There are no real pre-requisites if you are willing to work up from scratch and put in the effort. Having an IT or IT adjacent background will help. I have a pinned post with some free resources that I would recommend you start with instead of Cloud Practitioner (which is a waste of time IMHO esp. when you want to do SAA). They give you better hands on start. Also use the search feature on reddit and look at those who have posted "saa solutions architect pass" and you will find many who have zero background in IT and go through the exam. Also you pass the "hey start on helpdesk and you can zoom your career into space" comment that comes up here all the time - so you are on the right path apparently! You should come back in a few years and tell everyone how you are CTO now. (sorry a bit of a rant at those who keep saying everyone should start at helpdesk) More on reddit.com

Generally speaking - no. The pro exams are at a whole different level for two core reasons: the questions are much longer, denser and more complicated to the point that there is a legit concern that you may run out of time before you finish the test. I’ve never once sweated an associate exam but my pro tests I usually finish with about 20min left on the timer. Stressful the pro exams try harder to trick you. On associate tests there are usually 1-2 answer options that you can knock out as being obviously wrong or just silly and that lets you guess between two remaining if you don’t know. However on a pro exam there may be three answers that are all plausibly correct yet differ in some minute technical way and you can’t guess your way out of it with good odds, you need to to KNOW the answer or at least be deep enough in your technical knowledge to knock some answers out Also the CCP is a foundational exam easier than even the associate tests. See if you can pass the test for solution architect associate before sitting for the pro version More on reddit.com

u/rawhahs Congratulations on passing your exam! It’s a really tough one, you’ve done great! Keep up the awesome work! :) More on reddit.com

I haven’t taken such advanced certs yet but… The Network Specialty is infamous in the community for being the most difficult of all and poor wording of questions and answers. Maybe it’s because lots of people suck at networking. I would assume it would be easier for someone who doesn’t suck at networking. More on reddit.com