Software Engineer to DevRel: a Guide

Tips and tricks from someone who’s been there, done that

Developer advocate/technical evangelist/”devrel” is a hard role. Not because everything we do is hard to do, but rather because the role sits at a weird intersection. DevRel is at the intersection of engineering, product, and marketing, with some even venturing into sales.

Where does DevRel sit?

Most companies have DevRel in product, engineering, or marketing, and there are valid arguments for having DevRel in any of these categories. Let’s take a look.

Product: one of the roles that developer advocates play is the bridge between the product and the developers. Many developer advocates will get and relay issues and requests.

Marketing: More roles that DevRel play are growing the community for the company or product as well as getting more eyes on the product. Many DevRel also give talks/presentations, write blogs, and make videos.

Engineering: Naturally, engineering focused companies want to have DevRel under engineering so they can collaborate closely. In some cases, some developer advocates will not only relay issues and requests, but also write some features themselves.

Goals for DevRel

DevRel is a weird role because there are a lot of goals associated with it. The goals attached to a DevRel role are likely more closely related to the stage of your company than anything else. In early stages, you’re primarily looking for awareness and activation. Later on, you want to move from awareness and activation to activation and acquisition.

For example, a company that’s early stage in it’s market like Zilliz, wants to primarily focus on awareness and activation which translates into customer acquisition down the line. Zilliz makes a vector database (Milvus). Currently, the market for vector databases (as of October 2023), is still early. Most software devs still don’t even know what vector databases are. Their primary questions include things like: why does this technology matter, how can we use this technology, and what do I have to learn/know to get started.

On the other hand, a company like Amazon, Google, or Microsoft, wants to focus on activation and acquisition because their market and products are more mature. Most software devs know what the cloud is and know they want to do things in the cloud. For them, the questions are primarily: how to do things, best practices, and optimization.

DevRel Focus based on Stage

Let’s take a look at some of the things that DevRel people do in order to achieve their goals of awareness, activation, and acquisition.

Top Developer Advocate Activities

There are many “pillars” of DevRel. I would break them down (roughly) like this: building community, working with developers using the product, and inspiring developers to do more. Let’s take a look at the things that are important for each of these.

Building Community:

• Having an online presence through social media and some sort of chat app like Discord or Slack
• Regularly engaging with community members through live or online events
• Supporting and promoting community members who are working on cool things with your product

Working with developers using the product:

• Learning about why and how developers are using your product
• Seeing what kind of problems or challenges developers face with your product
• Discovering what alternatives devs have seen or tried

Inspiring developers to do more:

• Giving devs easy ways to get started building with your product
• Building cool, fun, or otherwise interesting projects with your product
• Explaining how your code and tutorials work so devs can take it and run

Thoughts from Others

Along the way, I’ve met many amazing people who also work in this field. I’m lucky enough to have had the chance to briefly pick their brains. Here’s what they’ve said.

Kristen Kehrer:

• Dev Rel is an area where tech skills and soft skills meet.
• I’ve been watching YouTube videos recently on improv comedy, giving presentations, and other skills I wouldn’t have imagined needing when studying data.
• Skills around creativity and skillful delivery certainly would have helped in a traditional data role, but they’re front and center now.

Yi Ding:

• Communication (ideally both written and oral)
• Ability to code (although not expert level)
• An ability/passion for pushing people to fight for the right result for the user

Daliana Liu:

• How to create engaging content and make people click instead of thinking about the technical aspects. Does it resonate? Does it address a pain point? Does it address your audience’s frustrations?
• It’s a role with a lot of different takes from different companies and different folks. It’s not a straightforward role that can be the same for everyone. Figure out the content you enjoy doing and the products you want to work with.
• Have your priorities straight. There are so many things you can do, what is most aligned with my current company’s growth stage? Top of funnel? Conversion? Sales?
• Make sure you don’t burn out and also have time to learn.

Goncalo Martins Ribeiro:

• Nice balance between tech, product and marketing.
• You don’t need to be an expert in any, but know the basics on all of them

Thanks for reading everyone, I hope you found this helpful, and feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn with any questions you may have!