"When I moved to VMware, I expected things to continue much as before, but COVID disrupted those plans. When Broadcom acquired VMware, the writing was on the wall and though it took a while, I eventually got made redundant. That was almost 18 months ago. In the time since, I've taken an extended break with overseas travel and thoughts of early retirement. It's been a while therefore since I've done any direct developer advocacy."
"One thing became clear during that time. I had no interest in returning to a 9-to-5 programming job in an office, working on some dull internal system. Ideally, I'd have found a company genuinely committed to open source where I could contribute to open source projects. But those opportunities are thin on the ground, and being based in Australia made it worse as such companies are typically in the US or Europe and rarely hire outside their own region."
"Recently I've been thinking about getting back into developer advocacy. The job market makes this a difficult proposition though. Companies based in the US and Europe that might otherwise be good places to work tend to ignore the APAC region, and even when they do pay attention, they rarely maintain a local presence. They just send people out when they need to."
The narrator began a developer advocacy career in 2010 at New Relic, then worked at Red Hat and VMware before COVID and a Broadcom acquisition led to redundancy. An 18‑month break followed with travel and consideration of early retirement. The narrator rejects returning to a 9‑to‑5 internal programming role and prefers contributing to open source at companies genuinely committed to it. Geographic location in Australia limits access to suitable employers because many US and European firms ignore APAC or lack local presence. The narrator is reassessing a return to developer advocacy and used AI to research recent changes in the field.
Read at Grahamdumpleton
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