Is developer relations right for you?
How do you know whether moving into developer relations or DevRel is right for you?
- Differences between being a product-based software engineer
- Pros and cons of this move
- Signals in your own life are strong indicators that you might be successful in DevRel
- What the DevRel mindset is
- The main focus of the blog is to focus on the engineering side of developer relations.
Difference between being a software engineer on a product and a software engineer in developer relations
- Product-based software engineer the majority of your time is spent working on
- features
- fixing bugs
- writing tests
- eliminating technical debt
- writing design documents
- Engineer in developer relations, there’s simply a lot less time to do all of this
- developer relations teams are the connective tissue between 3rd party developers and the internal product and engineering teams
- time spent on creating, building, and connecting with communities.
- collecting feedback and working with your internal stakeholders to make sure the product is evolving to better serve the developer community
- not always be the case, but generally speaking, the size of the coding projects in DevRel is smaller.
- building a proof of concept, a demo, a code snippet, or perhaps a client library
- your code itself is to be used by other developers within their own projects
- building a community, overhauling documentation, amplifying knowledge about a product through videos and speaking engagements -- less coding.
- part engineer, part product manager, part marketer, and part business development.
- encounter a lot of different stacks
- have to be flexible and learning new stacks on the go.
- DevRel at its’ core is about people
- software engineering is often more about the code you produce
- a mix of a great engineer who connects with other engineers and has the respect of the internal teams at the same time caring about people (developers) and making them successful.
- software engineer’s impact is likely focused largely on technical contributions
- For DevRel
- community growth/support
- growth of product awareness
- product influence
- communication regarding product launches
- delivery of technical content
- Requires being good at a different set of skills.
- You have a chance to see the world.
- You’ll be closer to the people who use the product.
- There are less DevRel jobs than software engineering jobs.
- Most people understand the value a software engineer brings to a company, it’s not as clear in developer relations.
- There's a lot of explaining to do.
- Actively participated in or organized programming events, contests, hackathons, or workshops.
- Spoke at technical conferences or meetups.
- Have a mixed background of engineering and product or project management.
- Academic background or teaching experience of technical subjects.