What org does Developer Advocacy belong in?
This is part of my series of “The State of DevRel Report”. We’ll add the link to the full list later.
Developer advocacy is a relatively new term for a job long done unthanked by a specific few on an engineering team.
To broadly cover the responsibilities of the developer advocate:
To the company, I’m the voice of the community. To the community, I’m the voice of the company.
We can split specific developer advocacy tasks into two categories: Engineering & Community.
Engineering
- Create SDKs
- Write clean, up-to-date documentation
- Prioritize language and framework support depending on the pulse of the community
Community
- Write tutorials for the latest SDKs
- Attend hallway tracks at conferences to engage with community members
- Help people find the information they’re looking for
Even at a glance, it’s easy to see how these two categories overlap nicely, yet distinctly. So now we get back to the original question at hand: Where should the developer advocacy org sit?
The answer, as most technical answers often go, is it depends. The two most common options are Marketing and Engineering. If you’re in Marketing, you’re probably more focused on creating content to help people find value with the product as is. If you’re in Engineering, you’re probably more focused on product improvements to help people who happen to find you get more value.
There’s no right or wrong approach, but often a balance. The best teams create a positive flywheel with Engineering and Community. Each developer advocate is responsible for a vertical within the product, say a specific language domain like Python. That developer engages with the Python community by creating Python-specific content. They keep a pulse on what the community needs, including building new integrations or shipping updates to changing landscapes.
My 2 cents for teams based on the org:
Marketing
- Don’t focus too much on ROI, conversion funnels, or other traditional marketing terms
- Make sure you’re solving real problems for the community, not just pushing your product
Engineering
- Remember that no product is perfect, but quality content can close the gap and get people to value. Not all problems should be solved with code!
- Keep in touch with your community on platforms like Twitter and Discord. Get consistent live feedback on what people need
