DevOps and DevRel With Matt Stratton  ## Metadata - Author: [[Certified Fresh Events]] - Full Title: DevOps and DevRel With Matt Stratton - Category: #articles - Document Note: --- tags: [#devrel, #devops, #careers] - #devrel - #devops - #careers Author: Matt Stratton (guest), Brian Rinaldi & Erin (hosts) Source: DevRelish (YouTube) Reference: [DevOps and DevRel with Matt Stratton](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtEZ2OUntWo) date created: 2025-08-23 19:50 --- # Title: DevOps and DevRel with Matt Stratton ## Table of Contents: - [📝 Summary](#-summary) - [📖 Main Content](#-main-content) - [🗒️ Notes](#️-notes) - [📖 References](#-references) - [🗣️ Paraphrase](#-paraphrase) - [📰 Newsletter](#-newsletter) - [✅ Action Items](#-action-items) - [🧪 Hypotheses](#-hypotheses) - [📊 Methodology](#-methodology) - [❓ Questions](#-questions) - [🔮 Future Research](#-future-research) - [💡 Implications](#-implications) - [🧠 Learning Styles Assessment](#-learning-styles-assessment) - [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#-accessibility-assessment) - [🌍 DEIB Assessment](#-deib-assessment) - [✅ Logical Validity](#-logical-validity) - [🔍 DARVO Analysis](#-darvo-analysis) - [🔍 SEO Evaluation](#-seo-evaluation) - [🎯 Conclusion](#-conclusion) --- ## 📝 Summary: Matt Stratton (Director of DevRel at Aiven) unpacks the evolving role of Developer Relations within DevOps. He stresses that DevRel is often misunderstood, sometimes devalued, and frequently expected to wear too many hats (content marketing, community, advocacy). Key takeaways: - DevRel for DevOps emphasizes *how you work* vs. *what you build*. - Business value must underpin DevRel activities—“awareness” alone won’t protect your role. - Salaries and opportunities in DevRel have shrunk as VC funding tightened, but seed-stage startups are still hiring. - Diversifying skills and proving value beyond “talking at conferences” is critical for career resilience. --- ## 📖 Main Content: Stratton positions DevRel as “marketing for developers who hate marketing” but with nuance—it’s about *community engagement, trust, and product adoption*. He contrasts DevRel for products (SDKs, APIs) vs. services (Ops tools), noting that one teaches integration while the other requires shifting how practitioners think about work. Much of the conversation pivots to the *business value of DevRel*. Stratton warns that if a company can’t articulate why they’re investing in DevRel, advocates risk being scapegoated. Interview processes often mis-evaluate DevRel candidates by overemphasizing coding tests instead of community impact. Career realities surface: late-stage capitalism shrinks salaries, but consulting opportunities are rising. Stratton emphasizes that DevRel is *full duplex*—not one-way evangelism, but feedback loops between community and product. The conversation closes with pickle jokes and microbiome trivia (49 strains of bacteria in fermented pickles!)—a reminder that DevRel thrives on community quirks as much as corporate metrics. --- ### 🗒️ Notes - [00:03](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtEZ2OUntWo&t=3) Stratton → Director of DevRel at Aiven, 5+ years official, decades in Ops. - [05:47](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtEZ2OUntWo&t=347) DevRel in DevOps = “how you work” vs. “what you build.” - [16:54](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtEZ2OUntWo&t=1014) Misconception: DevRel = travel + talks. Reality: strategy + measurable impact. - [21:41](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtEZ2OUntWo&t=1301) Roles differ per org → community engagement, technical demos, product advocacy. - [31:07](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtEZ2OUntWo&t=1867) Warning: “Awareness is not a business goal.” DevRel must tie to revenue/adoption. - [35:57](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtEZ2OUntWo&t=2157) Market shift: salaries drop, fun-only DevRel jobs evaporate. - [45:33](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtEZ2OUntWo&t=2733) Startups = demand Gen + content + community bundled into one role. - [50:16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtEZ2OUntWo&t=3016) Build adjacent skills → blog, teach, write → prepare for transitions. - [1:00:36](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtEZ2OUntWo&t=3636) Focus shift: less Kubernetes hype, more platform engineering. --- ## 📖 References: - [DevOps and DevRel with Matt Stratton](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtEZ2OUntWo) (CFE.dev / DevRelish) - Ali Spittel, *Why I Left Developer Relations* (YouTube) - Emily Freeman on DevRel at scale (Twitter) - Arrested DevOps podcast --- ## 🗣️ Paraphrase: 1. Original: *“Awareness is not anybody’s goal… if you cannot show business value, a way of showing value will be assigned to you and you probably won’t like it.”* → Paraphrase: Awareness is insufficient; if DevRel doesn’t demonstrate its impact, others will impose metrics that may harm the team. 2. Original: *“Developer advocacy is full duplex—it goes both ways.”* → Paraphrase: Effective DevRel isn’t just outbound messaging; it requires bidirectional communication between community and company. --- ## 📰 Newsletter: 🚀 **DevRel in Flux: Matt Stratton Speaks Out** This month’s feature dives into the intersection of DevOps and DevRel. Matt Stratton (Aiven, Arrested DevOps podcast) joined *DevRelish* to break down what’s changing in our field: - DevRel in DevOps = *how we work* vs. *what we build*. - Awareness ≠ business goal. Tie your activities to adoption and retention. - Job market is shifting: fewer cushy roles, more consulting gigs. - Building side skills (writing, teaching, adjacent roles) helps weather downturns. 🎧 Full talk: [Watch here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtEZ2OUntWo) 📚 Related: Ali Spittel’s [Why I Left DevRel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=...) --- ## ✅ Action Items: - Map WordPress contributor DevRel → business goals (onboarding, retention). - Use Stratton’s “full duplex” model in WPCC and FAIR: contributor feedback must loop into leadership. - Apply DevOps-style metrics (incident response, adoption bottlenecks) to WordPress governance. - Advocate for OSPO charters at GoDaddy that tie DevRel → measurable impact, not just “awareness.” - Position Contributor Days as “community feedback labs” → align with Stratton’s *how vs. what*. --- ## 🧪 Hypotheses: - H1: DevRel framed around adoption + retention outperforms “awareness-first” strategies. - H2: DevOps-style postmortems improve contributor retention in open source projects. - H3: Cross-training DevRel in adjacent skills (tech content, PM) increases career resilience. ### 📊 Methodology: - Survey contributor retention rates pre/post-feedback loop improvements. - Analyze content engagement tied to adoption vs. awareness. - Comparative study: startups w/ multi-role DevRel vs. large companies w/ specialized teams. ### ❓ Questions: - How do we define business value for open-source DevRel? - What skills should new DevRel professionals prioritize in 2025? - Can DevRel avoid being subsumed into marketing/demand gen roles? ### 🔮 Future Research: - Longitudinal studies on DevRel ROI in OSS projects. - Impact of consulting vs. full-time DevRel models. - Comparative salary studies across seed/startup vs. enterprise roles. ### 💡 Implications: - Could influence OSPO hiring frameworks. - Supports sustainable funding proposals for WPCC. - Helps redefine DevRel beyond “talks + swag.” --- ## 🧠 Learning Styles Assessment: - **Visual**: Few visuals; add flowcharts for *how vs. what*. - **Aural**: Strong; conversational podcast format. - **Verbal**: Excellent storytelling, analogies (Pepto-Bismol, pickles). - **Physical**: Weak; no hands-on prompts. Suggest adding “try this” tasks. - **Logical**: Present; structured reasoning around business goals. - **Social**: Strong; interactive chat + live engagement. - **Solitary**: Limited; add journaling/reflection prompts. - **Naturalistic**: Absent; could analogize DevRel ecosystems to biological ones. --- ## 📊 Accessibility Assessment: - Transcript exists = accessible. - Needs alt-text for visuals in future slides. - Conversational style clear but long—recommend breaking with timestamps. - Suggest audio-only podcast version for auditory learners. --- ## 🌍 DEIB Assessment: - **Strengths**: Inclusive language; critiques toxic hiring/interviews. - ** - Summary: The content is a conversation between two individuals, Brian and Erin, with guest Maddie Stratton. They discuss the role of developer relations (DevRel) and advocate in the technology industry, specifically in the context of DevOps. They explore the differences between DevRel for DevOps and other types of organizations, highlighting the importance of understanding the community and providing value based on how developers work. The conversation also touches on the challenges and misconceptions associated with DevRel. - URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtEZ2OUntWo&ab_channel=CertifiedFreshEvents foreign thank you all for joining us for this episode of devrelish where we have Maddie Stratton as our special guest um of course I am Brian Rinaldi I'm a developer experience engineer at launch Darkly and my co-host is hi I'm Erin I am currently looking for my next adventure in several Dev advocacy Dev experience maybe a very online human that works with developers the titles get more interesting Friday and Maddie Stratton yeah tell us a little bit about yourself Manny where do you work what you do cool yes um so my name is Maddie I am the director of devrel for a company called Ivan We Are The Trusted open source data platform for everyone and I have been kind of working in the devrel industry officially for like five years it sounds about right unofficially a little longer than that um been working in tech for a couple two three Thirty whatever yours maybe not 30 but I always just tell people when when when I would talk to folks who didn't know about Deborah all their advocacy whatever we do you know talk to you know regular folks out there and they're like what do you do I said I worked in Tech Ops for a couple decades and now they pay me to talk about it so yeah very involved in the devops community devops Day stuff a bunch of junk good oldest we'll just talk about at some point but you know um that sounds that sounds similar to the answer I give to people about about Deborah because it's really hard to explain the other one I say is like oh Deborah it's like it's marketing for developers who think they hate marketing yes I was going to say the other way I say it is the way that's going to make a lot of deveral people angry but that's okay is I say it's Gorilla Marketing yeah indirect Mark indirect marketing is the the nicer way to say that so that's part of what devrel can do right yeah I was gonna say that both sounds better than what I told myself my parents asked me what I do and they've only come on they're like whole conception of like what I do is talk on the internet with strangers who are also nerds and I'm like that's not wrong yeah I was like but show me the why yeah I'm like not wrong but also you know we're gonna lean into it yeah so yeah I you know and I actually my my spicy take on that whole marketing for developers who say they hate marketing is I always tell I always say because they say they hate marketing because even though that same developer who is like yeah if it's marketing I I don't I don't pay attention and then they'll walk away with their laptop covered in stickers and their T-shirt with a logo on it I'm like yeah yeah you really you do hate parking I'm actually wearing a pair of launch Darkly socks right now so you know they are really nice socks they are very I like the I will say the one company that has to be is Oracle um they have a oracles logo on them though they do I know that's the downside but they're stance I'm sorry I sold out to the brands so but okay I mean Deborah for devops I think like when I first got into the devrel dev technical developer advocacy space I was always devops was that intimidating area for me to be totally transparent and I got kind of a crash course working in machine learning where it's very Ops heavy and you have those a lot of databases or the back end stuff but how might several Maddie differ for devops than it does kind of many of our other types of organization or better question does it well it does and and like we we've talked about this in a couple different ways and and we can have a whole there could be a whole podcast talking about what devops means and maybe it's been running for 10 years and it's called arrested devops and you should listen to it but um but uh when we think about like sometimes we talk about is like Ops route and it's you know it's that sort of devops is a kind of a subset of this conversation and when I think about the type of devrel that I've done it's always been in that space a little bit like I do not primarily uh function well as a software engineer and one of the general problems we have and we just all have to make our piece with it is like the word we mean half of the time is practitioner and we've all shortcuted that to developer unless you're at Amazon and then it's Builder which just confuses everything else but like when we say developer most of the time in our type of part of the world of Industry we're generally speaking about practitioner technical likely technical practitioner so anyway that said let's look at where Maddie came from right so my sideway entry into devrel was doing sales engineering and customer uh architect type roles that had a lot of Community Focus when I was working at Chef which was a configuration management infrastructures code whatever kind of thing where very devopsy very but also still like my peeps over there were Ops folks they were sres or even before sres they were you know Ops right we were infrastructure people right who were learning how to do some developer things or maybe not or wherever that comes in and yes we can talk about like yeah chefs for everybody blah blah and then I went and then I was at pager Duty and that was my first like now my title is Advocate and actually my title over there was devops Advocate which was really funny because I'm like I advocate for devops they do that all the time but it really was like what we would lump into like a developer relations role but our the average consumer like the people that we were advocating to were not softer engineer title folks some of them were but a lot of it was still like the people having these conversations with tended to be infrastructure operations SRE whatever um and you and it was and and and then the same thing I've worked at palumi I've worked a bunch of different with another info code but I think where it comes to be interesting is depending on your product because sometimes if it's a very and when I say a developer oriented product I don't mean a product that developers use but it's a thing you use directly to make your thing right like if your product is an API that you embed into your code or it's a library or whatever that's a certain kind of product and you devrel that in a certain way if it's a service or a thing that developers use you kind of think about the world in a whole different way in the devops stuff falls into that right think about how if you are um you know like your product is fundamentally ends up being a library that you embed in your code versus your GitHub right like you're the whole way you reason about whether people are using you and how you're using it right like it's not how many times was my library downloaded or how many API calls have happened it's how you know we're reasoning about the whole way of success in a different way and how we show value in a different way and it we kind of is it about how we work or what we build and I think that's another way to think about it a lot of times devrel for devops if you will is about how you work versus how you build right like you know yes you could make the argument and say like if you're you know if you're like caslin fields or someone who's over at Google that's a devrel for kubernetes like maybe that is is what you build a little bit it's not so much how you work but it's also you're gonna tell you everything these lines are fuzzy we'll just deal to that right so the reason that matters is because how you think about your community and and giving them the things that they need um differs right like because if you're saying like cool I'm gonna show you how to like add this Library into your code to build another thing is different than you now have to reason about the world in a whole different way and I've I've been places where the point of the advocacy of the awareness of the community is getting people to think in a different way because you have to think in this other way to even see the value of the product right like you're not going to dig palumi if you don't think about infra code as being important yet right versus like I already know the problem I have you know I already know I need to do this thing and so I'm going to use mail gun because I already know I need to send emails right you don't have you don't have to convince me that sending email is a thing I have to do but if I'm reasoning about a different way to do instant response I I wanna so you think in a different idea Focus right so that's the first thing is to break down and saying what what's the what's the reason someone uses your stuff is it for what they do or how they do it yeah how they work or what their are what their thing they create is and that goes back and that's not even about like how you do conference talks that's even about the the things you create to help them be more successful right you know it's like is it is it that I'm creating content if that's the way we say it or I'm putting things in place for you so that you know how to like respond to incidents better or how to organize your work better or is it this is how I take this thing and write the code this way and make these these pieces go together like it's it's it's it's different levels of that and you have more of the how than the what when you think about quote unquote Dev devops or Ops Rel right yeah we don't build things we use things that makes total sense because I was thinking about it when as you were talking I was thinking about you know at launched Darkly that we kind of sit somewhere in between because half my job is telling you how to actually take the sdks and like okay how do I use this in this particular project which is that how we do things but then the other half is like the whole point of that is is how do we build like how do we how we work so I'm like telling you okay here's how you you know get away from like branching and etc etc right like so you know it's it's a more theoretical how how we work kind of thing so I think your your distinction makes sense and I think but there are there are cases like mine where some of that blends together it's not like a clear-cut line oh for sure yeah I mean there are places where it cuts in a lot like like everything what's our favorite thing to say in this entire industry it depends yeah all the time like it's the um but I think it reminds me of you know I'm currently in the interview process talking to a couple companies and the example that I always give is you know because some people are I ask I ask companies like why do you want Deborah why is Deborah something that you're choosing to invest in right now with this role like you're hiring an open position why do you want Deborah reasons reasons yeah and it's like that's like I get some like sometimes it's like reasons or popularity or like we're trying to grow our developer relations and I'm like and but the one thing that I always gets is and I said it in an interview and I was like wow I don't know if that was like the right question to answer in anybody but that's also how I feel is you know I use Pepto-Bismol as my great example for people who don't want to develop her relations it's like what happens if you build a community like of people who like a Pepto-Bismol had a community strategy what would that look like no one would want to join you don't want to be like in if you're using the products Pepto-Bismol I likely don't want to talk to you like that's not a tool it's not a viable if I'm if I'm having to use that I'm not going to go want to hang out on the internet with other people using Pepto-Bismol no sometimes major duty is a really good example that's contrary to that which is I always sort of would laugh about this when people you know complain on Twitter about pagerduty and what they're and then we used to remember there was like a sales rep for obstini who would like go and try to reply to them and be like well you should try Ops Genie and they would totally get flamed because the reason people were complaining about pager Duty wasn't the product itself they hate they were complaining about the thing that many of them have to use it right like that's never going to get any better but they really like the product it's like you know it's the product that everybody loves to hate because you you hate that it exists um so not to pick apart your analogy but like it it's a thing but like you do have this problem and maybe the product is so good that it's the best that it could be and it's in its you know shitty situation as you uh said in the the chat there yeah Aaron um are you are you giving me crap for being in the Pepto Community that's this is all about my Pepto Community yeah are you the one person who like scanned the QR code on the back of the Pepto Bismol they're like oh my God the one Community person at Pepto is like this air in person I have value championships [Laughter] strategy for this so so speaking about um okay I'm gonna I'm gonna go ahead and bring it up since you brought about like why companies had different oh we had um can I ask this one there was a there was a follow-up thing to that Aaron said the question that she asked she says why and I would just make I would make an even more refined way of asking that question as you would say is what is the business value of developer relations in this company and if they give you anything fuzzy that is not an actual business goal run away because you will eventually have a business goal because awareness is not anybody's goal that is not a real business goal it is important and it does a thing and I've said before if you cannot show the business value what you do a way of showing value will be assigned to you and you probably won't like it so if you can't get a real good answer like if it is if it's all hand waived then it's probably a very dangerous place to be because maybe that'll be true for a while but at a certain point your chickens are going to come home to roost on that and if you don't know if you're if you're not in front of it that's how you end up getting burned that all of a sudden they're like oh we actually looked at this and we don't know what Aaron does here that provides us value so what's a thing we know we know Mau now guess what you're tied to whereas if you start with a business goal um you know what I mean and it can be an indirect connection to that business goal it doesn't mean it has to be a thing but you're like how does this connect to the and if it's really vague you are in for a bad time eventually maybe not tomorrow maybe not a week from now but it will happen and I think a lot of us have seen that happen yeah oh yeah I think that's a that's a really good point and I think the other thing is is the other thing I've learned through just career stuff and you know my first my first job in community was open source Community by way of product management um and it's like so I carry him from very much a product manager head of thinking of like where our users dropping off where our users like where are the pain points in the adoption process and that is a very different problem than how many paying users we have like pain points adoption is different than conversion and they're both business goals but they're both business goals yeah they're totally legit right that's what I'm saying business school does not necessarily mean revenue it doesn't necessarily mean paying user or whatever but you know so yeah I I would agree with that I think I think you can ultimately you know it is revenue right like ultimately it's Revenue uh obviously like in that that's where the revenue number is yeah yeah I I I I totally get what you mean but I but I I only bring that up because I often hear that like within the community it's like oh you know I shouldn't be you know have to be accountable for any kind of Revenue numbers and I agree with that in the direct standpoint But ultimately like I have to be able to somehow it may be like a you know Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon kind of thing where like but somehow or another the things we're doing have to bring business the company otherwise there's no point in Endeavor like I mean you know we we're not awareness like you said awareness is is a is a goal but it doesn't um it's it's too fuzzy to really tie into uh directed like when think push comes to shove and they're like which team do we get rid of it's like oh I don't even know what what's this awareness doing us anyway if you would like to hear me talk more about this topic I will put a link in the chat to the talk I gave at Deborah Alcon in Prague last year which is basically also about the world is a little different than it was you know when I say my talk I say when I tell you these things I might have had a different statement in 2021 even in the beginning of 2022 and it's again like you said you maybe aren't tied to a revenue number but like the company exists for a reason and I guess the the final thing I just want to say about you say we kind of like don't think about it in this way but like part of the reason uh make one spicy comment that leads into another one which is we as devrels like to believe first of all we're like we're an industry built on empathy and we get really mad when we get stereotyped into all devrels do is fly around the world and give talks and whatever and you know who we love to stereotype the hell out of sales and marketing people right and the thing about sales that I would say when it comes to this is the reason is because we have this perception that like sales is like the used car salesman right sales and marketing also to a certain extent are there to trick you into doing a thing and I'm like if your product's so crappy that the only way someone would pay for it is if they were tricked then maybe you shouldn't be there you know like so that's just the only General thing there are definitely sketchy toxic people in sales don't get me wrong I'm not like hey everybody there's toxic and crappy people and everything we do but Ryan you were trying to take us somewhere oh no I was yeah so I was going to bring up Ally's video which came up on it's the only reason Ali's watching right now is because she thinks we're going to talk about her so we definitely have to so yeah so just in case for those who weren't didn't catch it so Ali posted this video why I left developer relations which actually hits on a number of things that we've already talked about number one the the um you know the why does a team um why is a company have devrel it also even talks about like toxic people in in devrel so like all of these things came up in her uh video it's really good so like she had she lists I'm gonna put a link for those folks who haven't seen it yet um into the chat but um she had nine things so most of which I I felt like had a lot of Truth in them like like I think you know writing you don't write so much code I've warn people when they're thinking about becoming different I'm like you do realize you don't write as much code as you might think you do like I know people imagine it's like oh I just get to come up with fun demos and code fun demos all day and I'm like yeah I mean that's I I guesstimate my job is maybe 20 writing code if that you know it's like I recently got out of an interview and I feel comfortable sharing this this is public information you can go find the job description on the internet and I walked away after an informational call and was like this is so not a fit because the interview they had reached out to me had seen my resume and my For Hire page and had even sent me links to work that I had done and I was like yes that's my work then they were like do you feel comfortable passing a technical exam and I was like sure I will do a take-home technical exam and then they were like on top of that you'll have to do a live coding session with our founders that isn't related to the job you are doing and I was like okay and then they're like one of the red also a red flag about you is you don't have a computer science degree and I was like why are you still in this conversation at this point yeah even if you had all those things like these this sounds terrible I was like oh and then I like asked him kind of awkward like let's talk about salary this is a senior level developer relations position 115 000 in the New York City area no guarantees of health insurance no yeah so so you're saying you didn't take it [Music] but but yeah so I mean I yeah to your point I think you don't I've I've had arguments about this because like you know when you have coding tests and stuff like that I don't mind doing homework honestly I don't mind give me homework because homework to me is like I gotta know that you're I like your product I want to be able to use the product and say hey you know what this is a product I would actually be out there talking about that I'm cool with homework interviews because I started doing the homework and I was like actually I don't want to I don't like this product and I've walked away I mean like no harm enough hell I just don't like the product and I can't vouch for it but yeah so so back and now this video she's okay she doesn't write enough code companies don't know what they want the influencer devrel pipeline is another one she mentioned um I I feel like that that one I I feel it but I also feel like it's getting a little bit better because partly because of that you know companies are realizing they need to get some value at a difference well that's what I was going to say like that happens when it's like and Ellie talked about in the video too which is like why do you have it sometimes you have we have a Deborah because my board told me I had to have one right so then you're like what do I look at but when you're looking at like what you want to accomplish and there's a whole pipeline into devrel that I think is under um not on I guess underrated and is it actually it is the sa to devrel pipeline is so good and I'm not just saying that because that was me but like sorry for my dogs my dogs my dogs are sleeping nope that was mine um the solution architecture sales Engineers or whatever are very good at understanding how to make things useful you know and and go into that into that place and again it's not they're gonna turn around and try to sell it but a lot of it all still goes back to all of this is like why are you there and one thing I want to just bring up and and this is true and I think Ali kind of talked about this in in her video the parts that I saw like I said in the chat I I started watching it right before this and then my internet went out and I got it back just in time so I only saw the first half of the video so I'm gonna watch the rest of it because it was really good um because there was also and I'm not switching into this conversation but there was a on the other side today there was like a tweet from Emily Freeman that had to do with doing deveral at scale and like there is a ocean of difference in conversation between devrel at a seed round 12 person startup and devrel at AWS or Google or Microsoft in some ways and in some ways not but when you're looking at a certain time and then and then in between it gets even different like and then those of us that sit in between those two because there's things that are true at the at either end that are different in the middle so it's always really important I think in any conversations we have to be really careful about broad generalities because number one devrel contains multitudes and the lens upon which we're having this conversation um is very uh context dependent upon the size of the organization that said there absolutely are things that are true across the board right about why do you do it what are you there do you understand do you understand and also the not all you know anytime we get into like the one true devrel right there's a real devrel would do this a real devrel can write code a real devrel is good at speaking there are people who are me because this is what is the Hope what is developer relations it's about how do you relate and engage with your community of users and Community is a whole other thing it's become such a loaded word and there's stuff I'm thinking about within my organization about when we talk about Community there's perceptions about oh you're talking about the open source community and it's like no the community is our universe right and there are people in our in our and again and so many words we can't use anymore because it becomes something else like they say they're in our orbit our lowercase orbits right they're they're they're touching us they're part of and they may never be a customer they may never even be a user of our product but they are part of the community right so um yeah anyway anyway there's certain things that are that are always true and there's certain things that are very different upon what you're trying to accomplish but first of all anybody who's like well if you're a really real devrel you would not care about this or you would do this or do whatever is like for the birds and I I hate them and they should go away well I think Laura and Kathy there's all Dev advocacy developer experience is another one we see a lot or my first job in this space was head of Open Source Community which was basically being a PM on top of everything else um I think to Cassidy's Point um perfect timing is is an education problem like what is the role and like personally I have the take of whatever the tool or the product that you're using actually know how the product works like that is my biggest pet peeve is like when people who are doing tutorials or content or whatever it doesn't actually know under understand the product it's a huge red flag for me so if I see content created by a company and they don't use the product themselves red flag um but also like the level of technicality can change with company like my formal background is in journalism um that's fine but it's funny because they see that on my resume and they go oh she's completely non-technical at all and I'm like my last job I was in Python and using Docker every day and no like no and it's it's a very different thing but at the end of the day it's like what what objectives are you trying to accomplish yeah and I think this goes back and like Cassidy said it's like so many companies want different things and that's why I think it's really important you can't you know unfortunately there's there's one General title that can mean 30 different jobs and they're all valid implementations of that job but it might not be the implementation that a you want to do and or B you're good at and so that's why it's you know it's important to ask a lot of these questions and it was you know like uh Laura says in the chat people forget you're interviewing the company as well and that's a big part of that is to say like okay what is this job and it's running because again you would do this for any other kind of a job you would be like so what will I do here and if they were like you will do business things you know you'd be like um no maybe you could kind of tell me what I actually do and like what I'm accountable for and where I work and it's like no you're going to do business that would be crazy but we do this we do this here it'd be like well you're just in charge of our community what does that mean what because what what I think it means is not necessarily what you think it means and as long as those Venn diagrams of what I think it means and you think it means overlap a bunch but if they are very small then it's probably a bad place to be so I really loved the adoption of the term uh user ecosystem and I think that's one that I've really started to love and we use that at my last role um Lauren cell uh was the person who like used it a lot and it's like how do we think of our user ecosystem so like the larger where are our users and then what tools are they using or thinking about and then how does this look across you know customer success Community open source developers like what are like and thinking about it from that perspective and that's been like my obsession lately um foreshadowing things coming on my blog um I want to challenge the word user there because that ecosystem is not inclusive exclusive or includes only inclusive of people that use your product or use your tool and it's like when I think about like kind of concentric circles and like again things I'm thinking about writing and I'm deciding at what level of this is me writing for my team and writing for the internet and where these things go and versus most of it just ends up in texts to other people as I think out loud but it's like there are people that are part of that ecosystem or universe or whatever that are very valuable part of that that will never ever touch anything related to your thing but they're part of that and I'm not going to want to say like you know it's easy to say I'm gonna I'm gonna shortcut with the words because they're faster and I hate them and it's fine they're the thought leaders the influencers or whatever the people in that space who are part of that right like you know if you're in the kubernetes space if you're a product related to kubernetes Kelsey Hightower is in your ecosystem and he is never going to touch your thing maybe but that's fine and it's not that he's in your ecosystem because you want him to endorse you but the work he does influences and I mean that in the right way of influence not like influencer way but it affects that whole way we live like the way that I do devops work when I did work for a living um was influenced in a good way like the right way of the word by the work done by people in that space by Andrew Clay Shafer by Nicole forsgren or whatever so they're part of so when I was like at pagerduty for example I would sit there and say that and I'm not saying these things to name drop because I'm going to tell you who they and why it matters we would say that John alspaugh who was you know learning from incidents you know expert created blameless postmortems all of this stuff is in the pagerduty ecosystem and never would use pagerduty and that's totally cool but he's part of it and it's not because we have to Curry favor from them or whatever they're just part of the way we reason about things yeah exactly so I I you know in in listening to you I'll talk about this one thing that it's has struck me is that there is has been a so a lot of the growth I think in devrel over the recent years has been um these people like this single one person devrel team at a small startup kind of thing and that's I think like getting going back to Ali's video I think I felt like a lot of that stuff like aligned with experiences at small startups where they hadn't kind of where we talked about where they were told they they needed the devrel but what didn't have clear idea of what they wanted out of a devrel or they just had this vague idea that hiring devrel would suddenly like oh I'm gonna suddenly you know be be we're gonna build our automatically like bringing somebody who's an influencer we're gonna suddenly get all these followers and get all these users and blah blah blah and it was just like none of that um number one none of that ever really pans out the way they think it will and number two ultimately it becomes like well what do you what that's not they they start to realize that it's not stuff that brings affects the business like it's just you know I can get have tons of followers on Twitter which I don't anymore but like you know um but it's not necessarily going to drive money or real you know like it can build some awareness but it's it's not the ultimately like that important of a business goal so I'm I like I love where you're going with this but I have a real life story which actually exactly counters that so okay which is really interesting and it's like it's also one of the gray areas of my like and something that I've personally struggled a lot with being in Deborah and it's actually something Ali mentions in the video of like devrel and Dev advocacy your life kind of blurs a lot of the time meaning like sometimes you don't have a nine to five you're I'm like and especially like even when I was working I was like oh it's just on my slack I'm just gonna respond to three things real quick blah blah it's three sentences um so outside of tech I do run a comedy show um we have an AI comedy show that I run I'm a co-producer in if you're in the New York area tonight at 8pm at Crystal Lake but one of the things there soft shell there um but I I actually used the tool that I was formerly employed by in the development of this comedy show and I've actually done a technical now I've submitted things that I've built for the comedy show as a technical exam in the interview process as well I had someone who had attended our event as the comedy show they not only attended the event but they later was like that was really cool how did you build it and I'm talking through them how I built it and blah blah and they showed up to the workshop next week I was hosting at my day job and they would have never found out because they were just like random person in the comedy scene but again it was Loosely related is that everybody know most people didn't but like I still tracked three people who came that they first heard about us through this comedy show very soon and to be clear I'm not saying those things are useless I'm just saying like you know when that's the primary goal when you know they're I think you know the important devrel activities are much more easily tied like the content activities as Maddie was talking about earlier like I can much more easily tie that to a a clear business benefit um you know I you know I like where where does this content sit on the funnel in terms of like you know how it helps us you know either bring people into the top of the funnel or help move people along in the funnel kind of thing like you know so that they you know is it some sit somewhere like to help somebody in the purchasing process make that decision kind of thing I may not be able to tie it to actual Revenue but I can tell you where it fits into that process I mean there's a lot of stuff in marketing that you don't tie to direct Revenue I mean like there's lots of things that are valuable in an organization that are not that are very and you know like you're you're making a lot of leaps to to get it to the revenue I mean but I mean product is the thing and that's the other thing too is like you sit there and say you know think about the idea of of a developer Advocate or a develop person of the right type like again because it's not everybody is the same shape who is customer zero right who is providing and this is one of the things like we the reason we don't say evangelist anymore is twofold one is because it's colonists and not great the other is because evangelist implies a one-way conversation and I always like to say and this is what telling you that I'm an Ops person and in for persons I say that developer advocacy is full duplex right it goes both ways now this also gets us into like the whole work as imagined versus work is done thing and we need to have reality about where we sit in in that Spectrum um that said so if you are in a devrel group that is connected more closely into the product thing and then you have that tight feedback loop into product and giving fast feedback back into there that's all you know very easy to connect to business value the same way that the rest of your product organization is but it's got to be part of where that's happening so like all these business goals exist and everybody else in your company deals with them right you know and it's like I used to say in my devops talks I'd say do you know how your company makes money if you don't go find out I'll wait because we can't have any other conversation if you don't know what your company is how you're connecting to Value like nobody employs you to just have fun and the reality and the problem is and this here here I'll get spicy now is there's a whole bunch of us maybe myself included for a certain amount of time when money was cheap over the last few years when you literally could be employed as a devil and your job was to have fun it doesn't mean you didn't work hard but we were able to do that and that's not the case and that's not because I mean partially yes you know late stage I mean actually it is because of late stage capitalism that's totally fine but that's what happening like we can rail about it all we want but if you want to have a job we need to figure out where this goes so for at least for a while we have to go back and work for a living for a bit you can't have a job where your entire existence is that you get to go you get to like do things that are so far away that are so long tail and it's just totally fun um those days will maybe come back or maybe they'll come back in a different thing but nobody holds your breath because in the meantime telling you the bank ain't gonna accept a mortgage payment that is I'm just waiting until money is cheap again in the meantime you know I'm I'm gonna do these things um and again I've told I've referred to myself as the cynical devrel because it's like it sucks like again none of this is me saying it's right but it's the world you know and also you know and and this is the other thing too I think you alluded to this a little bit Aaron when you're talking about your scenario and you know it's it's tough out there that was sort of like kind of my my talk at Deborah Khan was saying hey it's tough out there and what I'm seeing is that the jobs are there but the bags are small right you know and that's the you know and you you mentioned that and it's funny because I I am not looking for a job um I'm safe to know my boss is not listening to this because I just like saw that he's on um the Silicon angle and the Cube live stream at Google Cloud next right now so he's on a different stream so I'm okay but I but but I'm not but I know people who are so I actually take a fair number of calls from recruiters because I'm doing a little filtering for my friends to say hey is it worth your time to call this person back because again because especially when I know I'm not looking I'm happy to ask for what the number is I'm like where are you looking at and I had someone I talked to who was like literally they were basically hiring they wanted a CMO when all was said and done it was like going to be a VP of marketing or whatever and stuff like it a hundred thousand dollars you know but also but then it's like oh but open equity and you're like cool guess what I can't pay with Equity my mortgage child support dog food does not you don't spend with that so it's it's rough but that sucks but like you know I think unfortunately we're doing this I've done the job search in August of last year now the job search in August of this year and I actually think this year is a little bit easier and maybe I'm just saying that prematurely I'm currently not employed but like I feel like maybe this year's easier but I don't know who knows um and I don't know if that's the experience you've kind of encountered buddy or um yeah and it's it's like Laura says you know I see that and it's it's really frustrating from a perspective again I should definitely say this is primarily even though I and my context on one side when I'm looking for to help my friends find jobs and help them do that they're almost always Stateside where that comes in whereas me I have a global team so when when Maddie is hiring in Maddie isn't hiring right now but Maddie might be at some point that's not a promise that's just saying that you never know um where things are going and I hope that we are very fair and stuff the the one thing that does suck and I'm not making an excuse about to Laura's point about like they'll say it's a remote job but it's um us only is it's it's a lot of just dumb about like where you have a presence in the company you know and um and it's like oh yeah the remote anywhere but Colorado yeah I think people have stopped doing that because that's a big that should be a big red flag to you because that means we don't actually want we want to try to pay you as little as possible um but I I think that's the yeah yeah I don't remember yeah maybe it'll get slightly less terrible eventually yeah I think I think it definitely will I mean I've been I've been in devrel for I I've been trying to figure it remember exactly like 13 years so it's been a while and I've been through some ups and downs in devrel so like I've seen you know stuff like this before where devrel teams you know had what we thought at the time was large devrel teams but then got got worked much later but like you know getting cut back including when I was on the devil team at Adobe that kind of like they're like oh yeah we're not doing developer things anymore the whole team was mostly come on um but so I've I've seen this stuff happen before I think you know the right now feels a little weird at times just because so much of the growth to me was of devrel was in startups that now have had to to kind of really because the lack of VC money have had to really cut back on on their spending on this kind of thing and be a little more cautious about spending in devrel so I think that's part that's affecting the salaries of devrel specifically is is money isn't cheap like it was yeah you know that's the um it's terrible but like but one of the things I was thinking about I was talking to um a friend of mine who is like not pleased with their job and that doesn't narrow it down because lots of us are not pleased lots of people are not pleased with their job I'm very pleased with my job boss who's not watching because he's on the cube right now um but um yeah thanks will I I kind of assume the gross was for me because it's will who's in the chat who's like that's gross that's uh where that goes um but you know they're like hey I'm in you know and and the one advice I would give and maybe it's right if if if things are real bad where you're at get out if you have to but try to stay as much as you can because what happens is because those salaries are lower and as someone who was in a situation that did a reset and how long it took me to get back so I got laid off this was not in devrel but it still applies I got laid off um as an Ops person 20 years ago I think it was about 20 or ish about about 20 20 years ago or so and I you know in the process of looking for a job it was a very tough time this was you know Circa 2002 which you know some of us will be triggered by that and say like and I ended up having to take any job I could get and it was a good 40 pay cut and it took me four years to get back to where I had been because once you're in there you're fighting this fight up there so if you can hold on to what you have you know um but if things are awful you know um would we care to speculate about when the market will bounce back well if I knew that yeah no but I mean I I think it's gonna get better before it gets worse because we're starting to see I don't want to say see the purse strings loosen up a little bit um but I think there's a re uh recentering or recalibrating that is happening and I think there was a bit of a of a glut right like it was sort of like cool and we saw this on both sides right we saw this in situations like Ali talked about ali had which was the I just got to get somebody or whatever and then it's like oh you've been here for a while or someone's been here for a while and now I'm like I don't understand what you do so I'm gonna reframe you but then or then the other side we saw this at some of the really big places where they're like money is cheap we're gonna throw around millions of dollars to higher up like 35 people to like do this thing and then but it all comes back when eventually the balance sheet balances right and so this is also why I think there's value in like figuring out how we get more um cross-functional when we get more like attract because like the less the more General you can be in some ways and I'm not saying t-shaped right like I know people get that becomes a thing but like if I have some sidecar stuff because it's also what sets you apart because the other thing is when you can do more than one thing you can hold on when the one thing you mostly do isn't as as much in demand you can find a thing that you're also really good at so um yeah but I think again I would say too for me you know the people that are reaching out to me it's a lot of like seed round AI startups that want that devrel team of one who's also like Ali said is also your technical content marketer and is also your demand gen is also all of these things and I mean here's the reality right at a certain point like you got to take what you can get you know I mean it's a certain point like you can't pay your rent with pride you know but but also go into it like knowing wherever that is and I think the other the other thing in general and I this is you know and I'd love to hear we're getting a lot of really great there's a lot of super smart people in the chat who have a lot to say um that we should listen to um you will find and this was something I've seen I've seen people having success and this is harder to do for New folks because Cassidy just said this is rough for new folks and part of the reason is this there are companies that have short-term cash but not long-term cash so like especially when you look at a company that's dealing with their Runway and everything like that taking on a hire is a long ish term op X cost paying you as a contractor as a consultant thirty thousand dollars to do one thing that money is there but there it's it's funny because it's like hey we could Aaron we could hire you like we could contract you basically say we're going to give you this this check to do this one thing and you're like holy cow that but wouldn't it be cheaper for you to pay me less than be an employee though like you would think that wouldn't you right but especially when you're looking at what your board is looking at because you're looking at your Runway and when we bring you on for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars or whatever we have to plan to be able to keep paying that but actually you know but short term I can sit there and I can write you a check because that's capex right that's like that's that's the thing but that's very hard to do when you're new because you can't sell yourself as like I'm good at this so like that's that's hard you know so this is not a perfect solution um but I'm seeing a lot of places that I've seen people talk to them and they're just like dude we can't hire you or you know man we can't hire you but you want to consult yeah you know because that money I have you know yeah I you know I agree with some of the comments in the chat that it's the bounce back has kind of started I feel like I mean I'll put this way I think the best place to find jobs in devrel right like has always been like for the past few years it's been the devrel collective slack in their job support right and that jobs board went through a period I think like starting Sometime Late last year for like six months where I swear there was almost nothing it was almost silent only the only post you'd get were people looking for jobs or losing their jobs um and very few jobs and it's it's it's felt like it's picked up I do think to somebody's point I can't remember who in the comments here it's it's a lot of seed stage because and to me this makes sense because seed stage is like hey I've got X dollars right like I need I need to like move really really quickly I need to like build you know I I have this much runway and and the other companies are all like once they're past that seed stage they're all like well now we need to prove for our next round that we're being more efficient with our dollars is the thing that all the VCS are looking for now so it's like you know the Endeavor L doesn't really fit into um expanding you know that our efficiencies you know um or can but I mean my point is like that I'm just saying from their perspective so so I think it makes sense it's a lot of sea Brown folks and the bigger companies to me are all like I think they saw an opportunity to kind of trim the you know trim a lot of people and said hey you know we're going to cut it not because there was no value in there devrel because we just I've worked for big companies they always like we're like okay downturn we could just make some slices even though we're making record profits can I make a little bit of a hot take here absolutely and this may get away from me and I apply pickles and this won't what did you say mention pickles I said spicy pickles okay spicy relish you really want to make your joke Aaron has a really really good joke about pickles she's dying to make okay let's let's I want to hear the spices okay so one of the things we're always like oh my God I hate that they hired a Deborah when they really want a technical content marketer hey you know what maybe go be a technical hard time marketer for a minute for two reasons one is like because it'll actually help you do your other job better to learn how to do that and or you might actually be good at it and the again it gives us that sidecar thing so if if at a certain point where you're like hey man I really really want like the thing I want most in the world is to like you know be a race car driver that drives golf carts and they're like well there's that's not a thing that happens right now but what you could do is like get a lot of good practice driving golf carts like you know in some other way like maybe you could do that and it's adjacent so I think that's sort of the thing too and it doesn't have to be tight I'm naming that one there's lots of other that make us better at what we do as a devil for whatever kind of devrel you are now if you're not the kind of devrel that writes then yeah then probably don't try to go get a job as a TCR because it's probably not first of all you're not gonna be able to get the job most likely and it's not going to help you but maybe there's some other engineering role maybe there's some other product role maybe there's some other thing you can do and I know I'm not by the way none of this is like oh it's so easy just go do that I'm just sort of maybe sort of saying like can we reason about like ways to do things that are adjacent you know yeah yeah that that kind of reminds me of a period when okay there was a point in my career I moved all the way up to director but it was like director of content it was it was it marketing anyway I it I didn't I didn't I ended up loving that job um for multiple reasons but I decided I want to get back into like a I see Deborah and it turned out to be really really difficult to do because everybody's like oh I'd only been in that job a year and I was doing a lot of the writing and stuff and be like oh you're a director in marketing and I don't know what what can you bring to the table Yeah so I I literally spent like the next I the next six months or so as I was working I spent I wrote a new blog post every single week for on different topics like I made sure every week I had something and it was it was not like that I um I don't think you have to stick to that schedule but the point was I was trying to build my resume back into the role I wanted to fit into by doing by doing things that was outside my job I like it this was nothing really it helped me well actually I do uh like I I can do Deborah I have done devrel look at all these blog posts I've written in the past six I think in a similar sense if you're trying to get into it you can I think there's ways to find to build that skill set or at least beef up your resume even if you don't necessarily have the rule yet well I think that's like the advice that a lot of people like have been giving is like you know do the job you have to in order to get the job you want you to do the job before you're ready to do and I think that's it's you know so much like you know I'm a adjunct at NYU on the side and so much of my job is like charge for your work like these are graduate students like they're not 19 they're many times have 10 years of work under their belt and they're they're like on one hand I'm like charged for your work but on the other hand I'm like but you need to be out there and be present and sometimes it's a hard one it's like it's a hard balance but it's also like and I'm a big believer of like you know always give more than you can like give more than you take you know put it out in the world and it'll come back to you but yeah it's an adventure yeah I mean and I know I I recognize that like that's it's a hard thing to do like it's not always I want people to like say I give up all their time in their weekends or whatever but I I kind of determined I I had to do it to like get back to job the role I'm on it but anyway um we are running low on time here we got like six minutes left and and we have uh so so Maddie we didn't tell you about this you know the pre-show but we this is the the key moment in our Show Where Oh shoot no pressure or anything yeah no no no don't worry this is all an errand because I never I never had oh good okay there's two things there are two things first of all obviously you the show because the relish is themed around pickles um so um and you may not know this about Aaron but Aaron is an amateur so she's an amateur Pickler because she'd like to be able to compete in the pickle Olympics that's why she's not going pro oh I do like this I like where we're going with this actually devro job career Pap I'm going to be a pickle comedian and a professional pickle comedian what if you're a professional pickle comedian you can't compete in the Olympics so I want you to think this one out you might be being short-sighted right I like that I like these job titles coming in oh Brian Smith yeah Ryan Smith the good one oh that's a good one yeah that's a fermentation this yeah okay and Brian Smith okay yeah you know um on that note before you get do you give us your pickle fact here like you you really do have like a white I mean you're you're a Pickler a comedian uh you were a journalists into Deborah also like you know I think that covers all the bases of the bases were pickles and comedy and yeah things I'm not good at um using my desk clean there's a nice pile of books right here that are cleanly off camera so yeah yeah don't bring me for that but I would lead with the pickles and their job search for sure for sure um and I will agree with Maddie the best pickles are sold out of a barrel because the fermentation process is very fascinating but but also my friend who works at the ren Fair learned this year as many years as he worked at the ren fair that if you go to The Pickle Barrel people with your flag in full of ice with your flag and they will fill it with iced pickle juice for you and he was like sitting in his shop drinking pickle juice with like how has it taken me how many 10 plus years of working here to not understand this was the thing you could do oh my goodness to use the line that does pickle my fancy now it's done okay so tickle facts let's go back away um so I actually went to academic journal for today's pickle facts and in case you were wondering um the pickling the bacteria in pickle this is probably one not one if you're like a germaphobe I guess but it's actually one of the highest strains like you can find the most diversity in bacteria in lacto-fermented pickles so there's over 49 different strains of bacteria found to make a successful best tasting pickles according to this journal article and it is actually some of the best bacteria for your like metabolism in your microbiome yeah I had the same thought by the way as as Cassidy more or less I was like well there's there's academic journals about pickling the I learned a pickle off of so I learned pickle as part of a class I took in grad school it's a whole other tangent but um yeah the there is a the guide that I used to pickle is actually from um Washington State's Department of Agriculture and it is an Open Source book and guide to how much Brine and salt in your acidity that you need to not to kill the bacteria to be good bacteria yep I think matty2 shoots can close us out the CPO okay I think yeah yeah okay I'm sorry Laura I probably grossed you out with all the bacteria but you know what I will eat all your pickles for you or fermented Bloody Mary's mix because that's my that's my other Jam for mentioned Bloody Mary I I I do love how the end of this show always just kind of goes way deep into uh pickle related like play on words and stuff like that so yeah the comments and in the show it's it's my favorite part well it's not right I mean yeah aside from this is like the best Google make a blood a fermented Bloody Mary if you like a good spicy brine takes a week it's very good so with that um we are out of time Maddie this was a really really awesome conversation I had so much fun and um thank you to everybody in in the audience it's been like crazy and all these kinds I mean great audience here like absolutely if you want to be on like shoot us a DM of like all of that stuff because I would like so many of you are brilliant Cassidy was on the show um so yeah yeah we yeah we'd love to have you all as as yes um if you haven't been a guess I want to talk about devrel but we will be back next month um I will be posting that soon uh and also please check out see cfe.dev for we've got a bunch of stuff in September coming up tons of 3D events and can I promote one thing I didn't realize I should have said this when people were paying attention that podcast I talked about that I do arrested devops we just released an episode that is about building your personal brand with Cassandra Ferris that is maybe interesting to lots of people watching this so go to arrestedevops.com find it in your podcatcher listen to it yeah I did post a link earlier but yeah I don't know why I didn't put the connection that earlier that I was like oh yeah actually maybe interesting that's not about kubernetes we barely ever talk about kubernetes now we talk about platform engineering now but anyway awesome all right thanks everybody we'll see you next time bye, DevOps and DevRel With Matt Stratton, Certified Fresh Events, 01h9gc79s4pz665ksgf7pber5b.