# Getting your first job in DevRel  ## Episode metadata - Episode title: Getting your first job in DevRel - Show: DevRel Roundtable - Owner / Host: DeveloperRelations.com - Episode publish date: 2023-02-21 - Duration: 01:08:26 - Episode URL: [Open in Snipd](https://share.snipd.com/episode/387521cc-3366-4563-8ece-af38b862e354) - Show URL: [Open in Snipd](https://share.snipd.com/show/99654468-565c-4529-8a33-1ca184de8b69) - Export date: 2026-02-17T23:24:34 ## Snips ### [Developer Relations in a Developer-First World](https://share.snipd.com/snip/23313f09-eff8-4160-a08a-8e76311d712b) 🎧 40:24 - 43:34 (03:10) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/a1ea2a5b-31c9-46dd-b5e6-1031cf8ea29a" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> 1. Marketing should be dev rel relations or developer experience at smaller companies, as this is what is most effective at top of funnel awareness acquisition. 2. Sales should not be involved in dev rel relations, as they have a different mindset and are not interested in education. #### 📚 Transcript 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 driven to achieve a certain level within an organization I'd like at some point to be on a C suite sort of thing. At Vonage, I was kind of at that, but it was a very kind of split org. Anyway, so I'm at C company now and I'm on the, I mean, there's not a board of directors because we're so small. So, but I'm, you know, one of the senior people on the team and effectively are in marketing. So developer experience within developer experience is marketing. I mean, dev rel team, the dev rel experience, what do you want to call it is marketing. And I think that works at smaller organizations who are entirely developer focused. So, you know, in this book, it talks about developer first or developer plus developer first being the end user is a developer. So, I think actually marketing being dev rel relations or developer experience at these smaller companies makes a lot of sense. So the real, I mean, the relationship is it is that function that 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 the not always not always software engineers. Then, I mean, ultimately, you know, it's that age old conversation where will dev rel sit and I think again if the goals of what your dev rel team is doing is kind of top of the funnel awareness acquisition. Then the dev rel team should sit within marketing and work with marketing and work. I think the best way for it to work the best way I've seen 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 dev rel team and 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. The best way for for marketing dev all together is to if their goals are aligned to be the same function. Sales. I haven't I'll be completely honest, I haven't seen dev rel and sales work together very well at all anywhere. 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 the primary focus. We've seen the emails. Someone signs up for a new platform. If it comes from a sales team is persistent there's 10 of them. The wording is different if it comes from people with more of a development. It's mindset. It's about education. It's about asking questions and saying 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. I don't have a great answer to the sales alignment, although I believe sales 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. --- ### [Developer Relations in a Developer-First World](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5292cf55-1717-4fa4-8643-3777504f8c05) [[devrel]], [[wpcc]] 🎧 40:24 - 43:34 (03:10) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/3b3391e6-b934-461e-990a-7c0383ffe6b1" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> 1. Marketing should be dev rel relations or developer experience at smaller companies, as this is what is most effective at top of funnel awareness acquisition. 2. Sales should not be involved in dev rel relations, as they have a different mindset and are not interested in education. #### 📚 Transcript 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 driven to achieve a certain level within an organization I'd like at some point to be on a C suite sort of thing. At Vonage, I was kind of at that, but it was a very kind of split org. Anyway, so I'm at C company now and I'm on the, I mean, there's not a board of directors because we're so small. So, but I'm, you know, one of the senior people on the team and effectively are in marketing. So developer experience within developer experience is marketing. I mean, dev rel team, the dev rel experience, what do you want to call it is marketing. And I think that works at smaller organizations who are entirely developer focused. So, you know, in this book, it talks about developer first or developer plus developer first being the end user is a developer. So, I think actually marketing being dev rel relations or developer experience at these smaller companies makes a lot of sense. So the real, I mean, the relationship is it is that function that 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 the not always not always software engineers. Then, I mean, ultimately, you know, it's that age old conversation where will dev rel sit and I think again if the goals of what your dev rel team is doing is kind of top of the funnel awareness acquisition. Then the dev rel team should sit within marketing and work with marketing and work. I think the best way for it to work the best way I've seen 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 dev rel team and 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. The best way for for marketing dev all together is to if their goals are aligned to be the same function. Sales. I haven't I'll be completely honest, I haven't seen dev rel and sales work together very well at all anywhere. 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 the primary focus. We've seen the emails. Someone signs up for a new platform. If it comes from a sales team is persistent there's 10 of them. The wording is different if it comes from people with more of a development. It's mindset. It's about education. It's about asking questions and saying 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. I don't have a great answer to the sales alignment, although I believe sales 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. --- ### [How to Succeed as a Dev Reluctant Salesperson](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6707e5c5-1376-49cc-9b48-61a333f07b8f) [[devrel]], [[sales]] 🎧 44:16 - 45:11 (00:55) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/819616c0-dbc7-475d-a672-35c73c1d8e16" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> 1. DevRel should include sales, as it is an important intersection of the team. 2. Storytelling is key to creating connections with customers and employees, and companies like 3M do it well. #### 📚 Transcript And should Dev rel, the rally 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. And I see Becca nodding. So Becca, do you want to take it? I don't know that I don't have an answer for sure, but I will say that this has been a question that's been on my mind a lot lately. 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 that most famous for post it notes. --- ### [How to work with sales without alienating your developers](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3fd245ae-41d4-43d1-9337-2c581e7e31f9) [[devrel]] 🎧 46:45 - 50:04 (03:19) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/669980f0-8c82-4a02-b2d5-afab9137a146" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> 1. Sales should not be selling to the developer relations group, as this will only anger them. 2. Sales should partner with the team, and send them information and leads to help them learn and adopt faster. #### 📚 Transcript Well I'm glad I'm last I could talk about this for pretty much the whole duration of college like this is a conversation I have all the time. And it is and they're both the they're both right the storytelling is huge and so 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 officer as well. I'm seating the market for the next generation of X users right and so, and for sales 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 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 it can get you in well get me in trouble particularly in an in an OSS environment like working with sales will get you in so much trouble. But ideally you do want to work with sales I mean sales sales sales you don't want them selling at your meetups you don't want them adding sales slides to your presentation you don't want them getting into your business and crossing that line you have like a like 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 in marketing is part of the job. It's that simple and so your goals. I have a leadership philosophy. Slightly off track but leaders should very, very simply create and share a vision that the team grasp send adheres to and follows. And then creates goals that that the team understands and are very easily achievable so 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 and product whatever the case is your goals ladder up throughout the organization so that you don't have to have these conversations very often. When 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 for 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 coupon or an event or somewhere where 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 that'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 that'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 around send them to our slack send them to our content. We have a lot of places we have a whole series on getting started you want to use your 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 miss everybody up but you still have to partner in the question actually you know what are the specific activities you've talked about booth duty but you've. --- Created with [Snipd](https://www.snipd.com) | Highlight & Take Notes from Podcasts