#120 CTO Andrew Brown Passed Dozens of Cloud Certification Exams

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Andrew Brown, a CTO-turned co-founder of ExamPro.co.

Andrew created this cloud certification exam prep website with another Andrew – also from Canada, who also loves Star Trek.

We talk about Andrew's early career fixing computers in the 90s, and his early freelance web development work. These ultimately lead to jobs and promotions that leveled him up to CTO.

Andrew also shares his advice to devs who want to learn DevOps and Cloud Engineering, and which certs to prioritize.

Andrew suffers from Muscle Tension Dysphonia, a disease that causes voice loss. He shares how he's using AI tools to get around this.

Andrew also talks about his love of Tetris Attack (also known as Panel de Pon or Pokémon Puzzle League). He built a frame-perfect port for competitive online play.

And of course, Andrew's favorite Star Trek episodes of all time.

Can you guess what bass line I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's the theme from a 90s cartoon.

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Links we talk about during the interview:

Just a few of Andrew's many freeCodeCamp cloud cert prep courses. (He has dozens more on freeCodeCamp's YouTube channel): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/author/andrew/

His website, ExamPro.co: https://www.exampro.co/

American Mall simulator browser game by Bloomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com/features/american-mall-game/

The Greatest Generation podcast: https://maximumfun.org/podcasts/greatest-generation/