Getting Your First DevRel Job  ## Metadata - Author: [[YouTube]] - Full Title: Getting Your First DevRel Job - Category: #articles - Document Tags: [[video-notes]] [[youtube]] - Summary: Getting your first DevRel job - URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNW8xfuS6mM foreign hello hi there how are you I'm well you know what shoes I meant to say this earlier when we were backstage but happy United States American Valentine's Day galentine's Day solo times day um I love that I'm here with you thank you for being here likewise yeah thanks for joining me today it's going to be really cool I think it's really early in the morning for you isn't it it's not so early it's like 8 30 a.m PST so you know been up for a couple hours doing some things and stuff um but also I can't sleep the night before these because I get super excited and I have been a co-host to Matthew and now we get to be co-hosts together without like the head host and we're just gonna take it off the tracks sorry Matthew oh poor Matthew I think he's probably crying right now but it's gonna be really good it's gonna be really good so anyone who's watching feel free to add your questions in the chat and we'll get through as many of them as we can too and speaking of a speaking of which the questions you might be adding in the chat you know add any questions that you want around developer relations like developerrelations.com there's tons of resources through hoopee but what is the topic that we are talking about today sues so I fall in love with your deathbrow career and we're going to be focusing more on how to get into devrel because that is a big question it's the age-old question there's two agile questions in different I think or three one is how do you get into it one is what is it and the third one is how do you measure it like it's this big mysterious thing so we're gonna demystify how to build your career in devrel today because that is a question that we always get asked I am super excited and I I really appreciate when people can list things out in a very clear way so the way the fact you articulated those three main bullet points I was like no you're right that is what it is those are the three lifelong age-old questions um shall we hop into our panelists let's do that yeah all right so I will kick us off um our first panelist is Phil legater and I realize that I always ask people well obviously not always because I'm not sure if I just said your name correctly so like it is a head developer experience at Tigress data he's done it all from Hands-On execution to c-suite budget justification so everything he's been the janitor the president everything in between he takes care of um you know the entire house top to bottom all the foundation and he's a proponent of the triple a triple RP devrel strategy framework which I so deeply want to know more about which and helps numerous developer relations teams map company level goals to team activities that bring value to a business so welcome Phil thanks for being here thank you very much and that's a great intro I don't know if you caught me just doing some revision okay Mom I've also got this one and I'm not paid for these either no so thank you ever so much for my intro I really appreciate that don't let me name anything that's the other thing that with the ARP framework um again it's just I once worked on this thing called quicker which wasn't spelled in any way you'd expect it was kww i k a um again don't let me name anything but employ me please employ me and uh and help me build your develop relations teams or developer experience teams and I've had the fortune uh Good Fortune of doing that um I do already have a job just to be clear uh I've Had The Good Fortune doing that a few times and I've really enjoyed building teams growing teams but a big part of that has been starting people off in their devrel careers so I hope there's some useful information that I can provide during the stream I should just say I I work for Tigris data and you print it on sit correctly um we're an open source developer data platform the simplest way of putting that is with kind of like mongodb Atlas for open source we're obviously not as big as mongodb but at the slightly more complex way of looking at it is where we have a database product a search product we're open source we have a cloud offering too and in the future we will offer caching Pub sub event streaming and various things like that so I've done my piece as someone in devrel who also has marketing responsibilities well welcome and um I appreciate the analogies made between something that you might know more and then you can apply that too if you haven't heard of Tigris but I think a lot of people have so maybe give yourself a little more credit there okay thank you sues who is up next before I say something next whenever I hear about the framework um that you just described I always say in a pirate voice in my head I don't know if I'm the only one oh you've got to there's a video on devopulations.com of the introduction to the art framework and I actually attempt to say it all in the in in a pirate accent so by all means people go and have a listen and they'll laugh to that oh it's not just me then that's good that's good I read it and I was like it's just so tempting and with it um cool okay thanks for that thanks for validating me there um our next guest is Kelly hillborn Kelly is very senior in their developer relations and Community most recently elasticus Global director of community and developer relations also is a Community Development advisor at chain link labs and has previously worked at IBM welcome Kelly thank you for having me kind of not quite sure where I go I'm no longer at elastic so I'm kind of between jobs but I do take a lot of mentorship steps and Advising anywhere I can for developers and people wanting to get into the space so hopefully I can add a lot to the conversation cool thank you and who's the next stop next up is a developer a community Builder and a keynote speaker he's currently at Technical Community builder at Deep RAM and a host of virtualcoffee.io where she started as a way to bring the developer Community together for informal connections and then continued because the community finds so much value in it I actually heard about virtual coffee in 2021 maybe even 20 2021 I believe before I met Becca and every time I get to be around her I honestly feel like I'm with a celebrity welcome it's it's so great it's so good to have you here you've done so much in so many different aspects for building developer communities and bringing developers together and developer relations professionals together oh thanks so much for having me I really appreciate that um it's been it's been a really great journey I'm the uh baby on the devrel conversation here today I've only been here a couple of years but I'm really happy so I've been doing Deborah things for a while with virtual coffee and then moving over as the technical community builder at deepgram so it's been a lot of fun thanks for having me yeah I think I mean seriously with with the amount of experience combined right whether or not you it's a spectrum or a circle or like we have everything from uh Grassroots like Community like created communities to like you know IBM which is like a you know fast Enterprise I don't have to describe IBM people know what it is um so pretty amazing what like the journeys that all of you have been on and in the companies that you've been on them with um and so glad to have you all here and let's let's dive in does that sound good okay so great we are going to start off with practical or you know this idea here is for delivering practical advice for the Next Generation or current generation of folks who would like to enter into the developer relations space and so we wanted to kick us off with a little bit of context and Becca we'll start with you can you describe a little bit of the path you took to devrel and then we'll have um Phil and Kelly um dive into and then and then we'll get into like the meteor topics where we get super controversial um I think I don't really have a path I just like stumbled into it um I was walking a path and unexpectedly took the wrong way maybe I'm not really sure but I I taught College English for 10 years before doing a boot camp and moving into Tech and then I was doing some Consulting work as a front-end developer but my background is in teaching and so as I went through boot camp I somebody on Twitter said you should be blogging about this experience and so it's well okay I'll I guess so that makes sense right and then my husband is a second career developer as well and he was speaking at conferences and I just thought that everybody was speaking at conferences I just thought that's what developers do because that's what I knew so I think I actually spoke at my first conference I was less than a month into my first job as a front-end developer freelancing and so then when the pandemic hit my kids were all home I have four kids and I lost my job as a freelancer which I didn't really even have an interview it was a conversation right and so I found myself interviewing for the first time for a new role and that's kind of how virtual coffee came about because I thought you know what I'm not the only one that is feeling this terrible right now I'm sure that there are other people out there that are really feeling isolated they're feeling alone and so we should get together because I know the worst place to be is by yourself when you're having those feelings and so I put out there on Twitter does anybody want to join for a virtual coffee and that's how I came up with that very original name um but we started getting together and I found that you know there were days where I was doing double sessions because people kept wanting to join and it was that sense of community and belonging and so I continued to do some freelance work and still do virtual coffee we started adding things like podcasts and monthly challenges and events and stuff and it just kept going and and at some point it was our first hacktoberfest in 2020 where it really seemed to solidify into something new in that this wasn't just a pandemic thing like we all want to be part of a community at some point it doesn't have to be during a pandemic there are lots of reasons why people can't get together in person and as a mama four kids um that was me prior to the pandemic too and so I just continued to build on that community and and go with with what everybody wanted and to be supported by so many amazing people and volunteers there and to really understand that you know this is this is bigger than than what I initially had thought and then somewhere I don't know uh about a year and a half ago um the Deep Graham reached out to me and said hey do you want to come build community for deep gram or a speech to text API company um and I said I don't think so um but then uh the Michael kept asking like hey maybe we should have a conversation about this and so I continue to think about it and then finally I don't know if he wore me down or if I was just ready to move into developer relations after doing a lot of devreli things for so long and so I've been at Deep Graham building community and working with the developer relations team for about a year and a month right now so it's I've been kind of all over the place but I'm I'm really happy to have found such a great Community as part of the devrel community devreli I love that uh what's that what's your devreli devrelish devrelia path um Phil uh well it's great to hear about Michael hiring people because I think his first job in devrel was at Vonage um which was my team so again very very proud and honored to to have helped more people get into devrel um my path was I was a software engineer um I I think the roles I've always had were always like building sdks writing documentation create sample code so so I wasn't aware of it because I was straight out uni but I was always serving Developers through enabling um experiences for them not really the community the interaction I got was through support not really through any official forums or open source or anything like that um but I was always passionate about serving developers and then eventually I think I mean there's lots of opportunities for companies I was out to do a lot more externally but we never did but I encourage eventually encouraged companies to start blogging about what we're doing and sharing knowledge um and then that led me to quitting my job uh wanting to become a real-time web evangelist which I just made up on the spot I enjoyed real-time web Technologies and um and then that led me into you know again the idea there was I liked building things sharing what I shared what was possible and helping others uh and that took me into my first developer evangelist job at a company called Pusher along the way I came across um a book an online book by Christian Hellman called well developer evangelist.com I think it was at the time he's Rewritten it to be developer advocate.com or as a new version so that's how I discovered it but it was that I think a similar desire to help educate and support developers was the the thing that took me in the direction it wasn't a chosen path as such I just ended up there it's like um I love that there's like a thematic thing right it's not that everyone stumbled but you're on One path and they're like oh this path is quite interesting maybe I'll Fork right um but something that resonates across I think both yours and Becca's paths is that there's passion involved for what you're doing um or like curiosity about moving into a space and then certainly idea about knowledge sharing like what do you know that someone else doesn't know or what does someone else know that might help you and so there's certainly a collaborative aspect there Kelly I'm wondering if the pattern holds true or if I'm making a line between two dots and calling it a pattern the pattern might hold true I mean some of the you know some of it I could have come on by accident some of it was very intentional um I didn't start writing any code until fairly late in my technical career I started out I'm not going to age myself too badly but a long time ago answering phones on a help desk reboot your computer reset your password setting permissions and graduated into networking and systems Administration windows and Linux I went to work for a couple of companies that were now you're calling Cloud companies but back then they were just simple hosting companies you rack servers you spin them up you lease them out as fast as possible few iterations of director of I.T and a lot of other roles and then I went and joined a startup which is which I think that's its own podcast for all the stories that I have there and shortly after that I joined a company called softlayer to build a startup program the idea behind that startup program was you give startups you know early stage companies free access to services and back then it was I don't I there were only two other companies doing that now of course there are a lot of companies that have similar programs and so I was really doing Community Development as early as probably 2009 before I even thought about any type of developer activities developer relations and when we're onboarding companies onto this what is that what amounts to infrastructure as a service it's really not a developer skill and so I'm really staying in that infrastructure side the devops side more than anything else and through the course of of onboarding startups and working with Founders and speaking and conferences and speaking in front of accelerators and helping people it was a natural progression to start with python and get into everything I could to help these developers build what they're trying to build so that they're successful on our platform so that that I'm successful um and so I almost it's like intentional kind of but really stumbled into it at the same time and then you know the acquisition of software by IBM happened and then I was moved into a pure devro role and it was very very different than even what I was doing before I was concentrating on developers and startups and IBM's version was you know typical of ibms just very very different approach and we were doing developer advocacy for customers or potential customers as well as developer advocacy for any developers you find out in the ecosystem and so it's I have a very very interesting and and probably unique take on on getting into devrel and and you know lasting as long as I have to be honest it's fun though love what I do well let's dive into those takes I think Zeus had some ideas around like what she thinks would be super helpful to to hear and to dive into from your points of view so Sue's take it away okay so um like I said at the beginning one of the agile questions about death rail is how do I get into deprel and I think there is some sort of like you know misconception sometimes and maybe a little bit of confusion as to how to do this or what you need because naturally people are going to approach the most visible people to go and ask them and the most visible people may not necessarily have had the most accessible path into devrel because not everybody can craft that big personal brand and get into it that way and there are hundreds of people working in devrel that you never hear about because they're getting on with it and they are just not visible to the general populace but they're visible to the audience that they are serving through their roles so I kind of want to get some actionable advice out of you folks for people who want to get into devrel and they're thinking right okay in the current economic climate as well I'm really trying to hang on to the job that I've got and I'm looking for a new job it's really difficult I don't necessarily have a lot of time to spend on this but maybe there are things that I can doing my current role that will serve me really well to moving into developer relations so my question to you is I'm going to come to you one by one to make it easier is which one skill would you advise people to hone so they can get their first devrel job and how can they hone that skill on a very sort of scant time and money resources so maybe how can they do that in their day job and then demonstrate that to a hiring manager I'm going to come to you Becca because like you say you you like you describe yourself as a self as a baby of the group so you have very recent experience of getting hired so which one skill would you advise people to hone I feel like this is maybe a cop-out and you want something more specific but I think communication is the most important skill that you can have uh as someone on a developer relations team and there are lots of different ways to communicate and I think that's important to remember to communicate in ways that work for you but also discover how other people communicate right because developer relations is not about you it's about helping and supporting other people in some way so finding out okay how do you communicate what is the best way that you receive information what is the most effective way for us to communicate together and then think about how you can support other people in the way that you best communicate okay so like find the ways to match up those different communication skills and in terms of growing those skills it can be you know it can be anything you could be writing it might just be you writing a Daily Journal of the things that you did get started there it could be writing a blog post it could be making a tick tock uh or doing a video or live streaming but I think that you know it's important to focus on what where your skills are good but also don't be afraid to get out of your comfort zone either so in terms of communication I found that to be really helpful for me it's easy to stay in like hey I really like writing and I like to spend all of this time just focusing on this thing and taking time but um finding other ways to communicate has been really valuable for me and also asking people for feedback on that too so in terms of wanting to grow and become a better Communicator sometimes people give you feedback and that's great but oftentimes things move really quickly or there's not opportunities for feedback and so reaching out to people that you know and who you are comfortable with and saying hey would you mind providing me some feedback I just gave this talk and I want to do better even if you think like this is the best thing that I've ever done there's always room to grow cool thanks for that and Phil you have hired people into devrel roles at all different levels I've got another we've got another baby devil there uh Phil you have hired people into all different levels in developer relations what's your take on this so I think it that the skills that somebody should focus on and at the time obviously they should focus really depends on I think if they have an understanding of the role because in developed relations there are lots of different roles from Community Management from Pure technical writing through you know technical writing into more uh like you know blog posts more um like you know acquisition-focused type content then there's then there's speaking you know which can be live streaming recording videos which is different from doing a live stream which is different from standing on stage and giving a presentation which is different from giving you know running a workshop so I think if you know if you have an idea you want to be in developed relations but you can be specific about okay those are the types of roles I'd like to do or these are the skills that I have that I'd like to to do more of then I would probably focus on on the skill related to whichever kind of role you're looking for so I don't think I would have gone for an evangelist type role which was definitely well at a startup company is very general it was like you know doing everything from SDK development to docs to blog posts to uh you know running online competitions to in-person hackathons which were definitely a big thing back in 2011 um I I definitely wouldn't have chosen to be I'm more of an introvert so I wouldn't have chosen to go I want to be in the community standing there in front of people I would have gone up for more of a sort of educational role so through to maybe the blog post content probably not live streams you know probably not videos whether that would have been good for me I don't as an individual my own growth I don't know but I think an easier path for me a more comfortable path would have been I'm going to focus on writing some content which will be technical content maybe do a bit of no Library work goodreadmes a bit of blogging and then I would have focused there and I think I would have found a way into a company through that approach but if you are really excited about being out in the community then yeah I mean backstage we were talking about becoming an influencer and that is is a path into developer relations but it definitely isn't for everybody but some people may be very excited about that so may want to focus on the personal brand and I do think back when I was hired in by Pusher in 2011 that would have been ultimately what they were looking for from their person in death rail although I felt I brought a lot more value through the product side of of my work but they really wanted awareness they really wanted acquisition yeah yeah very true very true and I think that's a whole other Round Table isn't it all the different roles and all the different concentrations of folks in because you can get all those different concentrations in one team um some companies have more than one level team that have different flexes as well Kelly you've recruited people into different worlds in different organizations so what's your feeling on this what's the one skill you think people should hone if they only have time to do one um well I think I think Phil and Becca gave the best answers already so I'm having to think fast on my feet here to come up with something something decent that's not true there's a there's a lot there the you know Denver whenever anyone asks me what devrel is I always give the kind of canned answer of you know it's our job to to lower the barrier of entry for developers to utilize and using our products right and so that to me that always breaks down to education and so I really want you don't have to I've hired Advocates that have zero experience that come straight from engineering they just have this desire to to be an advocate and I think that's fantastic because I for me it's easy to teach someone to to find that passion and and you know feels right you you don't want to put a writer on stage you don't want to take someone that loves being on stage and sticking behind the computer to write all that it doesn't make a lot of sense that their their passionate work is not going to show through and so to me it's important to to figure out what they're best at and they can hone that skill and and admittedly being an influencer is part of that it's not an end-all it's not a be-all it's not it's I don't think that's a goal I think that's more of a byproduct for me personally I like the idea of having a large following in people that can can kind of amplify your message and and see what you're doing but again to me that's more of a byproduct and so I really I really aim for that that empathy and education more than anything else if you're going to be helping people solve problems getting started um implementing your products and services or whatever the case is that requires a lot of patience empathy and one and a desire to help people and so my my best advice for someone that wants to get into devrel is start doing that you know most companies that have a product even in your you know your company time spend time in the support channels spend time in slack spend time you know if they have a Discord or disc or spend time in there answer questions for people be there be there and you know what I'm describing is advocating advocating for that company advocating for that product advocating for for yourself without trying to build a following this is more along the lines of I want to help people be successful with what we've got going on here and that's an advocate and if you can learn those skills and you have that empathy it just shows you're in an interview and and they say what are you doing free time spend time on Discord and discuss and helping people and making sure that they can really utilize everything we have to offer and it's not frustrating because I can tell you anything I want to download run or install that's frustrating I skip it and I move the next thing and most people that I know are kind of are very similar and so if you can if you can make that journey and that path easier you're already doing the job and so that to me that's that's the best thing that you can learn and it's the best thing you can showcase yourself in an interview or to a hiring manager say I'm already doing this now I just want to get paid for it yeah you do hear a lot of people say that because developer relations is very much sort of the Swiss army knife isn't it it really is you you know a lot about all different things and uh you've got a lot of skills that you bring to the party and that's why that's why not everybody can do it it's it's quite a hard job and it it takes in a lot of different disciplines and like Phil said earlier depending on the concentration really it might have a bit more of this and a little bit of that one but it's always going to be a big mixture and uh Kelly I'm going to come to you again with this next question to be fair because I don't go in the same order again because then you'll be like oh everybody already said what I wanted to say um I think a lot of people look at getting into Deborah and they think about coming in as a junior or coming in at an entry level um but actually that's not necessarily the case is it because you could have quite a long career behind you um like me I had 20 years doing other stuff and then I came in to develop her relations so can you talk a little bit about um how or what you would look for or the kind of thing that the kind of people that you would hire into a senior devrel role as their first developer relations role as opposed to coming in at the entry level can you talk to us a bit about that yeah that's a tough one um now I don't have the scapegoat of saying they gave the best answers so I have to put myself out there no I mean in that in that scenario it goes back to what I was just talking about if someone has the engineering background um and again for for there's so many roles never you don't necessarily have to have an engineering background but to be senior that means that you can almost single-handedly answer answer almost any question that comes through um create maintain and host your own events uh Mentor Junior Advocates like there's a bit senior to me is a really big word that means it's got this all like I said a Swiss army knife it's all encompassing you know Persona that people have that says you're going to help you're going to Mentor you're going to teach you're going to do all of these things and if someone's been in you know they're if they're senior in their career they've done you know some type of teaching they've they are already creating good content uh they spent time as an engineer I would have no problem moving them into to a senior role by any stretch but just with the understanding that sorry I'm gonna back up my general philosophy about a role if you move into a role it takes you a year to be comfortable right wronger and different that's the way that I view the world and so if I have someone come in even as a senior they need that year to really just get to to absorb everything swallow everything get moving uh and have a have a solid understanding of where they sit in the world and where they're going to be in the next three to five years um but you know even even that being said there's you can walk into a senior role and really perform Super well I've seen a few do it that are just still the best Advocates I've ever seen and they came straight from product right to me and they just exploded they were genius and so yeah there are those times but it does require that you have done a few things education content creation a desire and ability to help others I can't say the word empathy enough it's hugely important um and you know you're there you're you're you exist you've been in on online in in forums and in slack and just helping up that's what you're known for yeah senior all day long yeah yeah and I think it also just from my personal experience as well it's about having those business skills that you can only get from having risen up the ranks in some discipline um that you're not necessarily gonna have honed with very little experience because just because you haven't been exposed to certain situations um so yeah Phil I'm gonna come to you with the same question as well because you've managed a number of teams and in your teams you've had a lot of different levels of uh folks in your team so uh what's your take on this question yeah see Senior for the in the places I mean we had this and I think it's quite common you know like P3 was developer Advocate this advantage and I've seen this similar other places P4 was senior developer Advocate P5 and I always get this mixed up there was staff and principal so you you know you could get so if you think about senior it's actually only I think there was a junior P2 but we we often hired a developer Advocate P3 so it's only in the middle the senior so often we did hire quite a few people who were already working in communities but had a senior engineer role somewhere else but they were definitely you know as Kelly was saying already doing the job of being an advocate for the community really that they were in and those communities very specific technology I mean programming languages in our case so that's what we're looking for we're looking for somebody that could be a conduit of communication to that Community making sure we're building the right things for them and making sure we're um you know being seen positively in those communities through through often supporting that individual right and doing what that individual thinks is best for for that community so I think the skills that were that those people maybe were missing was more of the business aspect side of things there's alignment with company goals uh making sure that um you know there was you know whatever's trending in in the python World there is a use for that within within a communications platform at Vonage um or if the goal at the minute is it if if like quite a lot of companies that are new if nobody's really heard of you then just hiring that individual and them going hey you know I know what for Tiger's data that's not good enough right they've got you've got to go okay well how do I bring value to the business and value to the community and line those things up um so I think that thing that's been the hardest part uh it's the same same when I was at ably as well we had um some amazing developer Advocates amazingly creative uh amazing Engineers you know those those are in like an advocacy role if you've got someone who's a fantastic engineer fantastic they're creative and everyone's just like wow everything they do is brilliant but then making sure that what they're doing aligns with your company goals so if it's okay we need to be you know create content that's going to result in sign ups people aren't always driven by that and I heard I totally get it but the business will not exist if you don't hit your goals so that's been the that's been the hardest part I think of bringing people in that haven't done a devil role and have been Community focused and have been a great engineer um or have been a fantastic Community manager somewhere else but then haven't in the companies I've been at anyway being able to kind of always as easily map the company goals to the work that they do yeah that is super important especially in the current climate where everybody is hanging on for dear life and you know we really have to sometimes we have to really we just for long justify what we're doing but I definitely have to make it link back to the company objectives and yeah I mean Kelly said earlier and you know you're not really into a role for a year some companies may not exist in a year right so they've got to come in and sometimes if you're certainly if you're hiring a senior person okay we've got to be hitting some goals quite quickly because you know I work I now work at a um seed Stage Company we probably won't exist in two years if we don't hit our goals this year so yeah I've heard some bad stories about folks that haven't even been in a job for a year before you know companies have decided to make changes as well so if you can hit the ground running then all the better really so uh yeah I think that kind of marks out the difference doesn't it you're not you're not gonna be given that hand holding you're gonna have to just hit the ground running and get on with it so Becca I know that um you are very visible on Twitter and you uh like I don't want to keep coming back to it but you said it like you are the baby of the group so you've got various experience of getting into devrel from the beginning and a lot of people do approach you don't they and they say to you like Becca can you tell me about this can you can you help me I really wanted to do what you're doing can you tell us about some of the assumptions or misconceptions that people come to you with and you're thinking oh hang on a minute you know maybe I need to kind of guide you because you've got this idea and you might be kind of leading yourself down the wrong path are there any common misconceptions or assumptions people come out with I think the first one is that you have to be an extrovert like I think Phil you said earlier that you're an introvert I am an introvert most people guess that I'm not an introvert but I I think that it comes down to doing things that you feel comfortable doing and also being able to get out of your comfort zone you don't have to be an introvert you don't also you don't have to do all of the things right that's the other thing like well you know I'm pretty good at coding and I can write a blog post but I can't speak in front of people and live streaming is terrifying like then don't then don't live stream and don't speak or don't pursue jobs that have that as one of the primary goals you don't have to be able to do all of the things find the thing that you're good that the thing that you are interested in with devrel and then see if that seems like a really good path for you yeah yeah I agree and it is really easy to kind of feel not inadequate but feel like you're never gonna get there because you see these people and they seem to be like the egots of death row like you know this quadruple threat and you're like how am I going to do all this because like you say folks are introverted I'm definitely introverted I do not no offense to anyone here on the call I don't really get my energy from being in big groups of people I'm much happier just kind of like getting on with my stuff on my own but I don't mind doing the performance piece I don't mind doing the live streams I don't mind doing the talks but I very much like it to be something that I have control of and um I think there are jobs like that they exists out there it's just a case of finding them and I think folks really need to have a maybe have a reality check and go and look at Job adverts and really go and speak to more people like a wider variety of people and find out the reality because I think if you focus on the people that are famous or you know super visible or have the personal brand you're probably not going to get a full picture of what you could get involved in and maybe there's a missed opportunity there so yeah Rebecca do you want to um kick off the next segment I do I actually I'm gonna I'm gonna lob a curveball it's not like a fast curveball so we're gonna all see it coming but Phil you touched on something that I thought was really really really interesting and all three of you did and so I think maybe to wrap that up a bit right it really sounds like you're like lean into your strengths if your strength is speaking then like go there if your strength is writing then go there your strength is personal brand building then buildeth away and and then don't underestimate the power of what you are very good at and becoming and maintaining your like joy in doing that like Phil you said the power of a good read me and like do not underestimate the power of a great read me you know that is like such um a display of empathy when you set the context for someone else to get into your own head through like an amazing read me it's like lean into that um something else that that came out of that I think is right is this idea of now maybe it's just in this context economic context or or probably probably always right is like how do you connect what you're doing and and to the success of the business right like how do you actually measure that and and sneak peek is we actually have a develop Round Table coming up in April I believe called devrel and dirty words and it's about the linkages between devrel and marketing and sales and for a long time right I was like okay well devrel doesn't sing or at least like a general idea I was like devrel does its thing and then like Marketing sales do there it was like devops like you debit and then you throw it over and you're like okay go opposite and there doesn't need to be and maybe in today's climate cannot be such a thick wall between those things like these three things have to handshake because they all affect the outcomes of the business um and so I I would love to hear from you all if a career path or something that we have to embrace as people that are devreli is that something that people entering their career whether they are you know tenured seniors coming in as new devrel people but you know senior in their space or entry level like kind of newcomers just walking in how my how might you advise someone to think about the relationship between devrel and sales and marketing um Kelly we will actually know I think we have not yet kicked off with Phil so Phil can we kick off with you it give me a really tough one they just keep amping up it's just getting a little bit uh well so at the minute the role I'm in one of the reasons I guess a bit of a personal journey is that I am quite um driven to you know achieve a certain level within an organization I'd like at some point to be on a c-suite sort of thing um at Vonage I was kind of at that but it was a very kind of split org um anyway so I'm at Sea company now and I'm on the I mean would there's not a board of directors because we're so small uh so but I'm you know one of the senior people in the team and effectively I run marketing so developer experience within developer experience is marketing I mean devrel team the devops experiencing whatever the color is marketing um and I think that works at smaller organizations who are entirely developer focused so you know in uh in this book it talks about um developer first or developer plus developer first being the end user is a developer so I think actually marketing being devopulations or developer experience at these smaller companies makes a lot of sense um so the I mean the relationship is it is that function that is what you're kind of kind of doing in the developer Plus or in larger organizations where you've got multiple personas you're trying to reach they're not always not always software engineers then um I mean ultimately you know it's the age-old conversation where will devrel sit and I think again if the goals of what your devil team is doing is kind of top of the funnel awareness acquisition then the devil team should sit within marketing and work with marketing and work I think the best way for it to work the best way of seeing it work is to be entirely working within that function so goals aligned involved in a lot of the same conversations I mean sometimes if it's like demand gen paid advertising okay don't involve the devil team that although you probably do want them reviewing your adverts and things like that because you're trying to reach the people that they speak to all the time so I think the best way for for for marketing is everyone to work together is to if their goals are aligned to be the same function sales um I haven't I'll be completely honest I haven't seen devron sales work together very well at all anywhere I think there's a completely different mindset that a lot of sales people have that does not resonate well with people that think about education as a primary focus we've seen the emails once someone signs up for a new platform if it comes from a sales team it's persistent there's 10 of them the wording is different if it comes from people with a more of a develop relations mindset it's about education it's about asking questions understanding what they're trying to do you can get some really good sales people that do that as well but the majority of it is you know that can we jump on a call what's your use case what volume are you talking about so I don't have a great answer to the sales alignment although I believe sales is in is fundamentally important for certain types of businesses to succeed so I wish I had an answer for the sales side but I don't so I will say I think uh the team at temporal does this really well in terms of I've heard developer Advocates there and sales team be like we've actually never worked so well together uh than than we do here um so we can dive into that later but and that might be something to dive into in terms of teams that are seeing success with that something that I kind of maybe want to another dimension I want to add to this question um for Kelly and Becca as Maybe uh should devrel also be looking to work better together with sales or is that our should those two things like as we look into career paths in the future and driving those business outcomes marketing is certainly uh really integral part of that and should devrel devreli people also be looking for ways to collaborate and include sales or is that something where it's like it's just still not the right like intersection and because I think Phil's bringing up a good point right where it's like it hasn't we we haven't traditionally seen it be done well and should it be something that people should be looking into doing well um I see Becca nodding so Becca do you want to take it um I I don't know that I don't have an answer for it for sure but I will say that this has been a question that's been on my mind a lot lately um and it's a kind of a personal project that I am working on in terms of being able to tell the story of your company your community and yourself right and I think that storytelling is key to creating connections and there's a company that does it really well the company 3M um the most famous for Post-it notes I don't know if that's what they're most famous for but that's what I like to go with I used to have actually I have a wall of Post-it notes over there now um but they focus on the storytelling culture right and it's top down it's who they are as a company and then how they share that story with other people and I know that their sales team is actually trained in storytelling so it's their job to go in and to be able to tell stories to the people that they're selling to these are the project products that we have that would really help you and they don't do it in a sales way they do it in a storytelling way because when we tell stories we connect with other people and I think essentially we're all telling stories in different ways right and so if we can figure out how to create a storytelling within a company culture starting at the very top and moving down then I think it's much easier to make those connections with marketing with devrel and with sales because you're all telling the same story it just might be a different path to that story and making that connection helps you to curate that story together and figure out what's most effective for your audience member and so thinking about it from that perspective we have an audience we all have an audience what story most appeals to them maybe is that connection that can help to unify those voices in a way that allows us to work all together I love that okay storytelling Let's uh that maybe sounds like something to lean into in terms of practical advice to to lean it to well I just had to lean into but let's lean into it twice um Kelly what do you think well I'm glad I'm last I could talk about this for pretty much the whole duration of this college like this is a conversation that I have all the time um and it is and and they're both the they're both right the storytelling is huge and so it's when when someone asks me what I do or what value I bring or anything depending on where they're at heavily dictates my answer if it's the chief marketing officers well I'm seating the market for the next generation of X users right and so and for sales it's like well I'm educating your next customer so if I'm doing my job properly your job is so much easier and they understand it because the the time to close a deal is faster you have you know honestly and you wanted to go controversial we're going controversial because this is this is one of those conversations that can get you in well get me in trouble in an OSS environment like working with sales will get you in so much trouble um but ideally you do want to work with sales I mean sales sales you don't want them selling at your meetups you don't want them adding sales slides to your presentations you don't want them getting into your business and Crossing that line you have like a like a a community contract that do not break this contract or you were out you cannot come to my meetups you cannot come to my events but that's that's kind of an ownership thing you just heard me my events my meetups my stuff which you have to work with sales you have to work with marketing it's part of the job it's that simple and so your goals I have a leadership philosophy um it's slightly off track but leaders should very very simply create and share a vision that the team grasps and adheres to and follows and then creates goals that that the team understands and are very easily achievable so if they understand where they sit within the environment and the in the organization and those goals ladder up whatever organization and you can be a marketing strategy you can be a product whatever the case is your goals Ladder Up throughout the organization so that you don't have to have these conversations very often can you make sure that everyone on your team understands those goals and where they sit in the organization and how their efforts benefit the entire company from the ground up to the top and everyone has that understanding that doesn't mean that your internal education stops because again you have these conversations every day but you do have to work with sales if someone comes you know if you're if you're in a large organization not a smaller one you're going to end up at a kubecon or an event or somewhere where your your people or yourself you're doing Booth Duty you're going to handle you're going to hand over qualified leads to sales and so the understanding that I try to have with sales is it's not my job leads are not my job it's a glorious byproduct of all the beauty we bring in the organization but it's not my role so I'm not going to be that's not going to be a goal that's not going to be a task it's not going to be a kpi but I will end up giving you leads and I will educate your future customers so you don't have to try so hard so if you have customers that go to a Meetup your sales process is easier so it's on you to send them my way if you want people to learn and adopt faster send them the community in the dev roll route send them to our slacks send them to our content we have all you know a lot of places we have a whole series on getting started you want it easier use our stuff but don't sell to my group see ownership don't sell to the developer relations group because all you're going to do is piss them off and particularly in an open source environment you're going to piss everybody off but you still have to partner with them they still have to understand that's going to be my question actually you know what are the specific activities you've talked about Booth duty but you've it I mean that obviously is in person that's standing next to each other but you know often it would be from my perspective oh you know can can you do a webinar for a specific customer or can you come and fly over to somewhere else and give a one-off workshop for someone I mean are there any other specific activities that you felt that there's a lot of collaboration between between sales and devil or is it normally at arm's length most of times it's arms links but it's okay to to do that what I don't want to do is have them them being sales change our job because at that point we're abandoning our community and our developers and that's not okay if they need assistance or help that's fantastic if they need help with a certain customer send them to our Meetup that's fantastic they're in bird they're in let's I'm just gonna throw something out there they're in Berlin and they want to learn about Vector search I'm going to go do a meet up in Berlin about Vector search you send them and in the course of our day-to-day where we're still supporting our community and our users and our and our developers we will educate them on everything that you need but I cannot take time away from our community and our developers because that's just horrible to to educate a customer that's not my job but if we can meet in the middle that's awesome that's fantastic and I will help you out all you want there are occasions where we actually have in multiple roles gone and just trained a customer because it was in line with something we were already doing okay we're gonna go do devops days Berlin this you know this customer that we're going to train it takes an hour out of a trip that's already scheduled that's not a problem but that's a slippery slope right you don't want that to become the norm and so I generally try to find a very even middle ground that says we're already doing these activities come in I'll give you a hug like bring it bring it in and I'd love to have you there but I can't I can't abandon the community that I've got to go and do this and so and not only that if you have those clear goals in that Clear Vision you Empower your developer Advocates honestly to say no and I don't like saying no I like saying I'd love to but we need to have a conversation or but in in all you know if you take all that out of the way you're actually empowering your people to say no because they know their goals that is not in line with what we're trying to do as an organization if you want me to stop what I'm doing and work on this that's a conversation and so goals are so huge and it has to it has to work for marketing and sales and and strategy and and everybody across the company has to understand you where you sit what you do and how you affect them and it makes your job so much easier I could have talked for everyone like I'm eating enough time and I apologize something that I admit so Kelly internally at common room a lot of times we talk about sales and we talk about it in terms of value matching being like hey let's say you sell for a year but if the value isn't matched there then they're going to turn and after a year you're not going to have that customer and then you like poured all that like time and resources into bringing on that customer customer if the value match isn't there then like you're not going to have that customer and then that's just the the goal right is to like make sure that you are bringing on the right customer getting the right prospects in the door that are the right that would get the right value understanding how to make sure that they're getting the value from what you're selling and then that value match considering or like assuming right that it remains value matched and that they continue to grow with like how they're using your product and your product continues to support how they want to grow that sounds like what you're doing as um the developer relation side where you're like hey if people come into the Community First if they learn from our slack our Discord our discourse are discussed first and they understand where they want to go with their product and now they also understand how our product matches the value that they're looking for then we've made your job so much easier because you're not just a salesperson you are a value matching person making sure that this connection is the right one for a long-term journey together yeah and that that also it helps everyone but keeps you out of the process and I believe common room calls that a community qualified lead right yeah it's brilliant it's absolutely brilliant I don't want it to be a goal I do want to be a healthy byproduct um one more thing I wanted to touch on there that I think the three of you sort of touched on as like so we talk about Community codes of conduct right it's so important to have a community code of conduct when you're going to be hosting a community but I think the three of you touched on this idea of an internal Community code of conduct so it's not just here's how you should act you know as here's the expectations of our community members but here are the expectations of us as people who serve our community members across the organization this is a space for learning this is a Sacred Space for asking questions it's a safe space that will or will not be recorded whatever that is this is not a space for selling this is only a space for understanding where your customer is at to then inform that story when you have sales conversations down the line if there's a value match and so I think I really wanted to highlight that because I think each of you said that in your own ways around like it's not just about what you do externally but how you educate people internally and I think an internal Community code of conduct is like a very powerful tool as you bring other are people from the organization into those conversations with community members it absolutely is we actually have a a presentation we give to all newcomers that goes over the community and and everything that we do and the rules you can come here to learn you come here to immersion the community and really get a good feel for everything no selling no like there's there's this list of rules that you have to agree to or you know please don't please don't break the rules um yeah thank you for that sues we are moving toward rapidly the finish line of the conversation I want to know if you wanted to ask uh our panelists for any parting words of wisdom advice or mistakes to avoid yeah so before I do that I just wanted to touch upon something that everybody just said which a thought that occurred to me was that and I've seen this in a lot of organizations people tend to care about what they're tasked with and they think that's what everybody's tasked with so they think everybody needs to be working to help that same goal which isn't necessarily the case but the other thing I wanted to say to anyone who does want to get into developer relations and maybe is working in Tech already is that I actually think that people working in technical sales so like Solutions Architects or in technical marketing are really good candidates for coming in to developer relations I've seen that happen a lot where people have made that switch um they have a lot of the good skills that are needed they have a lot of understanding of the potential customers and the people that use the product so if you're in those sorts of roles and you're thinking about getting into devrel then I would say you probably have quite a lot of the skills and experience that are needed but you have to change your mindset so you need to think about right what is this audience I'm going to be speaking to in developer relations because it's going to be different the messages are going to be different and the outcomes are going to be different but yeah definitely consider that if you're in technical sales or marketing um it's definitely a route that I think is open to you so let's go into the final uh question then I think let's see let's talk about mistakes let's let's talk about things that people really need to avoid things from your bitter experience that you really don't want anyone else to suffer don't worry about how bad it is let's just get it out there because you know we've all made some really bad mistakes all being led into them by somebody um let's start with you Becca because you have a recent experience of getting into several but you're also talking to a lot of people who want to get into it I thought you're gonna say you have a recent Mr experience of making a big mistake like what what is it serious can you tell me no you've got a recent experience of getting into devrel so I'm sure you've seen a lot of pitfalls and maybe some people trying to take you by the hand and lead you into something that wasn't good maybe maybe not um so I I think that I I last week I met with my former team lead Michael and we went over my strengths and weaknesses and one of my weaknesses he said is you say yes too quickly and it's very true um I get I hear an idea and I get very excited about that idea and I want to run with it and a lot of that comes in the past working not on a devrel team right doing a lot of running things myself yeah I can handle this totally but that's not uh it may not necessarily align with what the business goals are what the strategy is um or you know I was a teacher so I ran my own classroom and I did the things that I wanted to do because it made sense right and so maybe the biggest mistake that I've made over the last year has been saying yes to doing all of the things right and then at the end of last year feeling like I just wanted to lay down and die for two weeks because I was so exhausted um but I also need to take that step back and create that space to say like before I say yes I need to think about how does this align with the goals of the business how does this align with the strategy and the story that I want to tell for community and how does this look three months down the road does this make sense or is this just me being really excited about like this thing that might be really impactful right now or that a bunch of people might jump on board with and not recognizing that there's a lot of other things that need to come into consideration before saying yes yeah that is that is good advice for anybody in any job I think think before you say yes because uh yeah saying yes to everything is just totally inflatable isn't it yeah yeah but it's hard though sometimes you get pressure and I think sometimes when your manager says you say yes to everything it's like well boss that's because you asked me to do it what am I supposed to do sit there and say no really I don't know it's yeah I think that's a whole other thing isn't it like let's do a talk on how to say no to your boss yeah it's a tendency too I think like being early career at something you want to say yes to the things right because you think that you should be doing all of the things or you need to prove that you can do 500 things don't but I think as gantler board who say who emphasized to me prior to this like when you say yes to everything you're saying no do other things as well and so kind of like flipping that mindset becomes really important what is this yes what does this mean that you're saying no to and that might be your own free time time to recover or to really deepen your skill set in one particular area yeah and it's hard when you like you said about the quadruple threats earlier when you're seeing all these people doing all the things it's really hard to kind of remind yourself that you don't need to be doing the same so Kelly you said that you are uh currently in between jobs you're evaluating your options what mistakes are you going to avoid on this journey that you're on now there's there are a lot of them luckily I haven't made any that are shattering in quite some time um you know I I can see a lot of people saying yes very quickly I've I've taken that a different route and saying I don't want people to just hear no from me and I mentioned that earlier it's I don't want to say no but also I'm not going to agree to their to the demands of someone else if it you know adversely impacts what I'm doing as far as um mistakes to make or not to make I find that the bigger the mistakes that that tend to cause me problems are the ones where I didn't have all the information um so there's two things I want to impart people number one is if you're going to join devrel I would like everyone to just have a you know have a a promise to themselves to be genuine um and be sincere if you offer to help someone don't make a hollow offer help them if you say hey reach out to me if you need anything that literally means reach out to me if you need anything you know and and you're you are promising to help them through it and keep that word will travel very quickly of you being a helpful and and genuine person as far as mistakes go try to have all the information before you make a decision I I another philosophy I have is you know I if I go into an organization I don't do anything for about 90 days all I do is learn I listen I talk to everybody um and I don't make any changes or anything or shattering for about 90 days just so I can really understand everything and not not what's going on why is it going on if that's not really clear okay why was the decision made to go that route in the first place so I really understand what's going to happen when I you know amplify it or shut it down whatever cases and so most of the mistakes that I've made in I don't know in the last 10 years or so or generally I didn't have all the information and so I made a mistake and I was like oh well I didn't know that and you're like and then and behind my eyes well then you shouldn't have made the mistake dummy you shouldn't have made the decision don't do that so really trying to have all of the all of the information that you can possibly have before making a decision even if that's about career if you're starting a new role make sure you love the technology and you love the people and you love the company and make sure you have everything you can possibly have to make the best decisions yeah that is definitely a something you can learn from when you've made that mistake at least once and um whenever you look back you always know that you made the decision based on the information you had at the time but once you've made that mistake you know that you have to gather more and where you might be able to get it from so yeah that is definitely good advice and Phil lostly Phil yeah I mean I'll continue that and and kind of put it on on the two sides I think there's a big thing certainly for people that have been in devrel for quite a while uh that are interviewing for new roles that they kind of want to have a few conversations and then the decision be made and I get that some people have the experience and have the online collateral to justify that um they know what they're doing but the thing is part of it is to actually have a moment of working with that company you're potentially going to join to learn from them to understand what that working environment is going to be like before you make that decision of taking a job which should be a big step right should be a big thing and it should be a commitment so so take the time to genuinely understand each other and to work with each other so that's the individual that's home but also I've been very I've made mistakes in the past in terms sometimes they've been great decisions other times they've not been good decisions but I get very excited in the interview process if if it's clicking with someone and I'm in the position of authority and I can go right I'm going to make a good offer now now that's just not and I've done that a few times but I've been so excited about the people I've been speaking to that I'm like okay let's just start working together so in on both sides of it you've got to really understand what the relationship's going to be like what the job's going to be like whether you can do the job or they can really you know as an advocate anyway you've got to love the product you've got to be genuine about that so that all having all the information is definitely you know take your time with that interview process on both sides of it whether you're the hirer or the person that's um whether you're the employee or the or the employer potential employer employer and then the last tip is for more Junior people getting into devrel that you may not have all the skills required to be successful in that role yet but you're being hired as a junior person for a reason you have potential that that you can do this role given time but from your perspective you need to make sure that the company that you're joining can give you that support that you need don't join it like so for instance I mentioned earlier you know we've only got a certain amount amount of Runway as a as a as a seed stage organization we need to everyone to come in and hit the ground running we can't hire Junior people at the minute I would love to be able to hire Junior people but if I'm spending half of my time helping someone succeed in their role I can't perform as an individual contributor for half that time so as the person that's being hired you've got to go okay what stage is this company at what's the expectation from me am I going to get the support I need to be successful here or am I going to join and within two months understand that okay I'm making a few mistakes that's completely expected of someone in my stage in my career but their responsibility as the employer is actually to support me and they're not giving that so make sure as the person being hired there in the junior role that you're joining a company that has that structure to support you in the role you're joining for yeah definitely and what you just said reminded me of something else you see a lot of job adverts for you know you're going to be the first devrel person well you're going to be setting up the team just be really careful about that unless you're super experiencing you have done that before it could be it could be really really really challenging and quite horrible because you may not ever get that promised team the the what you think therefore else should be for that company may not be the reason why they've hired you there might be a big disconnect and because you're the only person you don't have anyone behind you to kind of to help you fight your Corners so it can be quite a lonely place so yeah if you see anything that's you know you're going to be the soul devrel just treat it with a bit of caution it's not necessarily bad but definitely the due diligence there and make sure it's the right fit for you cool all of the info yeah yeah like uh like Kelly said make sure you have more information more information you think you're going to need so yeah Rebecca shall we shall we wrap up yeah all I can say is thank you all for not only being here to discuss devrel devreli things for an hour but over an hour and for diving into things that felt comfortable uncomfortable and everything in between and it's such a treat to have you all and Zeus thanks for being thanks for letting us co-cohost what a fun thing Happy Valentine's Day from the United States Happy Valentine's Day everyone yeah thanks everybody for coming hope for all the uh the viewers enjoyed it and it gave you a bit of food for thought thank you it was fun happy Valentine's Day thanks for having us thank you bye, Getting Your First DevRel Job, YouTube, 01k9gfavd4d01avaqpnp0zj0p4.