Joining Couchbase
Short version: My new job title is Developer Advocate, and I am working for Couchbase.
Long version: Being a developer advocate / developer evangelist is something that I've been considering for a long time. I've enjoyed speaking, blogging, writing, screencasting, teaching, helping, networking for a while now. But until now, I had always done these things only in my spare time. The thought of making those activities into my full time job appealed to me. But, there are a lot of developer advocate positions out there, and most of them don't appeal to me, because the product or the company doesn't appeal to me. The few times I managed to get interviews with really awesome companies with great products, it didn't work out, and I thought that maybe it wasn't meant to be.
But I'm very excited to announce that I finally found a DA opening with a great company with a cool product (a NoSQL database company based in Silicon Valley!).
I've done a lot of thinking this year about my career, and what direction I want to go. I've been a coder for my entire career. Some of the best parts of being a coder is sharing knowledge with other coders: teaching, writing, and expanding my own knowledge in the process. As much as I enjoyed working for my previous employer, they make a product that isn't developer-facing, and therefore a developer advocate position just wasn't going to happen for me there.
I'm ready to begin a new chapter, and I'm looking forward to reaching out to developers and helping to build the Couchbase community.