The world of Developer Relations
A take on what to expect and what it takes in this space in 2022
Did you know that the number of developers around the world was about 26 Million in 2020? Thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic, that number has increased significantly with more people trying their hand at different technologies. Why am I starting off with numbers here? This is the population that a number of us that are in the Developer Relations(DevRel) universe try to understand, serve, appease and cater to. When I started off in my role at The @ Company in 2020, this role was not very common. A few companies led the way; a number of us were trying to figure out the nuts and bolts of what it takes to run a successful Developer relations function. Fast forward to 2022. I feel like there is a lot more buzz around DevRel but there is still very little material available on our wonderful internet to get people started, and give them a foundational understanding on what a career in this role would entail. So, this piece is my humble attempt to give my take on what the DevRel role is all about, and what it takes to succeed.
So, what is Developer Relations?
I am going to give you my take on it. I feel that DevRel is a great blend of Technology, Marketing, Sales, and Customer Service with the Developer as your main customer. A typical day in the life of someone in the DevRel function could involve all of the above, or just one of the above. The intersection of these functions is what makes Developer Relations so unique and so much fun, not to forget the opportunity to learn all along the way.
I reached out to my fellow DevRel friends in the industry to weigh in here as well, and here is what they had to say to answer my question on, “What does Developer Relations mean to you?”
Neevash Ramdial(Nash) from Stream : “Developer Relations is a growing multidisciplinary field that sits at the intersection of engineering, product, and marketing.
The role, responsibilities, and goals differ drastically from company to company. Generally speaking, it refers to the activities and strategies for building and growing a developer ecosystem between organizations and developers.
The day-to-day of DevRels often includes a combination of community outreach (Twitter Spaces, blogging, speaking, etc.), internal advocacy (participating in internal engineering discussion, helping with documentation, etc.), and some product/marketing.
The most used words in DevRel: “It depends 😄”
Aditya from Appwrite : “Essentially DevRel is the bridge between the code and the community. DevRel folks are often responsible for maintaining communication between organizations and developers to ensure a better information flow and feedback loop. Thus, both entities have a better experience and growth path.”
Siddharth from Storyblok : “For me DevRel is a role in which I can express myself to others in multiple ways; speaking at events, sharing experiences, creating content items, and so much more! DevRel allows me to be who I am and portray my thoughts to the wider community across the globe. It not only helps me to bridge the gap between developers and products/companies but also enables me to spread awareness to others and educate them to bring a bigger impact.”
YK from CS Dojo : “DevRel, to me, is a way to connect what people want with what companies want. We put out a piece of content, for example, about a particular piece of tech devs want to learn. Then, we can weave whatever we want to recommend/promote in that piece of content.”
A huge shoutout to all my fellow DevRel friends for taking their time to contribute to this piece. A big thank you to the Flutter Community — am lucky to be working with so many awesome people from there that have made this journey for me so much so easier. That is the power of community!
What does a typical “day in the life” look like?
No day is similar — you are always in for a surprise. I don’t mean to say this to scare anyone, but I mean it in a very positive way. On one day, you might find yourself spending all your energy just educating yourself on your technology, and on another day you will just be talking to external developers non-stop. To sum up the major categories of the work you can expect, I have tried to depict them in the diagram below:
Let us expand on each of these facets in a little more detail.
- Understanding Developers
Let’s be honest, there would be no DevRel without Developers. I am stating the obvious here but it is important for everyone to understand who your target customers are for this role — it is always the developers.
Did you know? There is a separate market segment called the “Business to developer”(B2D) market? Here is a recent article that helps explain this market.
Even among developers, it is important to understand the sliver of the developer market your product is trying to focus on — they could be independent developers, they could be developers already working on a specific technology that your product or platform compliments, they could be enterprise developers who work in large corporations, or they could be a combination of all these or more.
Once you know your focus, the next big step is to understand their pain points, and figure out how your offering solves any of those points, or enhances the developer experience, or saves them a ton of time and money with productivity and more.
Collaboration with your Marketing team is key in order to have consistent messaging across all external facing websites, content, social media etc. We will be talking about all of this shortly.
How do we get this done though? The easiest way is to talk to your developer market. Even though most developers would rather be left alone to code than come on a call and talk, you would be surprised that there are so many wonderful people out there who are willing to talk to you and answer the questions that you might have. I always call it the “power of community,” and there is nothing like it. Every community is unique, but most communities are amazing. So, get out there and talk. You cannot talk to enough people.
2. Awareness & Education
Once you know your target developer market, it is important to find out where they hang out — it could be Twitter, Reddit, Slack or Discord groups, or even their own little secret hideout that you may not be aware of. Wherever the community is, you then start putting your messaging into action. This is where collaboration with your product, engineering, and marketing team is super important. All teams need to be in sync on your messaging, the tag lines, the campaigns you are going to run, and what constitutes success with your campaigns. From the developer hotspots, your messaging and campaigns should be able drive them towards your developer site and content that you will want them to look at to get started.
Cross pollination mostly works — by that I mean that you want to point to your developer site from your Youtube channel and vice-versa, but you don’t want to duplicate the same exact content across several channels (as it will hurt the search engine optimization(SEO) algorithms).
3. Content
You can have the greatest game-changing technology on the planet, but if you don’t have good content across all the channels to help developers comprehend how you can make their lives easy, or enhance their work, you are fighting an uphill battle with the developers.
As Chris Swan would say, “You cannot have enough samples and examples” for developers. So, take your time in getting all this content to get ready for the different types of developers you might be encountering and the different learning paths they might prefer. Over the course of time, you should have all learning paths covered.
4. Onboarding
You have done the hard part till now to get developers excited about trying out your technology. What you need to provide them now is a wonderful developer experience in understanding and getting them on their way in potentially using your technology for their projects. This includes spreading the word to their communities, and encouraging other fellow developers to try it out as well.If you have gotten to this point, you have already hit it out of the park.
However, it is never easy — you will have hits and misses, but you will learn from both. As they say, if there are shortcomings and misses, fail fast and move on. Continuously talking to the developers is key, and incorporating feedback and relaying that feedback to internal teams and the community is super important.
5. Community Building
Oftentimes building, nurturing, and managing developer communities comes with the DevRel territory. However, much like most of the aspects of this world, “it depends” — mostly on the maturity of the product, the developer tools, the documentation, and other developer-facing content like videos, tutorials, etc. If the technology is new and upcoming, there is a lot more effort that goes into building the community whereas more mature communities tend to have fans or ambassadors of the technology do that work, and it becomes a positive ripple effect for the ecosystem. A great example of this is the one that Google utilizes for the Google Developer Expert program across all of their different technologies. Most of the Google communities are managed by non-employees of Google who volunteer their time and effort to give back to the community via talks, tutorials, events, and other activities.
There are several tools available to kick-start your community — Discord, Slack, Twitter communities, and custom tools are all good options; the tool really does not matter as long as you know how to keep the community engaged.
Who can get into DevRel?
In my humble opinion, as long as you have a passion for technology, helping others and working with people and communities , and you believe that technology can make a difference, no matter your background or experience, you can get into DevRel.
Other roles that are relevant to this space:
Developer Advocate: is someone who helps developers be successful with a platform or a technology and also to act as a bridge between the engineering team and the developer community. This role comes down to more individual 1:1 communications with the community.
DevRel Engineer: works closely with the DevRel team and the developers but is more involved on the code, the documentation, samples, examples, website updates, etc. In some cases, they are also involved in demos and technology walkthroughs in addition to engaging in conversations with developers on social media, YouTube etc.
I hope you find this piece useful. I would love to hear your thoughts and feedback on DevRel and any specific topics we could deep dive into. I am also open to collaborating with the community, so if you would like to, please do reach out to me. Until next time, let us keep the Developer Relations flag flying high!
You can reach me at anthony@atsign.com or @anthonyvprakash on Twitter.
