# How to scale a developer relations team {% embed url="" %} Video {% endembed %} ## Summary: * Principles for building developer programs and strategy. * **Feedback.** * **Community first.** * **Diversity and inclusion.** * **Four Pillars to scale your DevRel Teams** * **Team** * Personas * Type of Role * Expanding Globally and Scaling * Pipeline for DevRel Hires * Org your DevRel is a part of. * **Outreach** * Know what are developers that are most relevant for you. * Online channels. * Influencers and community managers. * **Operations** * Vendor partners as an extended team * Swag * **Feedback** ## Scribbles: * If you get unlimited resources and a budget... * Probably bad news for your company because they’re not being thoughtful about how they are investing and the floodgates are literally open. * Doesn’t really focus one to innovate as it should be. * **What is really scaling?** * Preparing the ground for the next wave of growth. ### Principles for building developer programs and strategy. * **Feedback.** * Dev rel traditionally has been an outward-focus function. * There needs to be two-way advocacy. * Need to be able to take the developer feedback and bring it back to the Product & Eng Team. * **Community first.** * If you’re able to do it the majority of the time, that itself is good news. * Did you have influence in your Product & Eng Teams to block a product launch if you think that launch is not going to be beneficial for your developers? * If you have strong signals and feedback that the product is not ready, are you able to make that call? * When you are sharing content for meet-ups or events among your developer community, is that the content that you and your Product & Eng Team want to push out? * Focusing on the needs of the developer community really helps you win their trust in the long run and that really pays back also in business value. * **Diversity and inclusion.** * Important -- developer community that we’ve worked with and engage are also representative of these developers that we want to eventually engage with. ### Teams * What kind of personas exists in the DevRel world? * What kind of roles exists? * **Developer Advocate** is a much more common word being used now. * Folks who go on stage. * The ones that go at events. * At meet-ups and talks. * Go behind the camera and record talks -- share more scalably * Public face for your developer programs and your platform. * **Community Manager**. * Very quickly, if your product is starting to get traction, there will be a community that will build around it. * Folks who are helping swags for meet-ups, helping buy pizza for the hackathon. * Helping run events if your company has to run those first-party events themselves. * **Other roles** -- Developer Program Engineers, Developer Advocates are going and talking about the vision of the platform, getting people excited. * **Specialized roles like Developer Program Engineers exist.** * In many companies, especially if the dev rel team is fairly small, Developer Advocates will be doing the same responsibility. * **Tech Writers.** * Call-to-action. * Inspiring someone with a key message. * Experience that that developer website has is key. * Having a really solid technical writer team is important. #### Expanding globally and scaling. * Dev rel teams typically get started wherever the host organization is based but then very quickly realize. * The challenge is hiring leaders in these key hubs who can really grow your dev rel presence over there. * Focusing on hubs. * Figuring out the demographic that works best for your program and needs. #### Pipeline for DevRel hires * Where do we hire for Dev rel? * Traditional interview formats of either hiring for a software engineer role doesn’t really help. * LinkedIn * You look at people with dev rel titles, that pool is growing. * Software engineers in your company who are keen * Offer them a rotation opportunity or a short-term project for them to explore dev rel as a practice. * Hiring some of the community managers from the broader developer community that your org. works with. #### Which org is your DevRel part of? * Doesn't matter which organization your dev rel team is part of. * The obvious ones are marketing. * Irrespective of where you are, you can be successful if your dev rel organization. * Use your influence to land your dev rel team where you would be most comfortable with. * If you strongly think that your dev rel team should be part of marketing, make that pitch early on. ### Outreach * That number around 20 million has not shifted in the last five years. * Know what are developers that are most relevant for you. * Are you really engaging with developers that are relevant for your platform? * Online channels. * Events are very expensive, expensive on time, expensive on resources. * Don’t give you a channel to constantly engage with your developers. * Explore online channels. * Helps you get a lot more traction. * Influencers and community managers. * Identify key influencers and community leaders in those markets and build relationships with them. * Reach a lot more developers than a traditional channel will probably offer you. ### Operations * Dev rel is a job that requires a lot of travel for example. * Vendor partners as an extended team * Are you booking all your travel yourself or is there someone, a vendor or an agency who can help you? * There are organizations that can help you. * **Swag.** * Procblem when we have swags being produced centrally, not headquarters. And we’re trying to ship it worldwide. * Way too expensive if your developers are in emerging markets. * Shipping cost. * Producing locally. * Has a positive impact on the environmental footprint. ### Feedback * A key part of the developer ecosystem, the work that we do is gathering developer feedback. * This is an area where sometimes it’s okay to not focus on scale. * Face-to-face conversations where the developers were sharing their pain points.