2023 DevRel Compensation & Culture Survey  ## Metadata - Author: [[Community Pulse]] - Full Title: 2023 DevRel Compensation & Culture Survey - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/6a8f969a-7616-46ac-9553-90520e6ceb04 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Mismatch Between DevRel Tasks and Business Goals** - DevRel roles often have a disconnect between daily tasks and valued business outcomes. - Businesses may value product adoption but assign DevRel tasks that don't align with those goals. Transcript: Speaker 2 Have is when all was said and done you collated the data and you looked at it what was like the biggest surprise overall. Speaker 1 That's a great question so I think there are two that really stood out to me one was that like where developer relations professionals are measured or like they're gold on their daily Tasks or gold on like product awareness and product adoption which is like that's two different parts of the funnel and then and then some of the ways that they are measuring business Outcomes is like number of active users and there is just there is a like disconnect I would say or like too many leaps or gaps between what that data was sort of saying that either either The either dev rel teams are doing things on the day to day that the business isn't actually valuing or the business is saying they value one thing but then putting that asking dev rel Teams to do something that doesn't actually align to that and I don't think any of this is meant to be like nefarious or malicious or malicious or malicious I think this was just really Helpful in seeing that what people are tasked on the day to day what they're like what their core responsibilities are and then what the outcomes of those responsibilities are supposed To be and then how they actually ladder up to what the business wants to see from those teams. They just don't quite connect and so which which I think it's already up but I think that's also like one of the big use cases for common room in general is the fact that people want to say Speaker 2 Like okay here's the metrics you set for me here's what we're looking at. For me here's what we're actually figuring out in the community. Can we find a way to to to build me a metric that makes sense for the activities I'm doing and not just handing me the metric that you had the sales and marketing team because we're not the Same thing. But yeah I think that's totally interesting and I think that's like you kind of aligns with you know why we need tools account. Speaker 1 Yeah thank you for that I really appreciate that. Yeah absolutely right it's like hey am I here to make sure that that anyone who's coming in is getting getting a response in a certain amount of time you know like hitting an SLA am I here To make sure that discord is popping am I here to make sure that get everything in github is triage really quickly. Am I here to make sure that documentation is like spot on and that people aren't asking questions that are actually in the docs or that aren't in the docs that need to be reflected there. Like it there needs to be different ways where people can actually see now that we know what we're doing you can use a tool. My vote common room of course and to actually say like what are people talking about what are they asking about you know what is their role like are they an economic buyer are they a director Level who could actually say I approve this like purchase. Are they a contributor to your community are they a huge influencer like it's there is enough data points out there now where whatever tool you use like obviously I have the ones that I love. But like I'm just like use a tool like there are tools out there now like use those tools so that you as a devrel leader can actually understand what metrics you are you have available to You and then make sure that they're connecting all the way up to. Generally marketing teams that people are aligning to but people also align to success teams and product teams engineer EPD teams but mostly at the what we saw for my survey is mostly At the marketing side and that GTM side. Speaker 3 One of the things that I found what we were talking about this before the show also but I found interesting is that. You know. Because this survey does have a strong focus on like the cultural aspects of it and you can see right in the data was one of the questions that access to data shows the impact of my role towards The business objectives like that was the number one response. In terms of mechanisms to improve well being I feel like the fact that we're just having these conversations not only is indicative of again our industry just wanting to help each other. But I feel like it's show it's it's really is showing other people that you should be able to ask within your own team these hard questions like I don't I shouldn't just be like showing Up to do work and I'm doing this thing because somebody upstairs said this is what I should be doing today. What we expect from in Dev rel is to understand what the business objectives are and there's myriad of the of them and million ways to do them and your team understands those goals and What you're trying to do and the team comes up with how to accomplish those goals and also how are we going to measure those this in canopy measured. And it shows to me that we're again sort of seeing more more embracing of that sort of mindset culturally where we do acknowledge that metrics are important but also having a good way To capture that stuff and and have the conversation with other ([Time 0:18:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/baddb9c5-0ebc-45ad-9c8f-f3551afea409)) - **Use Tailored Tools for Metrics** - Use tools to understand and measure your community's metrics accurately. - Avoid metrics copied from unrelated teams; tailor metrics to DevRel activities. Transcript: Speaker 2 Sales and marketing team because we're not the same thing. But yeah I think that's totally interesting and I think that's like you kind of aligns with you know why we need tools account. Speaker 1 Yeah thank you for that I really appreciate that. Yeah absolutely right it's like hey am I here to make sure that that anyone who's coming in is getting getting a response in a certain amount of time you know like hitting an SLA am I here To make sure that discord is popping am I here to make sure that get everything in github is triage really quickly. Am I here to make sure that documentation is like spot on and that people aren't asking questions that are actually in the docs or that aren't in the docs that need to be reflected there. Like it there needs to be different ways where people can actually see now that we know what we're doing you can use a tool. My vote common room of course and to actually say like what are people talking about what are they asking about you know what is their role like are they an economic buyer are they a director Level who could actually say I approve this like purchase. Are they a contributor to your community are they a huge influencer like it's there is enough data points out there now where whatever tool you use like obviously I have the ones that I love. But like I'm just like use a tool like there are tools ([Time 0:20:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f8dc568a-8b3d-4621-8d73-2b8778f63e35)) - **Data Access Boosts DevRel Well-being** - Access to data showing role impact on business objectives greatly improves well-being. - Open conversations around DevRel goals and metrics enhance team confidence and alignment. Transcript: Speaker 1 Sure that they're connecting all the way up to. Generally marketing teams that people are aligning to but people also align to success teams and product teams engineer EPD teams but mostly at the what we saw for my survey is mostly At the marketing side and that GTM side. Speaker 3 One of the things that I found what we were talking about this before the show also but I found interesting is that. You know. Because this survey does have a strong focus on like the cultural aspects of it and you can see right in the data was one of the questions that access to data shows the impact of my role towards The business objectives like that was the number one response. In terms of mechanisms to improve well being I feel like the fact that we're just having these conversations not only is indicative of again our industry just wanting to help each other. But I feel like it's show it's it's really is showing other people that you should be able to ask within your own team these hard questions like I don't I shouldn't just be like showing Up to do work and I'm doing this thing because somebody upstairs said this is what I should be doing today. What we expect from in Dev rel is to understand what the business objectives are and there's myriad of the of them and million ways to do them and your team understands those goals and What you're trying to do and the team comes up with how to accomplish those goals and also how are we going to measure those this in canopy measured. And it shows to me that we're again sort of seeing more more embracing of that sort of mindset culturally where we do acknowledge that metrics are important but also having a good way To capture that stuff and and have the conversation with other aspects of our business about what developer relations does what community management does and what the just overall Sort of connection. Where those lie I think has been something that we've always wished we had available to us and it's it's it's forever going to be elusive because our job is always shifty and the ways we Go about things are changing. Speaker 2 I think to Jason sorry to interrupt but no one of the things that Rebecca mentioned to is like the concept of the go to market plan and everyone knows ([Time 0:21:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/31098fee-3ee3-4d88-8db3-79756a14bd6c)) - **DevRel Needs Distinct Go-to-Community Plan** - DevRel requires its own go-to-community plan separate from traditional marketing plans. - Building a strong collaborative foundation among Sales, DevRel, Marketing, and Engineering strengthens organizational success. Transcript: Speaker 3 And the ways we go about things are changing. Speaker 2 I think to Jason sorry to interrupt but no one of the things that Rebecca mentioned to is like the concept of the go to market plan and everyone knows when held it I'll die on is you shouldn't You should not have a go to market plan for your dev rel team. You don't have a go to community plan because that's what they do. You don't you know you don't say all right we're going to apply you know agile engineering principles to the janitorial team because that doesn't work. These are two different teams they have two different things they have two different goals shed two different plans. And I think that that that again setting up things that that actually like like this survey to say these are the things that make sense helps you to build out that plan. And similar what you were saying Jason I think too many organizations are like okay so dev rel we've got that checklist item. Our VC said we need to dig dev rel we all know how I feel about using dev rel is not I'm not going to get into that again. Dev rel is not a note. Anyway. So but like the whole idea of dev rel the checklist and then just not really knowing how to metric eyes or properly use that resource is is part of what I think holds us back and having things Like this survey where we can say listen. Because I mean what are the what are the biggest things that surprised me to kind of go back to the original question was the number of people that said my main job is education. And that's like okay that is actually the key to our job. We are there to educate which means good documentation which means being in the support for us which means to quote Rebecca having a pop and discord. I don't know what that means I'm way too old. But like in all seriousness like that really is what it means and that's all part of a go to community plan not a go to market plan. And I think that that's that's the key thing that that people need to take away from is like maybe maybe applying the good old metrics of monthly active users is not an active good way to Measuring dev rel team. Speaker 1 I think can I can I can I interview you here for a second. So I love that I love the idea of a go to community plan. Let's say I just want to clarify here let's say the community team or the dev the developer relations team is rolling up into the larger go to market organization the marketing you know The CMO whatever that might be. And the way that I perceive it and the way that we think about an operate at common room right is that it makes sense like I have my own community strategy but the go to community strategy. And so you know you know those two things should be totally separate and there should be like a CCO and a CMO and they're you know both sitting at that exact level which ultimately is kind Of my goal in the future but like talking about today. And so what do you also mean that the go to community strategy is another input and as all these inputs come together and coalesce into the ultimately like marketing is trying to know Speaker 2 Awareness distribution. Yeah. More more more the latter yeah because I mean like yes we do need to work with marketing I know that I've I've joked and said like oh we're not marketing we shouldn't be considered marketing Which is true but like everyone in your company is marketing everyone in your company is sales. But nobody understands that last part a go to community plan should be based on in the same way that like you know your teams KPIs and OKRs are based on the organizations KPIs OKRs are based On you know the companies. You see what I'm saying. So that go to community plan maybe it's not based on monthly active users but is built on building a community that should eventually lead to those monthly active users those marketing Goals those sales goals. We have to work in tandem or in 10. I don't know how we're doing with the three three we need to build a three-legged stool that is sales dev rel and marketing. It needs to work together and I mean even toss a couple more you trust in product and engineering you've got a five-legged stool that's super sturdy and everybody loves it. If you can get that that's the ultimate dev rel goal but engineering is going to have a plan sales is going to have a plan marketing has a plan. Why doesn't dev rel have a plan. And I think that that has to if you really want to be successful that's what you need. Yeah. Speaker 4 Completely agreed and I think that's a whole other. Episode that we should. I would love that. I would love that. ([Time 0:23:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/dc9ae52b-6888-4afd-99a0-eb2c444a7123)) - **Improve Survey Clarity and Scope** - Refine survey questions to capture clearer organizational structures and reporting lines. - Include diverse prior experiences beyond software engineering for richer compensation data. Transcript: Speaker 1 There will be another one like next year as far as I have to say about it. Another will. Yes absolutely. So in 2022 our first survey and we got feedback where people are like cool like data but like I would love to see range data. Not just the compensation data as it is. And so we were like that makes a ton of sense absolutely. So we created range data. Produced that as an addendum last year but then included that range data. This year without hopefully you know the community needing to ask because we're like we heard your feedback. We knew this would be useful. And so in that same way this year. We wanted to make sure that we are getting feedback about the survey and. Maybe this is like a quirky or silly but. Honestly one of my favorite parts of the actual report is the second to last page where it's it's legitimately people's feedback what we heard from them like verbatim. Scrubbed for any like personal identifying information like you know we asked them if that's okay and that sort of thing. And so I think a few of the main takeaways from there and and I'm certainly guilty of this is it's Americanish and I was like you know I never would have thought of that and that's because I'm coming from this viewpoint of someone of an American. And so things like the way we represent salary counts and the ways that degrees are described and the levels of education. There is somewhat of a. Not that it's a blocker but there's. We might not be getting the most clear data that we can get because we're not also speaking in a way that is more like globally accessible to everyone outside of American North America. And so I thought that was that is something that I can certainly address next year and that we will address and I loved that piece of feedback. I am I think in terms of. Questions there are certainly a few that we would sort of update so I think one of the most. Confusing questions and I got feedback actually I didn't get feedback but I saw a podcast or listen to a podcast where someone was talking about this report and they had some they had Some hot takes to share on it and I appreciate that they did. But I was like oh they're talking about our report. And one of the questions right is around who do you roll up to. And it's like do you know do you answer to the dev rel team or develop relations team or do you ladder up to the marketing team. And then also you know product and success and there's other options there. But honestly I think that question is is too is not clear for folks they're like yeah my my my direct lead who I answer to or who is my boss who is my manager is the you know head of dev rel. But what we were actually trying to get out is that organizational like who has the final pen where they're like everything that is under this umbrella of the organization is driving Toward these goals. These business level objectives. And so while I think that we have good directional data around the business level objectives that people are in dev rel are working toward. I think that sort of muddies the waters a little bit or could at least because you're like oh I'm answering to dev rel. So now you're in a headspace where you're answering the rest of the questions differently. But what we're really trying to get to is if you report ultimately to the CMO and these are what these are the organizational goals that they must drive that their name is on. Then how does that all ladder up. And so I think there's importance to get more clarity around that for next year. And then the last question I think and Mary you and Maddie and I think Matthew had a really cool conversation around this and our shared collaborators Google Doc when we were looking At what the. Survey questions would be for this year. And it was around. Talking about you know previous not just previous software engineering experience and how that might affect compensation outcomes or, or levels or any of those things. But previous experience in general is if you have previous experience in non non technical quote unquote non technical roles right or if you have previous experience as a PM, but not Necessarily as a software engineer if you have previous experience. ([Time 0:28:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6988939f-8827-4fdd-b311-a9fd55b157b2)) - **Mary's Pink Concert Experience** - Mary attended a Pink concert and admired her athleticism and political music. - Pink's personal engagement with the audience and acrobatics made the show memorable. Transcript: Speaker 4 I've been getting back into reading books again, which has been really nice for a while there for whatever reason. I was having having trouble focusing enough to sit down and enjoy reading. But I just finished a book called demon copperhead, which I know has been going around a lot of different book clubs and things recently. It's a Pulitzer prize winner. It's fantastic. It's a very, a friend of mine described as intense book. So don't it's not a light read, but it is a, in my opinion, a very quick read because the author, Barbara King-Saulver gets really, you get really invested in her characters and in what's Going on. So I highly recommend that. And then I know PJ you're normally the one to do music recommendations, but I'm going to steal a little bit of that today. I've been a fan of pink for years. I just, I love her music. I love her athleticism and what she does with her concerts and the politics that she brings into her music as well. And her new album is good. It's a new ish, I should say. But I had a chance to go see her in concert in Sacramento and she continues to be on tour for the next few months in the US and then going around the world. If you have a chance to see her into her, I would highly recommend it. Lily, my dog apparently would too, because she just talked up with my lap. But it was just, it was such a cool experience. She has an amazing stage presence, a really personal way of interacting with the people who were there attending the show. One of my favorite moments from the show is someone tried to hand or something to sign. And she had basically a leotard on because she does all sorts of flying and acrobatic stuff throughout the performance. And she legit stopped and did the like, pat all of your pockets to make sure you don't have a pen as she's wearing a leotard. And wait, I'm sorry, I don't have a pen. And like handed the thing back to the person. But just the whole like, hang on, you stop to see, like clearly you don't. All of us know that you ([Time 0:36:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4c66f075-ebeb-4dfd-887a-00ce2d1dfa20)) - **Rebecca's Pink Concert Discovery** - Rebecca experienced seeing Pink live unexpectedly as an opening act and was blown away. - Pink's athleticism and stage presence made Rebecca an instant fan. Transcript: Speaker 4 I'm just saying, you know, I'll stick to books for now. I promise. Speaker 2 Well, that's the funny thing is I'm going to do a book too. Rebecca, what have you got? Speaker 1 First, I want to double down on what Mary said about pink being an incredible athlete. I one time, I was, this is a long time ago. Wow. This is like almost 20 years ago, but I got to go to a Justin Timberlake concert and pink happened to be opening for him. And I didn't really know much about really either of them, but. Pink came out and I was like, I'm accidentally seeing this woman named pink, but I would absolutely on purpose see this woman pink like she is. Incredible. Okay, so I would say I want to talk about a few books I love in terms of what we've been reading recently. I've been reading the color of law, which is a little. Yeah. It's, it's honestly, it's called the sub headline is a forgotten history of how our government segregated America specifically America related. It is a dense read. It is a tough read. It is a read that makes you very self reflective as it should be. It's extremely educational. And I think that it does is talk about how the difference between does your endofacto lawmaking and like how that either gives or does not give our courts in our justice system, the ability To say like, Oh, that that wasn't us. We didn't have any hand in that. We didn't know that that would be something that was created. Versus actually being able to read with like a fine tooth comb and what the laws say and how they're structured and what that actually does to all of us as Americans. And maybe a lighter read in terms of books is I will say, check out our playbooks if you're a dev rel builder. So that's what I did. It was a great job. I was really excited. I was really excited to have a video of it. I was really excited to have a video about it from common room. And we really do work hard to say, like we dog food or on product. How would a dev rel builder uses our customers using this and then how can we turn those into playbooks to do things like automate your GitHub triage process or meet your support SLAs. We will be hosting a, I'm calling it, or we're calling it a decompression brunch because it'll be on Thursday, November 30th. And all DevRel and developer community members are welcome. It's really that moment where, man, by the end of Thursday, especially having worked at AWS as a PMM, you're tired, you wanna see people, but you don't wanna have to be so on. And so, brunch is from 11 to 2. The invitation ([Time 0:39:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/26528d9f-72c7-422a-820b-b983390acfed))