12 Months at Microsoft
Tags: career, microsoft
Published: 2020-01-22 03:33:16

---
title: 12 Months at Microsoft
published: true
date: 2020-01-21 22:30:56 UTC
tags: career,microsoft
canonical_url: https://www.aaron-powell.com/posts/2020-01-22-12-months-at-microsoft/
---

At the beginning for last year [I joined Microsoft](https://dev.to/aaronpowell/starting-2019-with-a-new-job-2cgm-temp-slug-6541646) in the Cloud Advocates team and given it's been around 12 months I wanted to do an update on my [6 months at Microsoft](https://dev.to/azure/6-months-at-microsoft-4j73) post.

Over the 6 months since the last post things have settled down into a bit more of a routine. I wrote 34 articles since that one and writing is still the primary way in which I like to produce content. But whereas in the first 6 months at Microsoft I focused on ticking off a few things I'd been wanting to learn (like IoT and Golang) recently I've been going back more to my roots and focusing on content around JavaScript and .NET (particularly F#).

I also spent a bit more time at events, and that is partially due to the back half of a year being event season in Australia. And while I might not have [had the best success getting accepted](https://dev.to/aaronpowell/reflecting-on-12-months-submitting-to-conferences-2ddf) I got myself to events across Melbourne, Sydney, Perth and Orlando (which is a gruelling 24 hours transit each way).

## The Only Constant is Change

I joked at the end of my 6 months post that I'd survived my first reorg and maybe that was just foreshadowing as before 12 months was up I'd survived a second one! 🤣 (I've also had 4 manager changes in 12 months!)

But it's not overly surprising, the CA team has just crossed the 3 year milestone which means that the original 3 year plan (like most companies we operate on a 3 year plan) has wrapped up and it's time to look at how to drive the next 3 years.

When I joined I was a _Regional_ Cloud Advocate, meaning my focus was on the communities in Australia **regardless** of technology. This was a challenge because we'd have to be able to speak to a lot of technologies that we didn't necessarily have experience in and we all naturally tended to drift towards the communities that aligned with out skillsets anyway. So a shift was made that we are now focused on particular technology verticals, which for me is JavaScript and .NET, and focus beyond just our region with that (but I want to focus more on the Australia communities anyway because at the very least it means a lot less travel!).

## The Next 12 Months

If I was to make a guess on what the next 12 months looks like I am pretty sure I'd be wrong about it! Ultimately, the high level goals are still the same, engage with development communities to work out what they need to support them growing and thriving. I have a busy travel schedule already planned out so you can see where I'll be by looking at my [talks calendar](https://www.aaron-powell.com/talks/) and I'm working on some internal projects that hopefully I can share soon.

As always I'm contactable if you want to learn more about what I do and how we as the CA team can help technical communities.

Until the next reorg! 🤣