Good afternoon, Sita.

Those three words kicked off the most intense 45 minutes of my professional life. Not because I was unprepared – I’d been preparing for two and a half decades without knowing it. Not because I was nervous – I’ve given dozens of public talks, written two books, and maintained over 200 GitHub repositories. But because this interview represented something fundamentally different from anything I’d experienced in my networking career.

I’m now a Certified Google Developer Expert in AI and Networking. The 51st in Canada. One of fewer than 1,000 on planet Earth. And Quebec’s very first.

Let me tell you why this matters – and why the path to get here looked nothing like the one I’d been walking for 25 years.

Here’s the thing about becoming a GDE: you can’t just study for it. You can’t memorize your way in. You can’t take a boot camp, cram for three months, and pass a brutal 8-hour lab exam that costs thousands of dollars and has a 70% failure rate on the first attempt.

I know this because I’ve been in that world. I’ve pursued those certifications. I’ve collected them like badges of honor over two decades.

The CCNA. The CCNP. The CCIE attempts. The vendor-specific gauntlet from Juniper, Palo Alto, Fortinet, and more. Each one a test of memorization, endurance, and your ability to reproduce configurations under pressure. Each one expensive. Each one stressful. Each one a gate that the industry built to validate you – or keep you out.

I’m not dismissing them. Those certifications shaped me. They taught me discipline, gave me depth, and earned me credibility in rooms where credibility matters. They represent thousands of hours of study, practice, and failure. They are hard-won and I respect every single one.

But they test a very specific thing: can you execute what’s already known?

The GDE process tests something else entirely.

There’s no study guide. No lab topology to memorize. No multiple-choice questions designed to trick you into selecting the wrong answer. No proctor watching you through a webcam while you sweat through an 8-hour simulation.

Instead, there’s a conversation.

My interview with Sita lasted 45 minutes. She asked me about my work. My contributions. My thinking. Not “configure OSPF on this router” but “how are you applying AI to solve real problems in networking?” Not “what’s the default administrative distance of EIGRP?” but “what does your community contribution look like?”

She wanted to know what I’d built. What I’d shared. What I’d written. What I’d taught others. She wanted to know how I think, not what I’ve memorized.

That distinction matters more than I can express.

Twenty-five years of certifications taught me to prove I could do what others had already figured out. Forty-five minutes with Sita asked me to prove I was figuring out what comes next.

The Google Developer Expert program isn’t a certification. Let me be clear about that. It’s a recognition. There’s a meaningful difference.

Certifications say: “This person has demonstrated competence in a defined body of knowledge.” That’s valuable. That’s necessary. I’m not here to tear that down.

It’s not about what you know. It’s about what you’re doing with what you know. It’s about the 200+ GitHub repositories I’ve maintained. The two books I’ve written. The talks I’ve given. The community I’ve built. The open-source tools I’ve shared. The blog posts, the mentoring, the willingness to put your thinking out in public where people can challenge it.

You can’t cram for that. You either live it or you don’t.

Looking back, every phase of my career was preparation for this moment – I just didn’t know it.

The early years grinding through networking fundamentals. The mid-career push into automation and programmability when most network engineers were still allergic to Python. The pivot toward AI and machine learning when I started seeing what these tools could do for network operations, security, and design.

None of it was a straight line. I didn’t wake up one morning and decide to become a Google Developer Expert. I woke up every morning and decided to stay curious. To build things. To share what I learned. To treat every problem as an opportunity to explore something new.

The GDE recognition didn’t change who I am. It validated what I’d already been doing. And honestly? That’s what made it hit different from every certification I’ve ever earned.

There’s a world of difference between those two feelings.

I’ve told you the personal story – the journey, the interview, the moment. But that’s not even the best part.

Stay tuned for Part 2 where I’ll share why this matters beyond me. Why the networking industry is at an inflection point. Why the traditional certification model alone isn’t enough anymore. And why, if you’re a network engineer reading this, you need to pay attention to AI – not tomorrow, not next year, but right now.

It’s a spicy take. You’ve been warned.

Not sure where to start? The VibeOps Forum is where we’re gathering right now:

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