Specialization and career paths for advocacy teams

Vera Tiago: So thank you for putting together this amazing conference. So I've been here since it started this morning, and I'm I'm oh my god. So many good content and good speakers. So I hope to be able to provide some insights to people attending DevRelCon this year. So fun fact.

So Lila was mentioning, you know, becoming a manager, becoming, you know, being an individual contributor. And I always said that I wanted to be, that I didn't want to be a manager. But guess what guess what? This year, it happened. So I became a manager of a developer advocacy team.

And since then, I know I've been thinking about, you know, a lot about skills, specializations, and that is because I want, you know, my team members to bring impact impact, but also to be happy, on what they do. So for today, I will be talking about, specialization and career paths for developer advocacy teams or the professionals. K? Okay. So what can you expect, from this talk?

So if you are considering, DevRel, I hope this, will give you an overview on the different roles and DevRel's activities. If you are an individual contributor, maybe this is, this will allow you to assess your skills and the things that you like to do and possibly and possible, plan your next career, move. If you are a manager or willing to become a manager, maybe this will give some insights about how to organize your team and plan growth for your team members. So I will start by defining developer advocacy and DevRel. We all know that, you know, depending on the company and depending on what you do, people consider, you know, different things or define this in different ways.

Number two, I will talk about different DevRel fields fields. Joe and Matthew mentioned this this this morning, but I will provide a slightly different perspective on this. And third, I will end by, you know, talking about specialization in developer relations team and advocacy roles. Okay. So picking this screenshot from the state of developer relations 2020, we all know that the times where we had a solo developer relations professional or a solo developer advocate are gone.

Right? The the this field or or this area is growing. And because of that, teams are growing from one person to multiple person. Actually, I started being a team of one. By the time I did the transition from customer success from a customer success role to product management.

The team was not called developer relations, and my first role was developer evangelist. Funny that Simon this morning, showed the biz different business cards. So I I I take that that idea to me, and probably I will, you know, scan all my business cards and the different, names that I had across my career. But, yeah, I also started as a team of one. And today, we have 14 people in the DevRel team, community manager, developer evangelist, developer advocates.

Okay? Okay. So but what is, a developer advocate or a developer relations professional? Many different definitions here. So I heard once that developer relations is a role which is more a public facing role or a public relations role, while the developer advocate is more like a sales engineer.

But then we we also hear that developer relations is the umbrella term for many different roles. But yeah. So technical evangelist, developer evangelist, these all are areas or roles inside developer relations. Here are a definition that I think it describes very well what is developer relations. So developer relations is a mindset of getting developers to adopt a platform, a technology, or a product, and making them successful with their initiatives.

So it's not about successfully adopt your product, but making them successful with your tool. Right? So it's about helping them in their pet pet project or job with your tool. And, of course, this can translate into you having one developer relations team, or maybe this is distributed across your company. Okay.

But what are the different fields, that DevRel has? Interesting that, you know, Joe and Nash presented, you know, dev marketing as what I have as something which is related to messaging and position, but also, you know, going out there and spreading the words. I decided to split this in two different areas. So I consider developer marketing is one thing, then we have developer evangelism. We have developer advocacy, which is probably the most technical role inside FREL.

Then we have developer experience and community management. So five fields inside developer relations. K. Starting by developer marketing in in what I consider to be developer marketing. So I think the goal for developer marketing is to create the go to developer strategy.

Right? So we have the go to business, but this is the go to developer, strategy. And it's much more about research definition. Right? So messaging, target personas, writing writing stuff, planning, having some knowledge about the the developer ecosystem.

So it's it's more, you know, it's more of a a planning role, and understanding how developers work and also having a plan in place for, you know, go to developers. In our case, in our systems, we have developer marketing, which is one person that doesn't live under, developer relations team. That person lives under product marketing, but we also work with an agency to bring us insight about the developer ecosystem, data, doing the research with us, you know, and help us shaping our positioning and our messaging. So but if you are doing developer marketing, there are some things that you need to master. So knowledge about developers, research, writing, analytical and strategic planning, and essentially program management thing.

Right? You need to work close with product management because, for example, every time you have a a release, probably you want to you plan that release. Right? So you want to say what is a good timing, when should we do it, and how should we do it. Right?

And, also, you need to work closely with corporate marketing and developer evangelist. Corporate marketing because sometimes we will need to fix the tone of some communications. And then we have developer evangelists, which is about delivering content or getting the word out. And, yeah, this is about, you know, the the public facing role, like the the outbound activities, which is speak at and attend conferences, write technical blog posts, record videos, live streaming, podcasts, partnerships with other communities. So it's it's about, you know, going out there and spreading the word.

Of course, I know that, you know, many people don't like, the developer evangelism term, which because it's deeply associated with being a one way street, right? So it's not an interaction like or two way street, like advocacy team, advocacy field. But, yeah, evangelism is also or to me, is about helping developers understand if your product is for them or not, or how can your products help them in their life, in their journey? K. So yeah.

So, this this this outbound role is about, public speaking skills, storytelling, writing, and networking. So probably the the person who does this needs to be an extrovert because he likes to go speak with crowds, be among crowds, and and do networking. This role or this field works closely with developer marketing and developer advocacy. Then we have the advocate or the developer advocacy field, and this is about enabling developers to successfully leverage your product. So it's a mix of education, adoption, and education.

Right? So it's about creating demos, extending the product, like writing accent opt on top of of your products, you know, using different languages. It's also about, you know, bringing the voice of the developer developer to internal teams. It's about supporting your community of developers, writing documentation and training, and also about dog fooding. So it's about being the customer zero of your product.

So if you have, you know, an early version before, you went over to the field, you should leverage your advocacy team, to test to test that that early version. Things Things that you need to master, knowledge about different tools, not just your tool, but, you other developer tools, that are that are out there because you need to, you know, understand how your product compares to them, coding, and some writing. Okay? So this this role needs to work closely with all the other fields, which is developer experience, develop developer evangelist, developer marketing, and community. And then we have developer experience.

And, again, this is a role that can have, you know, many different specializations. I think developer experience role is more like a product management role, in the sense that you want to improve the usability on your product. You want to provide tools that will improve your your developer experience, but you, again, are more on the planning side. So I remember there was a talk in in the DevRelCon twenty twenty, DevRelCon Earth, that was about a team, a DevRel team, which was focused on on developer, developer experience. And, essentially, they had, the developer experience, lead or DevRel head of DevRel, which was the developer experience lead.

But then he had many different, you know, software developers in in their team. So he was was about, you know, planning the the things that could improve developer experience, and actually extend the product, like the quick wins. But at the same time, you know, planning content, writing out tools, and etcetera, which was the develop the software developers who who who would handle this. Of course, there's also this role about developer experience engineer, which, again, can be, you know, a technical role, more developer advocacy role, but, you know, target developer experience only. So yeah.

But, for the developer experience manager or DevRel, It's about product design and user experience, planning documentation and training, planning SDKs, plug in, and, you know, extensions to the product, and talk to customers and end users to understand how they can improve the product. So skills to master, knowledge about different tools, product management, usability, and user experience. This role or this field should work closely with developer advocacy and community. Last but not least, community management. So community management in a developer world is about gluing all these different fields together.

So it's about growing and nurture, the developer community, but also, you know, also running different things, you know, on different areas, working with all these, different roles. K. So what a a community manager does? Building and managing online communities, organize or facilitate events, put communication together like social media, net newsletters, running different programs, for example, developer champions programs, etcetera. So skills that you need to master, this is very high level because, of course, like the DevRel role, community management role can drill down into into specific, you know, things like, you know, growth, engagement, management, operations.

So you you can you know, you you maybe you need to master different skills depending on the path that you wanna take. And this role works closely with developer advocacy and developer experience because most of the times, they are also the ones that, you know, will bring them the developer's voice, to internal teams. Okay. So get let's get deep dive into specialization, in DevRel and developer advocacy. So one of the biggest challenge in DevRel is, you know, to determine to determine which among of the numbers, possible activities is the most impactful and where you can bring more more value.

So it's about balancing, you know, being busy versus impact. You know, being busy, doesn't mean you are having impact. And the same, you know, if everything is important, nothing is. Right? So it's important that you find what you like to do and what you're good at, and then probably you want to to have a plan to achieve to achieve your your dream job.

Okay. So, again, different fields, developer marketing, developer evangelist, developer advocacy, developer experience, community management. Probably, you are a generalist, and you are doing a bit of everything here. But let me show you how you can branch out from being a generalist to be specialized in something. Okay.

So specialization comes when or your company determines that is that is your big focus. So instead of doing a bunch of things, probably you focus on the thing that your company needs more most attention right now. So imagine there is developer experience. Probably, you jump in the majority of your time in developer experience. If it is developer evangelism, probably you will, you know, jump in into more developer evangelism role, which will you will need to develop develop different skills.

So yeah. So by having multiple, you know, people in your team, probably you can organize, you know, according to their skills and the things that they want to do. Probably, a combination of one or two fields until until you get until you get, to focus on one area. I put here, developer advocate, the generalists with two stars because of one thing. Even if you have, you know, a big team and you can, you know, allow your members to specialize, the developer relations role, like the generalists, will important in cases of localization.

In our case, we have two generalists, one in Japan. So that person does all the the fields activities for Japan. So he specialized in Japan. So he does does a combination of, you know, many things. And then we have one person for APAC, which is also, you know, focused on that area because those persons know what it works for that audience, so they need to do a bit of everything, like community management, you know, developer evangelism, developer advocacy, etcetera.

But yeah. So you starting as a generalist, as as an as you continue to assess your skills and the things that you like to do, you will identify what is the road that you wanna go. Right? Doesn't matter if it is on your company or if you wanted to pursue your passion, you should be able to identify what are the things that make your heart bump and develop the skills, that will allow you to to to move to the next, to the next level or to your next job. K.

Just a quick example. This is how we are distributed. So, have three verticals. We have 14 people, like I said, and we have different people assigned to each vertical, which has a focus on on each of these verticals. So we have people that don't enjoy public facing, so they are more on the engagement side, producing code, producing documentation, etcetera.

Then we have people that like to go public, and those are the most, you know, public facing roles, organizing echathons, running our education programs, going to conferences, etcetera. Okay. Wrapping up really quickly. So as the industry matures, we are seeing a lot of specializations form. So it's it's a good opportunity for you to pursue your your passion and your specialization.

By investing your specialization, and it's it's also a way to maximize your potential. And one another very important thing that was mentioned by Zen, avoiding burnout. Because at some point of your life, you may enjoy this craziness of having so many hats, but probably in another, moment of your life, you will enjoy having a reduced scope and focus just on one thing. And yeah. So develop you the skills that will take you to the next, you know, dream job or the next level.

You need to understand them and work on them.