Introducing Developer Evangelist DACH Marius Obert

Introducing Developer Evangelist DACH Marius Obert

> Ahoy World!         
> I'm Marius, and I'd like to introduce myself as the latest addition to Twilio's Developer Evangelist team.

## About me

I recently read this interesting article about the development of software development. Even though I feel like my CS degree helped me get my career kick-started, many of the innovations mentioned in the article were not around back then. Big parts of the web were running on Silverlight or Flash, and the three billion devices that ran Java seemed like a lot. But only small groups of people, if anyone, were talking about server-side JavaScript, Go, Microservices, component-based web development, and blockchains.

In general, the field moves so fast that I had to learn almost everything on the fly during internships, side projects, and the job itself. I still think that the university curriculums provided a strong foundation for what I had to learn later. But, I also feel that you’re able to learn everything you need to know outside of a lecture hall. Given the high demand for developers nowadays, I doubt that the universities out there can even serve this demand.

This also explains the large numbers of people who want to do a career change into tech or join tech coming from a non-traditional background we see today. The collaboration of these different people who work together worldwide makes this industry so unique: Everyone has something different to contribute.

Sharing is caring. That’s the reason why I enjoy talking about incredible technology and software development principles so much. Principles like DRY (Don’t repeat yourself), the Dunning-Kruger Effect, or SOLID helped me a lot when I started with software development and didn’t feel 100% confident in what I was doing.

> Spoiler: I’m still missing this absolute confidence when developing. If you are curious about more principles and law, check out this Hacker Laws GitHub repository.

The best thing about this is that I can learn many new things myself while teaching others in the role of a Developer Evangelist.

Whenever I'm on the laptop and not busy with work, chances are that I'm doing something open-source on GitHub, I follow up with the latest trends with distributed ledger technologies, aka blockchain, or I just enjoy funny memes.

[XKCD 927]

IRL I enjoy playing football and watching the matches of the best club in Munich (or better: the world) live in the stadium or on TV.

Hint: It's not the red club from the side alley but the blue one 🦁 .

## My previous Iterations

0. I started my IT career studying applied computer science at the DHBW in Karlsruhe while working for SAP, the market leader of ERP systems. This program confirmed my passion for working in or playing with tech that I had since I was a small boy. But there's one thing that bugged me during my studies: All I ever did was work on proof of concepts and prototypes but no actual products with real end-users.

1. In 2014 after I received my Bachelor's degree, I wanted to change this and work on software applications. So I applied for an internship as a UI developer in the heart of Silicon Valley: Palo Alto. It's a funny story about how this became my job. Back then, virtual interviewing was much harder than today. So we had a few bandwidth issues during the interview - nothing too bad but bad enough to discuss typical interview questions about complexity theory and similar things. So we adapted and changed course and switched over to jsfiddle to do some pair programming with JavaScript. That's why I got tasked with UI development during the internship.

2. I enjoyed these tasks so much that I decided to become a full-time UI developer for four years – two in Palo Alto and two in Munich, Germany. During this time, I learned to love web technologies like JavaScript, and the entire Node.js ecosystem. After four years, my daily tasks became a bit too monotonous. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed coding, and I still do. But the types of tasks that came with this specific project were very much alike. And as you might remember, one of my favorite principles is DRY 🙂.

3. I wanted to switch to a new role that still had a heavy technical component and included tasks from other job profiles such as public speaking, traveling, being an active member of the tech community, and, most importantly, helping developers. I was thrilled when I became a Developer Advocate for a cloud-based business technology platform. For over three years, I was able to help enterprise developers on their journeys moving their traditional on-premise applications and processes to the new and shiny cloud world. It was a great time, but I also learned that it takes a lot of effort to change course with large ships and promote open-source software over established technology stacks.

[XKCD 1323]

## New Year, New Job, New Iteration

So in the new year, I started yet another iteration. I'm lucky to say that I was able to keep all the significant aspects of my previous roles and add new awesome ones. I'm still working in Developer Relations and am close to various engineers with different backgrounds and help them be more productive.

I'm still building inspirational demo scenarios with code that I'll share with the world in the open-source spirit. Hopefully, I'll also soon be able to do this again at in-person events throughout my focus region: Austria, Switzerland, and Germany, also known as DACH countries. 

And on top of all of that, I have the chance to work with new technologies and products from Twilio. Now, I am a Developer Evangelist DACH for Twilio 🥳 .

If you are a developer based in any of these countries and want to accelerate your Twilio journey, feel free to contact me via any of the following channels.

• Email: mobert@twilio.com
• Twitter: @IObert_
• Github:IObert