Tips for new starters

Geertjan Wielenga: Anyone reading this interview is inevitably going to want to know how to be just like you. What tips would you give somebody who wants to enter into this field?

Laurence Moroney: The number one thing that you need is passion. I think developer advocacy has to be something that you really love. It's not the kind of thing that means you can sit down and think that you will earn so much money if you do this or that. With that mindset, you just won't be good at it and you won't enjoy it.

Beyond passion, you need to be knowledgeable. You need to really understand the tech in depth. Finally, you need to be compassionate. You need to be able to walk a mile in someone's shoes so you can understand where they're coming from.

In practical terms, if you're not working for a big company, then get involved in tech communities and become a star in those communities. If you have those three attributes, that will just happen. When you're a star in those communities, you'll either be that independent advocate or you'll be giving yourself the ammunition to be able to join a company as an advocate.

I was a physicist at college but there was no work for physicists. I was a massive Microsoft fanboy. I thought that Microsoft built great tools and operating systems, so I learned Visual Basic and I built a career as a computer programmer.

I developed my career as a software engineer, then a software architect, and then a Microsoft specialist.

I mentioned earlier that my first advocacy job was for a start-up called Mainsoft. The irony was that what Mainsoft was doing was helping people to transition from Microsoft to Linux. There was a cross-compiler that allowed you to cross-compile ASP.NET into J2EE. Then, with your logic and stuff that was built in ASP.NET, you could compile those as Enterprise JavaBeans (EJBs) and run that. I joined as a Microsoft expert and I ended up becoming a bit of a star in the community around interoperability between Microsoft and J2EE. I spoke at JavaOne in 2004 and that got me noticed by Microsoft. At that point, I'd written a few books as well. When Microsoft was hiring for this thing called WPF/E, which later became Silverlight, it needed an evangelist for that.

People can grow in a way that isn't really possible in other industries. If you're madly in love with TensorFlow, Firebase, or Windows 10, you've got the opportunity to become that community's superstar. If you want to go and join the big boys, the opportunity to do so is there. If you want to stay independent, then the opportunity is there too. Developer advocacy is not something that you can study; it's just something that you do.

Geertjan Wielenga: Thank you, Laurence Moroney.