A Beginner’s Guide To A Successful DevRel Career 🥑

Developer Relations, or DevRel for short, is a role that helps foster healthy and mutually beneficial relationships between companies and software developers. It is a field that has grown in popularity in the last few years as more companies pay attention to product advocacy and awareness in the developer community.

This article will cover the genesis and history of DevRel, its current state, mistakes to avoid, and how to build a career in DevRel successfully.

The History of DevRel

The DevRel we know and love today was not a thing a few years ago. As of 2017, what we had were conferences and meetups among tech enthusiasts who shared the same interest and love for specific tools and technologies. Developers arranged local and international meetings and talked about things they've been learning, cool projects they built, the process involved in a problem they solved at work or home, and how they used specific tools, APIs, and resources to solve said problem. This was the genesis of DevRel—community; people gathering together and educating one another.

The Current State of DevRel

The demand for DevRel experts and professionals has increased over time. Sadly, that is not the only change that has come to the DevRel space in recent times.

The focus of DevRel has always been education. In fact, DevRel became successful because people made education their priority. No one was trying to market their company, bring in sales, get signups, drive adoption, or push and promote their company's products into people's faces. Instead, the focus was on sharing challenges and lessons learned while building great products.

DevRel has transitioned from education to marketing, sales, and adoption. Company leadership needs to remember that developers don't spend their time, money, and energy attending conferences to watch or listen to some product promotion. Instead, they come to learn. No one pays money to hear you advertise your company and talk about why your solution and services are the best in the world.

DevRel was a group of enthusiasts coming together to share their joy, and that must become the focus once again.

The Modes of DevRel

As stated earlier in this article, education is the core of DevRel. There are four major modes through which this can be accomplished, and they are:

1. Speaking
2. Writing
3. Video Content Creation
4. Conducting Workshops

Having experience in at least one of these modes is highly recommended. Also, consider growing in other modes over time as part of your career development goals.

There is no hard rule when it comes to choosing the mode to focus on first. No one is more important than another. A great way to decide is by picking the mode you are highly interested in. For example, if you naturally enjoy writing, consider selecting the writing mode, as you are more likely to deliver stellar results and improve faster with that than with other modes.

Tips To Set Yourself up for Success in DevRel

1. Participate in Local Meetups
   Local meetups are a great way to get your foot wet and gain practical DevRel experience. Often, it is also a great way to beef up your portfolio, carve a niche for yourself, show your talent, and ultimately gain access to international audiences.

2. Don't Make Relationships Transactional
   Avoid transaction relationships; people can often smell opportunists from a mile away. Trying to use people for their followership, connections, network and what you can gain from them is a sin in the DevRel space.

3. Be Open-minded
   Be open to trying new opportunities, attending new conferences, and forming new connections. Great things could come from these moments later in the future.

4. De-godify People
   Don't feel like there are people you can't talk to or be in the same space with. No matter their achievements, they are just humans like you!

5. Support People
   Find out what people are creating and the problems they are trying to solve, then see how you can support them in reaching their goals. This is a great way to form genuine connections.

6. Have Great Communication Skills
   When it comes to DevRel, communication is worth its weight in gold. Great developer advocates put a lot of thought into their communication, and it shows in the materials they put out, whether it's a GitHub readMe, YouTube video, or a 1000-word article. It is important to communicate in a way that anyone who comes across your work will understand.

7. Have Some Developer Experience
   While you don't have to be a 10x developer, some level of developer knowledge and experience is required to truly connect with other developers and speak their language. The more technical expertise and experience you have, the better, which is an advantage that will make you more effective.

8. Have An Active Online Presence
   Constantly publish content to social media platforms (YouTube, Twitter, Hashnode, etc.) via your chosen teaching mode. It's a great way to stay consistent and deliver content to your audience.
   The key to having an active presence on any platform is sharing and talking about the things you enjoy doing. Consistency is easier when delight is present in an activity.

9. Measure Your Growth
   Analyze your work overtime to ensure you've been growing. Have the quality of your videos gotten better? Have your oratory skills improved? Is your writing more structured and concise? Tracking these parts of your skillset allows you to spot growth or areas that require improvements.

10. Remember that it's DevRel, Not DevSell
    Always remember that the essence of DevRel is not sales or marketing. Those are the job of the sales and marketing teams. Instead, DevRel is fundamentally about providing value, growing relationships, and educating your audience.

Conclusion

Now you have all you need to succeed in DevRel; have a fruitful and impactful career.