for two years. He let me constantly challenge all of the decisions we were making (on-the-fly) as we built a rather large private cloud across the globe. He introduced me to VMware technologies and helped me gain the skills I would need to land my dream job at VMware in two short years.
Andrew Nelson (VMware) – While at Adobe, Frans introduced me to Andrew. Andy and I spoke at VMworld together in San Francisco and Barcelona in 2014. We briefly worked on a book together, during which time he told me if I wanted to get a job at VMware, I’d be surprised how quickly it would happen. I had an offer for my current role barely 1 month later.
OneCloud Architecture Team (VMware) – My dream job came with the opportunity to work with 3 double-VCDX certification holders. The first architecture review board call I attended they tore into another architect over his vRA design and it was at that moment I knew I was going to have to step up my game significantly to play with them. What a blessing it has been to work with them for the past two years — each of them has helped me grow my skills as an architect immensely. They taught me to critically challenge a design decision, not just for the sake of arguing, but because we are trying to understand the rationale for the decision.
Their support continued from afar as I went through the process of submitting and defending my design for my own certification. When I got the email saying I was now VCDX #257, they were right there celebrating my success with me.
Thank you to each of you for helping me realize my dreams and earn the VCDX certification!
