I recently attended a meeting with Developer Advocate, Tejas Kumar, for his advice on what it takes to be a good and effective developer advocate. The following are some important points that I received from the talk.
Education is the main focus 🧠
The primary focus of a developer advocate is making sure that developers get the proper education when it comes to using the product(s) that our company is providing. For example, being a community manager of my server, I make sure to always promote videos and resources that may be useful for my members to help educate them on new technologies or concepts that they might not have come across yet. Or hosting a live webinar on a new feature for the product so that new information can be rallied to development teams to make their work more efficient.
Don't maintain a personal brand ⛔
As a developer advocate, you want to make sure that you are not solely looking after the interest of your personal brand. Before DevRel became a thing, tech conferences were simply tech enthusiasts that came together and shared the cool projects that they came up with. I think it can get easy to think now with so many big yearly conferences that people are coming to just see you and that you have to strive to be the next BIG TECH STAR! I want to challenge you to not lose sight of what DevRel is all about, which takes us to the next point.
Build High-quality relationships🤝🏽
The root of developer relations is the word relationship. The main goal is to network and build high-quality relationships with others. What this does not look like is using people for your personal benefit, or pretending to be nice to others and using them as a stepping stone to the next promotion or job.
Here are some good trademarks of a developer advocate:
1. Are investing in people
Good developer advocates love to invest in the people that they are in a community with. They seek the best interest not just for themselves but more for the people around them in making sure that they are benefiting as much as possible from the product or service their company is providing. They are ready to teach developers who are facing issues with software and help redirect them on the right path to success.
2. DevRels always communicate 🗣️
Another great mark of a good DevRel is their ability to communicate. A tip to check on whether a Developer Advocate is a real one or not is to go to their GitHub page (if they have one), choose a repo, and look at their ReadMe file. No seriously, go check! This is because true DevRels always put thought into their communication, always! Do they have a regular default ReadMe or did they write down what they learned from the project? DevRels should always create content with their audience in mind in whether they would understand what is going on.
3. Have fun! 😄
If you do want to pursue becoming a developer advocate, I think it's important to do as much research on the role to see if this would be a role that you can see yourself enjoying. Not to say that DevRel is at all easy, it is a lot of work. Instead, ask yourself whether you enjoy fun networking with people and building relationships. Do you enjoy public speaking and teaching people the coolest and newest product? And are you great at communicating? If you can answer the majority of these questions with a "Yes" then perhaps DevRel is for you!
Till next time Advocates! 🥑
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