## Summary This piece tells how Amanda built her career as a Developer Advocate. She worked as a developer for six years before moving into advocacy and taking a role at Wix. She got there by learning the product deeply, getting active in the developer community, writing content, and using her network. It also gathers her advice for breaking in and shows how she now measures her impact. ## Key Points - Amanda spent six years as a developer before discovering developer advocacy, and her coding background plus a desire to work closely with people drew her to the role. - She learned the product by taking coding courses and working alongside experts before stepping into advocacy. - Community involvement came through attending events, networking, having conversations, and writing content to share her knowledge. - She measures impact through community engagement, community growth, conference leads, session attendance, and organic external conversations. - She balances advocacy with open source by prioritizing what matters most and spending a small amount of time each day checking the repositories she helps maintain. - Her biggest obstacle entering tech was unstructured, unclear job requirements; she found success by not staying attached to any single idea. ## Claim Atoms - **Impact is measured by company needs, not vanity metrics** — Amanda's metrics (engagement, growth, conference leads, conversations) track what her company currently needs. - **A coding background is a path into advocacy** — six years as a developer plus wanting to work with people led Amanda into the role. ## Links - Connects to developer relations and DevRel measurement: the metrics list here (engagement, growth, leads, attendance, organic conversations) is a concrete example of how advocates justify their work. - [[3. Resources/MOCs/DevRel MOC]] — applies-in: the MOC lists this note under What DevRel is and isn't.