You might have seen Developer Relations (also referred to as DevRel or Developer Advocacy) around Twitter lately and been confused on what it was. Or maybe you have a fuzzy understanding of DevRel and want to learn more about it to try to get a job in it.
Either way, this blog post is for you. We're going to be talking about what developer relations is, exploring its 3 main areas, then talking about how to land a job in this field.
The 3 Pillars of DevRel
Before we discuss the pillars of DevRel, let's give a quick overview of what it is. DevRel is a role that exists at developer tool companies (companies whose target market is developers). Developer Advocates help raise awareness for a product and collect feedback from the dev community to improve it.
DevRel has 3 main categories: Community, Content, and Product. Some Devrels do one of these while others are focused on a couple; it ultimately depends on people's skillsets and what the company needs. Both as a startup hiring for devrel and as someone who wants to get into it, it's important to understand these areas to know which you want to focus on. Let's explore each one in more depth.
Community
Community-focused DevRel usually centers around growing and managing a community of developers. This is typically a Slack or Discord community that's focused on a product or technology. Managing a community consists of greeting new members, answering questions, designing the community in an inclusive way, and making sure your members are getting value from the community. This can also include livestreams, events, and other activities that help the community grow.
Being a technical community builder is a very hot skill to have nowadays due to the shift developer tool companies are making in the way they obtain their customers.
Content
Content-focused DevRel is about spreading awareness about a product through written and spoken content. This can involve writing blog posts, making videos, teaching workshops, recording podcasts, and more.
Product
Product-focused DevRel is about owning the developer exeprience of the product. In other words, it's about improving how it feels for a developer to use a specific product. This can be done by talking to users to understand how they're using it, then making improvements to the documentation and creating guides based on their answers.
This can also extend to the product ecosystem so working on code examples, templates, and integrations is also common.
Getting a DevRel job
This is a relatively new role. To stand out though, you should try to have 2 out of 3 of these.
- You can code. For this, you can show off some of your side projects.
- You know how to build communities. You can show off helping build a community or organization if you have any experience in this area.
- You're a good content creator. You can show off your talks, YouTube videos, tweets, and blog posts for this one.
While there aren't pre-requisites for the job, it's very helpful to have prior work in these areas to show off and get your career in developer advocacy started. Ultimately, it's for engineers who enjoy working with developers, creating content, and managing communities.
Conclusion
As long as you can demonstrate the skills above, you'll likely have no issues finding a role. I also suggest having a website or writing up a document with links to your work to include in your applications. I have a list of some startups that are hiring here.
I hope this clarified some things for you regarding what DevRel is. If you have any questions, feel free to shoot me a DM on Twitter!
Top comments (6)
I feel like, personally, code literacy isn't a nice to have; it's a must have. I'm not saying you have to be able to build whole software applications or design complex systems from scratch, but a big part of gaining trust with developers stems from being able to speak their language and being able to relate to them and their needs. I'm not really sure how you build this kind of skill without some sort of software development experience coming into the field, but I'd genuinely love to hear how else you can break into developer advocacy and developer relations.
Hey Alida! I think what you are saying does make a lot of sense. In my experience, I became a DevRel without "real" software dev experience. Initially, I was working in strategy departments of big tech firms (TikTok, Uber, etc.), and along the way, I discovered Python/SQL. I took an interest in those and built some little bots/scrapers/programs. Currently, I work for Quine where we help devs contribute to open source. So with this in mind, I believe that I can't really relate to devs 100% because I never pushed anything significant to prod. Still, I understand enough to do my job properly. Who knows maybe I'm an outlier in the whole Dev Advocate world...🙃
Hey Bap! Thanks for the reply.
I think you actually are an incredible asset to the Dev Advocate world! I think I meant by this comment that it's great to have diverse backgrounds but having some code literacy or exposure to software development is an asset; there are so many ways to get this experience without having ever pushed to prod.
Funnily enough in the time since my original comment, I've moved on from Dev Advocacy back into software engineering, but your experience with big tech and having built "little" tools (I wouldn't necessarily count those as little!) is so valuable.
Thank you for your reply and for challenging my comment. The more I read it back the more I feel poorly for the tone I took here and I hope it doesn't reflect on your experience as an advocate. Thank you for being you!
Thanks for your comment! It is very kind of you, but I still think they were indeed small stuff lol.
It's very cool to hear you went back into the SWE world - I hope everything goes well for you there. 🌟💪
Agreed! For most developer relation jobs, you need to be able to code. There are some roles that are very community focused (more of a community manager type of role) where there may be exceptions but for a traditional devrel role, it's a must.
Really enjoyed your piece Hassan, +5 likes from me. 🌟
I liked your banner even more - a really cool sum up of what it is to be a Developer Advocate!