Working for a large company

Geertjan Wielenga: Also, people who are not working for vendors often forget that developer advocates coming from the large vendors often have a choice on which tech they want to work with. Couldn't you be working on something totally different from TensorFlow at Google?

Laurence Moroney: It's funny because I joined Google as a cloud advocate because that was what I was hired to do. I really enjoyed that, but I preferred mobile. So, when the opportunity came to jump ship to mobile, I think I became a better advocate because that was something that I was passionate about.

That ended up morphing into me becoming an advocate for Firebase and a little over a year ago, I was working on a tech in Firebase called Firebase Predictions, which uses AI around your analytics to help you to determine customer churn and customer spend. That uses machine learning under the hood and it helped me to drive a lot of feedback to the AI group within Google.

Part of my feedback was around the developer experience because I'm a developer and not an AI researcher. The AI group asked, "Why don't you come and join us?" My natural passion just bubbled to the top. I think that makes me a better developer advocate because this is something I love doing.

Geertjan Wielenga: This again illustrates the benefits of working for a large vendor: you can make that transition from one product to another versus if you're working for some small start-up with one specific tech. Do you see one of the appealing aspects of Google, Microsoft, Oracle, and others being that these large organizations have such a range of tools?

Laurence Moroney: Yes, but if you don't work for those organizations, then many of them have developer networks. At Google, we've got two groups: one is called Google Developer Groups (GDGs) and the other one is called Google Developer Experts (GDEs). Instead of just leaving these groups to go and do their own thing, we help them, but we don't control them.

We give them places to host meetups and provide them with information, swag, and stickers. People who don't work for us tend to rise up and become independent advocates and often, the ones that become the experts have access to a network of resources, as well as the ability to give feedback. They almost become light versions of the developer advocates who work for the company. They can also go between different tech stacks based on their passion.

Big companies can help people to explore their passions for developer advocacy, even if they don't work for them. That often helps people in their career so that they get hired as developer advocates later, maybe by that company or maybe by another company. They get the best of both worlds in some ways. They are that independent voice that you were talking about earlier, but they're an independent voice that has been validated by the vendor. They can go on stage and say, "Google says I'm an expert, but I'm an independent, so I don't work for Google. Here's my opinion." That can be very powerful.

Geertjan Wielenga: A dilemma that often can arise with developer advocacy is when you're enthusiastic about a particular direction your company is going in and then the company changes its direction. Have you been in that situation and how do you deal with that?

Laurence Moroney: I've been in that situation, yes. A good advocate will prepare their developer community for change, without actually leaking that that's going to happen. It's a fine line that you have to walk along.

I think if you are passionate in the space that you work in, you can see the trends and if your company is beginning to take a right-hand turn, then you can start preparing people for those trends. But that's the toughest part of the job.

Geertjan Wielenga: It can be difficult if you are very emotionally involved with a particular tech and you've been promoting it. Have you experienced any problems with that?