Google's developer relation teams have historically had two types of roles: the Developer Programs Engineer (DPE) and the Developer Advocate (DA).
In earlier years, this allowed us to form a distinction between developers who learned more heavily on the engineering side (DPEs) and worked on tools, libraries and samples. You could think of this as aligned with a software engineering position. We then had DA roles where there was a little more emphasis on creating scalable outreach (writing articles, giving talks, roadshows).
Over time, these roles have blended quite a lot. It's not uncommon to see DAs who are extremely heavy on the engineering side and even write specs as part of TC39 and similarly, not uncommon to find DPEs who enjoy speaking and writing. I think ultimately the distinction matters less these days than it used to.
The answer to this question has changed a lot in the last six years :) There was a year when my wife tells me I was traveling 30% of the year, which is crazy. That's thankfully gone down significantly over time and I travel pretty irregularly these days. At this point I've given approximately 110 talks around the world but I'm certainly happy to be taking a break from this for a little while.
Day to day: When I switched over to being an engineering manager, a lot more of my time was spent in coordination meetings with other Google teams, leads and in 1:1s with my reports.
A typical day at the office starts at 7.45AM. I'll usually try to catch up really quick on what's new in the JS community or before diving into meetings for 70% of the day. I reserve 30% for working on design docs, coding or writing articles (if it's not too busy). I wrap up sometime between 6-7 and head back home to hang out with the wife and kids.
I love VS Code. Use it everyday. My favorite theme is probably Seti (which I use across my editor, iTerm and Hyper.app)
VP of DevRel RapidAPI ❯ Award-winning Web Developer NodeCLI.com ❯ Google Dev Expert Web tech ❯ 2x GitHub Stars Award ❯ WordPress Core Dev ❯ TEDx Speaker ❯ "awesome example for devs" — Satya Nadella
Location
San Francisco Bay Area
Education
EE-CS Engineer turned Software Developer
Work
VP of DevRel (DX Eng., Content & Community) RapidAPI ❯ Google Dev Expert ❯ GitHub Star ❯ NodeCLI.com
Moving to management can feel like a large change. You give up some of the things you enjoy, like coding as much. Instead of building libraries, you're building teams and helping others build up their careers.
There's only so many hours in the day so you're going to hit a limit on how much you can "scale" yourself. When you're trying to help others develop their skills, it gives you a chance to do more of this scaling. You get to see how they would tackle problems (often in new and better ways than you would).
That said it's definitely not for everyone. I've been lucky for the rest of my time to still give me an opportunity to write or code..sometimes :)
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Hey Ahmad! I'll try to answer as best I can here.
In earlier years, this allowed us to form a distinction between developers who learned more heavily on the engineering side (DPEs) and worked on tools, libraries and samples. You could think of this as aligned with a software engineering position. We then had DA roles where there was a little more emphasis on creating scalable outreach (writing articles, giving talks, roadshows).
Over time, these roles have blended quite a lot. It's not uncommon to see DAs who are extremely heavy on the engineering side and even write specs as part of TC39 and similarly, not uncommon to find DPEs who enjoy speaking and writing. I think ultimately the distinction matters less these days than it used to.
Day to day: When I switched over to being an engineering manager, a lot more of my time was spent in coordination meetings with other Google teams, leads and in 1:1s with my reports.
A typical day at the office starts at 7.45AM. I'll usually try to catch up really quick on what's new in the JS community or before diving into meetings for 70% of the day. I reserve 30% for working on design docs, coding or writing articles (if it's not too busy). I wrap up sometime between 6-7 and head back home to hang out with the wife and kids.
I love VS Code. Use it everyday. My favorite theme is probably Seti (which I use across my editor, iTerm and Hyper.app)
50 small ducks. I like my problems bite-sized ; )
Nuce answers. Thanks for the response 👋
Sad (for me). Is that where this road leads?
It's not all that bad :)
Moving to management can feel like a large change. You give up some of the things you enjoy, like coding as much. Instead of building libraries, you're building teams and helping others build up their careers.
There's only so many hours in the day so you're going to hit a limit on how much you can "scale" yourself. When you're trying to help others develop their skills, it gives you a chance to do more of this scaling. You get to see how they would tackle problems (often in new and better ways than you would).
That said it's definitely not for everyone. I've been lucky for the rest of my time to still give me an opportunity to write or code..sometimes :)