September 18, 2018

a year at microsoft

Last night, Joe got home from playing guitar and said, “Well, I can see you haven’t moved since I left, which means you probably haven’t eaten anything either.”

And indeed, both assertions were true, but I had a good reason! As I explained, “I realized I had a blog post to write, because I’ve been at Microsoft for a year!”

A year ago today, I joined the Azure Cloud Developer Advocates team, surprising some people… including myself! And yes, I still identify as chaotic-neutral-unix! Guess what? I’m in the same org as Jess Frazelle; it’s Linux and container nerd territory here! Bryan Liston hired me and I was lucky enough to land in his org on Ashley McNamara’s team. (You, too, could work with people who understand the fine art of the reaction gif! This is what’s called foreshadowing. Later we’ll talk about us trying to hire you.)

2018 is wild. We may live in the darkest timeline, but there are unexpectedly bright moments (like Microsoft advocating for Linux)! I’m focused on tooling around the container ecosystem, so I’m recommending colleagues for most events where people want me to talk about devving some ops. (Getting more voices on stage is close to my heart!) As the Cloud Advocacy org covers lots of territory, I get to hear about all sorts of fascinating topics that expand my horizons (inside and outside Microsoft). I’m working with Jérôme Petazzoni on open-source k8s training (with my classes delivered, of course, on Azure!) These classes have been popular (as everyone wants to kuber some netes) and the largest class so far was 250 people at OSCON. And I still lead the devopsdays organization; I am so excited to watch it grow and to appreciate colleagues and friends speaking at the quickly-multiplying events. In 2018, we have 71 conferences on 6 continents! Talk to me if you’re based at McMurdo Station, because do I have an idea for you!

And there are exciting times ahead; I’m working right now on learning about Helm. So fun working with Lachlan Evenson and Ralph Squillace to figure out more about how I can help improve our open source projects! Learning is a thread that’s running throughout my experience here thus far. Getting ideas and inspiration from team members across Microsoft like Brendan Burns and Annie Parker and Scott Hanselman brings me delight!

If you’re still saying hmmmm, but something something megacorp… of course MSFT is a giant company. You may notice that every workplace has some tools, some processes, something that you wouldn’t have picked. I mean, unless you are the sole proprietor and make every single decision at your org! So I guess we can amend that assertion to “every place consisting of two or more people”. (Unsurprisingly, there are slightly more than two people at a company that’s older than I am.) Yet I’m pleasantly surprised all the time at the pragmatic flexibility I encounter; Microsoft wants to meet customers where they are, and this tweet remains entirely true:

When I woke up this morning (far too early, because Attack Kitten wants to play before Electoral Vote updates at 5am in our time zone), I found myself wondering, “How has it been a year already? We’re just getting this party started!”

In the Azure org, there’s so much interesting stuff to learn and share and build. If you are looking to join the fun, you can check out Jeff Sandquist’s Awesome Jobs post or chat with Chad Fowler - and I’ll see you on Twitter or on GitHub or at conferences near and far (like when Joe and I head to Australia for YOW!)… and maybe (if you decide Microsoft is right for you!) at our team week next year!

fin

Thanks to Samantha Grumdahl, Joe Laha, and Tim Gross for their thoughtful feedback as I wrote this. All mistakes, opinions, and attempts to recruit you are my own.