Peter De Tender Interview
Peter is a +20 year IT expert, with a background in Microsoft datacenter technologies. Since early 2012, Peter started shifting to cloud technologies (Office 365, Intune), and quickly jumped onto the Azure platform, working as a cloud solution architect and trainer. Mid 2019, Peter took on a position as Azure Technical Trainer within Microsoft Corp, providing Azure Readiness Workshops to larger customers and partners within the EMEA Region and global, with a focus on Azure DevOps, Apps and Infra and SAP workloads. Peter was an Azure MVP for 5 years, is a Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) for +12 years and still actively involved in the community as public speaker, technical writer, book author and publisher. Let’s continue and find out more about Peter and his journey.
Peter De Tender Interview
Tell us about yourself?
I’m Peter De Tender, married to Els and father of 2 brilliantly smart daughters (got mom’s DNA and brains), Kaylee and Kitana. Born and lived in Belgium for about 46 years, but relocated to Washington State, USA for Microsoft Corp in the first week of January 2022. I love working with Microsoft technologies, especially Azure, and I am learning a bit of .NET development. My current role at Microsoft is (Azure) Technical Trainer, providing weekly workshops to enterprise customers and partners from all over the globe on Azure Architecting (AZ-305) and Azure DevOps (AZ-400) primarily, with Azure Developing (AZ-204) and Azure Security (SC-300) every now and then.
How did you get started in Tech?
I remember my first steps into PCs at age 12, when my parents bought a x286-PC with MS-DOS 4.? for their business. I could sign up for computer classes during lunch hour at school and was amazed by it. A few years later, I took a weekend/summer vacation job in a computer store, building physical PCs, fixing printers, those kind of stuff. While initially they couldn’t pay me, we made an agreement I would log the hours and they would pay me in equipment. That’s how I ended up having a flatscreen monitor, a CD-writer, Sound blaster audio card,… long before my friends could afford it 😊. Interesting enough – although the passion and interest was there – I didn’t get approved for computer science in high school, so shifted to business and accounting. That’s also the Bachelor’s degree I graduated in, in 1996. After working in a finance department at Procter & Gamble European headquarters in Brussels, I moved to an IT company about 18 months after as the first Microsoft guy in a Unix-platform oriented company. That’s where I learned about Microsoft Windows Servers, Exchange Server, SQL Databases,… but also building physical datacenters, network cabling, configuring routers/switches, storage and firewalls.
What is your greatest achievement whilst working in Tech?
I never kept a list of achievements, and overall, every few months or years, something amazing happened which could be seen as an achievement. Looking back, I think my biggest achievement was not giving in to my teachers’ comments “I was too stupid for computer science”, as it’s been my professional area for 26 years 😊. I couldn’t imagine working as an accountant to be honest.
While most achievements were “just happening”, meaning I never focused on achieving them, let me list up a few coming to mind:
– first Microsoft training delivery in 2006
– becoming a Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) in 2010
– received the Microsoft MVP program recognition in 2013 (Windows IT Pro), but shifted to Azure as of 2014-2019
– Speaker at Microsoft TechEd conference Europe in 2013 and 2014
– Speaker at Microsoft Ignite North America conference in 2015
– becoming an Azure Technical Trainer for Microsoft in Sept 2019
– relocating from Belgium to Redmond, WA for Microsoft Corp Jan 2022
On the more personal side, but still related to Tech, some achievements I can list up here are:
– Published 8 technical books in 8 years (Exchange Server 2013, Hyper-V, Azure), as well as inspired and mentored several others to become a technical book author.
– Helped the youngest (17y) and oldest (67) MCTs to become a Microsoft Certified Trainer through providing presentation skills training and coaching.
– Got invited to present at numerous (inter)national conferences and user groups, too many to list up here, but great memories to all of them.
How did you get involved with Microsoft Azure?
My first Azure adventure was around 2012, deploying a few Azure Virtual Machines and hook them up to Microsoft System Center, as well as building training content for Azure Pack. VM capabilities were still rather basic, so I didn’t do much with it. As of 2014, with the beta version of Azure Resource Manager, it became more interesting to me, as it allowed for complete infrastructure deployments (networking, storage, VMs) and also allowed for migrating Virtual Machines. Early 2015, that’s where it really became my focus point you could say. I subcontracted for Opsgility.com, a US-based company with a huge focus on Microsoft cloud readiness, who sent me across the world to provide Azure workshops for partners and enterprise customers. I also was one of the authors of the 70-535 Azure Architect Microsoft Official Courseware, which got me closer to the Microsoft World Wide Learning organization.
What do you enjoy about your role as an Azure Technical Trainer?
Funny enough, I don’t have great memories to my first trainer experience (2006), as I hated being in front of an audience. I saved the training (and myself), by stepping a bit outside of the courseware material, and share my real-world experiences. That’s still my strength in today’s role as an Azure Technical Trainer. People often ask me if delivering the same training every few weeks isn’t getting boring or easy. While there are certain parts in the flow of a training which are repetitive, for me, every week is a different week. The participants are different, questions they come up with are different, etc… and I’m learning from them during every delivery. A lot of the questions I get are actually inspiration sources for building new demos, looking into new scenarios to learn about. I also noticed a shift after moving to the USA, where customers are typically larger, running more complex workloads on Azure,… as the ones I’ve seen in my EMEA deliveries in the same role.
Apart from the pure trainer role, it is also a great opportunity to work with other teams across Microsoft. As a trainer, we are the direct channel towards the content teams – the ones who build the slides, labs and publish https://Learn.microsoft.com content. We can interact with the Azure product groups, sharing feedback on features, testing private preview features and evangelize internally by presenting at Employee-only technical sessions or internal conferences. All this is optional, and not a core part of the technical trainer role, but for me, definitely something I see as a big benefit of the role.
For those who want to become an Azure Technical Trainer, what does it take to become one?
It all starts with applying for the role 😊. This might sound silly, but I talked to several people over the years, who never thought they would be good enough to work at Microsoft. Where they actually made it into the role and are really successful (hint hint).
To me, as an Azure Technical Trainer, it starts with “knowing your stuff”. Customers see you as an expert (for as much one can be an expert on “Azure”…), and you need to reflect that. The misconception is that you need to know everything. Each course has a specific job-role focus, and the magic lies in speaking to your audience. You need to bring a story that relates to them, as well as their day-to-day job. If you can bring up some tips & tricks that will make the job more interesting, less stressful the week after the training, that’s a big win.
Next, feel comfortable in presenting. Which doesn’t mean reading from slides. While certainly easier in this more-virtual world where you can put up multiple monitors to watch over your content, something you don’t have in front of a real audience, it is even more important to be able to tell a story, show compelling demos and do whiteboard sessions to reflect on the content. People have a virtual-world fatigue, so you need to come up with something interesting, different, attractive to share every few minutes.
So having a combination of technical experience, together with being able to translate it to an interesting story, those are the 2 qualities I see in being a technical trainer.
For someone who has worked in IT for several years but has never been involved with teaching, and now wants to move into this field. Is teaching experience necessary?
I personally think, that anyone can be a teacher/trainer. If you are passionate about anything, you can probably tell a story about it and be an inspiration to others who want to learn. The challenge is finding the balance between being deep-technical and being able to bring an understandable message.
We all have stage fright, even I still feel the butterflies in my stomach every Monday morning when starting a new class, when presenting a user group session or speak at an in-person conference. I always say, the day I don’t feel those butterflies, is the day I quit being a trainer/presenter. So far, it didn’t happen yet 😊.
Just like one can learn technical subjects, one can learn better presentation skills. Honestly, after presenting in-person for 15 years, shifting to the virtual deliveries because of the pandemic was hard for me. I didn’t see my audience, so I didn’t know if they “got the message”. So there’s a lot more effort needed to check back if they understand, if there are any questions,…
What are the key characteristics that Microsoft look for in a Technical Trainer?
What I’ve seen by participating in interviews for selecting new candidates for the role, is a much bigger focus on the Microsoft cultural fit, as well as fitting into the trainer team culture, than being a technical Azure expert or experienced trainer already. I’ve seen great technical candidates, well-known names in the Azure tech space, not succeeding in getting the job. On the other side, I’ve been amazed by some great candidates – who are now part of the team – whom didn’t have much Azure background or trainer experience. But they are now excelling in the role as much as the other ones coming in with more experience.
It’s also why going through a Microsoft job application is difficult to explain. It starts from your resume, convincing the recruitment team you are a good fit on all levels (technical, non-technical, cultural,…), before you even make it to your actual interview with the hiring manager. From there, you typically do a technical interview, where colleagues like myself are trying to find out what you already know, and where you can still grow. Again, it doesn’t mean you need to know “everything” on Azure before applying. We train on 16 different Azure courseware titles, and even I’m only covering 5 of them. In the next interview, it’s a bit more presentation skills oriented, where you need to present for about 20min, where the interviewers act as learners in your training session. How do you handle questions, how fluent is your presentation, is there a technical demo,… are the key focus points I personally look at.
From there, it’s up to the hiring manager and the recruiting team to make their selection. I also learned there is a regional aspect to it, meaning, you might be a great candidate, but unfortunately not located in a region where there is demand for a trainer at that time. It is also why each job advertisement on the Microsoft career website (careers.microsoft.com) lists up the different locations where the position can get filled in.
What would you recommend for those wanting to start out with Microsoft Azure?
The most important recommendation I have is GET STARTED!
Set out time to learn, I would say 1 hour per day, to go through Azure books, watch Youtube videos or MSLearn TV sessions, read through any of the +3000 Microsoft Learn modules,… and sign up for a Free Azure subscription, to get that hands-on experience. If you have Azure user groups in your area, try to reach out to them, attend some of their sessions in-person or virtual, follow Azure-related communities on Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media platforms of choice.
What other community initiatives are you involved with?
Overall, Azure is my community. I regularly present at (mostly online now) Azure-oriented user group events across the world, speak at Podcasts and take interviews like this one 😊. I also still try to keep up my blog https://www.007FFFLearning.com, although it’s been a few months. So this will be my first action item as outcome of this interview, picking up blogging again. I am also trying to follow and get a bit into the .NET Blazor communities, as I’m thrilled on learning more about developing, and started with Blazor several months back.
What’s next in your Tech journey?
I didn’t really think about it yet, for several reasons. The relocation to Microsoft HQ in Redmond definitely will be a big part of it. But for now, because of Visa regulations, I can’t really shift roles. And I’m still passionate about being an Azure Technical Trainer, so I can probably stay happy for a longer while.
Looking at other roles, I always wanted to be an evangelist, what we call a DevRel / Cloud Advocate nowadays. But with a new interest domain opening up around developing, who knows where I might end up in a few years from now, right?
Do you have any final words of wisdom?
Once we learn how to set time apart for learning something, we can learn anything.
End of interview
Peter De Tender
Website: https://aka.ms/pdtit
Twitter: Pdtit
GitHub: Peter
LinkedIn: pdtit @ LinkedIn
Loved this interview! Peter you’re an inspiration.