# devrelshow episode 52 - Joel Hans from ngrok > [!question] Lingering Questions > - How do you attribute revenue or pipeline to a "cornerstone" content piece that never mentions the product, without falling into post-hoc storytelling? > - Is the "folly" model (leadership-granted, unmeasured speculative work) sustainable past a 3-person team, or does it require a level of trust that erodes as a DevRel org grows? > - What happens to the recall mechanism if AI search and coding agents start summarizing cornerstone content instead of driving traffic to the original post? > [!tip] Article Ideas > - "Onboarding be damned" — a piece on DevRel's shift from activation metrics to top-of-funnel brand recall as AI agents default to whatever tool is already in their frame of reference. > [!link] Cross Reference > - [[3. Resources/MOCs/DevRel MOC]] > - [[3. Resources/Permanent Notes/The Four Objectives Framework Replaces Vanity Metrics in DevRel]] and [[3. Resources/Permanent Notes/DevRel Maturity Is a Five-Stage Progression Not a Binary State]] — existing DevRel-measurement notes this episode's trust/autonomy claim sits alongside, not duplicates. > [!quote] Vocabulary > - *cornerstone content* — genuinely useful, product-unrelated long-form content (e.g., a 7,000-word LLM-quantization explainer) published as a bet on brand recall, not activation. > - *folly* — Joel's replacement for "side quest," borrowed from Walt Disney's Disneyland gamble; leadership-granted time for speculative work with no guaranteed payoff. ## Metadata - Source: [[3. Resources/Readwise/Articles/devrelshow episode 52 - Joel Hans from ngrok]] - URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ4KmED0Mlg ## Author's thesis As AI-assisted development and abundant tool choice compress the middle of the adoption funnel (onboarding, docs, activation), DevRel's most defensible remaining value has moved to the very top of the funnel — being remembered, trusted, and interesting enough to even be in the running — which turns a technical-advocacy job into something closer to brand marketing, and works only inside a high-trust relationship between DevRel and leadership. ## Key arguments (≤3) 1. **DevRel's mandate is uniquely unstable**: unlike engineering roles that look similar across employers, "developer relations" can mean ten different job descriptions depending on the company and the quarter — Joel had three employer names in under two years purely from acquisitions, without changing jobs. 2. **AI coding agents collapse manual tool discovery**: if a tool isn't already inside a developer's (or their agent's) frame of reference, it's never considered — the agent just picks what it already "knows," removing the human comparison-shopping step DevRel used to win via onboarding polish. 3. **Cornerstone content and protected "folly" time are the team's actual bet**, made explicit as an unmeasured bet rather than a proven strategy — and both practices are named as depending on leadership trust, not budget, to survive. ## Claim atoms ### DevRel value has shifted from activation to top-of-funnel awareness > [!quote] ID:rw_pending > it feels like oh my god onboarding be damned like I just need to get people in the funnel Where/why: mid-episode, discussing why AI-assisted development and abundant competitor choice changed what DevRel optimizes for; the central thesis both hosts converge on. ### Fixed content quotas are named as a direct cause of DevRel burnout > [!quote] ID:rw_pending > forcing dev rel people to produce like x number of pieces of content every week or month ... holding people to a calendar I feel like it's really dangerous because it leads to burnout Where/why: Joel describing how he manages his 3-person team and what he's negotiated with leadership; directly actionable for any content lead evaluating cadence expectations. ### Sanctioned, unmeasured "folly" projects are reframed via Disney's Disneyland gamble > [!quote] ID:rw_pending > Walt Disney the person he had this folly which was Disneyland and it was this like ridiculous idea that was wildly expensive Where/why: Joel explaining why he replaced "side quest" framing with "folly"; a reusable analogy for pitching leadership on unmeasured exploratory work. ## Permanent candidates - **DevRel autonomy requires leadership trust, not just budget** — experimentation-friendly DevRel (cornerstone content, folly time, resisting quota pressure) only survives when leadership already trusts the practitioner's judgment. Not yet captured by an existing note (the vault's other DevRel notes cover measurement frameworks and maturity stages, not the trust prerequisite). → promoted below. ## Processing checklist - [x] Pull claim atoms and permanent candidates from the existing deep-read notes - [x] Checked existing Permanent notes first — found adjacent DevRel-measurement notes, none covering the trust-prerequisite claim; created new - [x] Connect into the relevant MOC — [[3. Resources/MOCs/DevRel MOC]] - [ ] Research whether AI coding agent training data measurably predicts which infrastructure tools get recommended (the episode's H4 hypothesis) ## Links - [[3. Resources/MOCs/DevRel MOC]] — direct fit: DevRel role instability, cornerstone content, and funnel-priority shift are all core DevRel-practice material.