My Google Developer Expert (GDE) Application Journey and Rejection

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Gerome Grignon

My Journey with the Google Developer Expert Program

I’m regularly asked if I’m a Google Developer Expert (GDE), why I’m not yet one, or encouraged to apply. This blog post shares my experience with the GDE application process and highlights my ongoing contributions to the Angular community.

The Application Process and Outcome

I happened to apply this year and was rejected. I’m not mad and quite happy applying is now part of the past because I’ve delayed it a lot, fearing of failing to join the program. I honestly feared to fail on the product interview, afraid of not being good enough. I’ll never know as I’ve been rejected on the first step, the application form.

The first step of the selection process is to fill an ‘application form’, provided by a Google Developer Expert, acting as a referral. The application form is a Google Doc, including multiple sections to explain how you contribute/advocate about the specific Google product you are applying to.

Delaying application means I was like Schrödinger cat: unable to know if I was valuable for the program or not. Now I know I can’t as I don’t meet the requirements. Or more exactly, the way I contribute and advocate about Angular does not fit the mould of what Google is looking for.

My Angular Community Contributions

At this point, you might not know me yet or not have the whole picture of how I’m involved in the Angular community:

Current Active Contributions

My active contributions to the community are:

Past Contributions and Achievements

My past contributions are, among other things:

The easy way to sum up my contributions is : delivering content but mostly caring about the community.

I enjoy creating educational content such as Angular Caniuse, I even happened to create a tslint configuration generator when TSLint was still a thing (fixing a typo on their documentation was even one of my first open source contribution).

I also enjoy being part of the community, helping people on Discord, mentoring people on Angular Space, being part of the Angular Devs France community, and so on.

Speaking Engagements and Community Focus

One thing I missed mentioning from the previous listing is my experience as a speaker. I typically speak about twice a year when I find some interesting ideas or am asked to cover a topic. Speaking is really awesome and enables interacting in person with the community, as most of my other interactions are online.

But there are two common reasons often preventing me to prepare an Angular talk (besides not having a topic in mind!):

At the end, if i had the great opportunity to be part of NG Poland 2024, I don’t provide that much talks about Angular.

The GDE Selection Process and Feedback

The first step of the Google Developer Expert selection process is to fill an ‘application form’, provided by a Google Developer Expert, acting as a referral. The application form is a Google Doc, including multiple sections to explain how you contribute/advocate about the specific Google product you are applying to.

I’ve been rejected on this part, being informed by an automatic email without any details (what a kind way!). I had some people sharing me the similar experience and how demotivating it can be not to understand why you were rejected.

I was lucky to get some feedback from the Google Developer Expert team thanks to my referral:

While we value his enthusiasm and contributions, the decision was based on our current GDE criteria. We encourage him to continue his excellent work and focus on enhancing his individual contributions, particularly in areas such as speaking engagements. While organizing events is valuable, it is not currently a primary focus for GDEs.

Moving Forward

The honest answer is I’m fine with it. I chose to focus on the community rather than on creating more individual contributions, and I’m happy with the way I contribute to the community. I’ve been encouraged to apply by people I helped, and I won’t betray them by stopping my current contributions for the sake of a title.

Key Questions About the GDE Selection Process

Is it about:

I hope they will be more transparent about the selection process in the future as I really went from being demotivated for days to being fine in a second by getting the feedback.

At the end, half of my dms are already with Angular Google Developer Experts so i’m not gatekept by the program at being able to have great discussions with them.

My motivation, as filled in the application form, was to be more in sync with the Angular team, as a way to be able to help the community better and I’ve been quite sad to discover some Google Developer Experts never interact in official channels.

Meanwhile you can expect me to continue being active for the community, but not as a Google Developer Expert!