Today's career post comes from Dion Hutchings, a Developer Evangelist for Microsoft who specializes in Windows Azure. You can follow Dion on Twitter @DionHut. We asked Dion about his background and how he ended up working for Microsoft at the Redmond campus and here's what he had to say:
I didn’t set out to work in lots of different types of jobs where I could still be technical, well, it turns out I’ve taken a pretty cool path. I think so anyway, and that’s the most important thing, right? I think Microsoft is the best place to work. I love the culture of altruism, sharing success with partners and the fact there are lots of different areas technical girls and guys can make real impact to the business.
My first computer experience as a kid growing up on a sugarcane farm in Queensland, Australia was on an Amstrad CPC128 where I taught myself to write Basic programs. My first program was a menu to keep my younger brother and sister from using it J and later I wrote more complex programs like a cyclone tracking app where I would enter data I got regularly from the news on the TV and plotted the cyclone’s progress on a map. From then on I was single minded about getting a computer science degree and writing software for a living.
I’ve had multiple dev and test jobs from an information management start up to military aerospace programs at Boeing with an extended ski working vacation in there somewhere, that’s another story. I then started on a very different tack at Microsoft talking on really fun Technical Marketing, Technical Sales and Technical Evangelism roles. I really love working with customers, building relationships, being a trusted advisor. All while doing what I love which is still writing some code, a little international travel and talking about what I’m passionate about, technology, with like-minded people.
If you are thinking about starting a technical career I would say go for it! – Your skills are in great demand especially if you are a great communicator and there are tons of places you can take your career beyond writing code, if you want to.