What’s next for Chris? I’ve got a new job!

In my last few posts and talks I covered my worries about the current job market in technology. Lots of people have been laid off in the last months and it is tough to find a role without making a lot of concessions. Every big tech company is slashing budgets and trying to save money despite having massive sales figures. I’ve always been confused about the job market and that there is a huge disconnect between people looking for a job and those hiring.

• As developers, we’ve traditionally never been happy about recruiters.
• As hiring managers, we’re constantly confused about the transformation our job specs make from initial email to published job ad.
• As recruiters, you always have to reassure talent that you are not one of the sketchy ones only out for a commission

We have companies struggling to find good talent and developers struggling to find a job that fits their skills and needs. It makes no sense.

That’s why I decided as the next step of my career to join WeAreDevelopers as Director of Developer Relations.

I’ve worked with them before as a presenter and MC at their flagship conference and I saw this as a great opportunity to help bring some light to the current turmoil in the job market and help developers get the information they need. I also want to help companies find the right talent and help them understand what developers need to be happy and productive.

This doesn’t mean I will cease to work on the web and its products. I will still be active in other areas and I’ve started being a technical advisor for several companies. I’m also working on some courses that will come out soon.

I also was amazed to remember that five years ago I gave a talk for WeAreDevelopers on the coming AI revolution: How to democratize and ensure ethics in AI

I joined Yahoo because I wanted to work on the biggest web presence and help run a developer program. I joined Mozilla to help the web when native mobile solutions threatened to replace it. Years later, the web is still around and thriving. I joined Microsoft to get rid of Internet Explorer and I am happy to say I managed to achieve this goal. I also wanted the Developer Tools in Microsoft Edge to be on par and exceeding the offers of other browser and I managed to do that.

I’m looking forward to make WeAreDevelopers be what it stands for: a community for developers beyond job offers. I want to ramp up the resources, training and video sections and build out and coach the team there on developer relations.

As I said in my Developer Advocacy Handbook, being a developer advocate is as much about telling developers about great technology as it is about advocating the needs and wants of developers to business stakeholders. And I can see this job as a massive opportunity to do just that.

Personally, I chose this offer because of some of the things I considered important:

• The job is fully remote, so I keep working from home.
• I am allowed to present at many other conferences in addition to help running the WAD ones.
• I can still do video courses for other platforms.
• There was no confusion how to hire someone in Germany and what that means in terms of job security and benefits.
• I have a team of people to work with and a lot of freedom where to go with this.

Watch this space for some questions I have for you later on what we could do to make this a great resource for developers. If you are interested, please get in touch.