DevRel v3.0: Return of the Developer Advocate

Reflections of a burnt out hero

It’s been more than a year since I published Developer Relations and the Hero’s Journey, and a lot has happened. At the time, I was about three months into what turned out to be a nearly year-long job search. In February 2024, I accepted an offer with Snowflake as developer content marketing manager for Streamlit. Between the commute to San Mateo three days a week, the constantly shifting leadership, and the sheer size of Snowflake, I found myself teetering on the edge of burnout.

Burnout is about more than just too much work and lack of recognition. I liked my work at Snowflake and I had received some of the best reviews of my professional life. For me, burnout is about feeling like I don’t have control and like my values are being compromised. I advocated for myself as best as I could but eventually landed at an impasse, and I decided to leave without anything else lined up. It was a choice between burnout and another job search.

Burnout is especially prevalent in the tech industry where the pressure to stay ahead of the hype cycle and ship at all costs can mean long hours, pivoting priorities, and little recognition. When it comes to planning, executing, and maintaining a successful, modern Developer Relations program, it’s important to create a developer experience that doesn’t contribute to the already demanding and chaotic workload of a developer.

A brief history of DevRel versions 1.0 and 2.0

The first “software evangelist” emerged in the 1980s when Apple released its Macintosh 128k and needed a way to inspire developers to build applications for the new technology. In order to understand where Developer Relations needs to go, it is important to understand where the practice has been.

DevRel v1.0: An Orwellian market blitz

In 1984, Apple’s interim marketing director, Mike Murray, enlisted the aid of Mike Boich and Guy Kawasaki to help displace IBM in the emerging personal computer market. Boich and Kawasaki were part of a greater marketing campaign that positioned Apple as the rebellious alternative to “Big Blue” (IBM). The campaign was complete with an Orwellian reference in a Ridley Scott-directed Super Bowl commercial slot that’s still considered one of the greatest advertisements of all time.

According to Kawasaki, “When I saw what a Macintosh could do, the clouds parted and the angels started singing.” This is the same sentiment he helped guide developers toward, propelling Apple into market domination and laying the foundation for Developer Relations.

DevRel v2.0: A rock star is born

DevRel 2.0 took a page from Apple’s book and expanded on it. Most notable is Twilio’s Developer Relations program – a team of “punk rock technologists having a barrel of monkeys on the Internet” led by Rob Spectre. With splashy demos and a developer-first approach, Twilio’s developer evangelists further refined the DevRel foundation established by Apple in the 80s.

With the slogan, “Ask your developer,” Twilio defined the three pillars of Developer Relations:

• Evangelism
• Education
• Community

Twilio recognized the importance of empowering the developers who would be working most intimately with the company’s product. While developers are usually not the ones cutting the checks, they are often the ones who influence whether or not an organization invests in a tool, product, or service. If the developer experience is particularly delightful and frictionless, these developer influencers then become champions of the product, espousing its virtues to their friends, peers, and colleagues – a testament more impactful than any marketing strategy. To this day, Twilio’s Developer Relations program is still referenced as a precedent in the field.

During the 2010s, DevRel enjoyed a rock star mystique. Traveling to and from conferences and live demoing code before large audiences was glamorous, and the most successful DevRel practitioners were intelligent, charismatic, and deeply empathetic. They are “engineers with people skills” – folks who can fluidly switch contexts between tech, socializing, marketing, and teaching. Their efforts were focused on generating brand awareness through in-person events and meeting developers where they were at, following up with hands-on tutorials and thorough documentation.

But a troubling question loomed on the horizon: How can the oftentimes intangible work of DevRel be quantified? This lack of clear metrics would prove to be disastrous in the face of a global pandemic.

DevRel v3.0: Return of the developer advocate

Into the abyss

As COVID-19 shut down the world in 2020, tech companies raced to hire to meet the demands remote work created. Moreover, favorable interest rates meant more capital. It was growth at any cost. In the subsequent tech layoffs starting in 2022, Developer Relations programs were often the first to pay the price.

When layoffs started hitting bigger tech companies like Meta and Twitter, DevRel found itself in what might be its first major recession since Apple executed their developer-first marketing blitz. Unable to prove their ROI the way sales or engineering teams could, DevRel programs were greatly reduced or completely eliminated. Opportunities were hard to come by, and the competition was stiff. Many DevRel practitioners chose to return to engineering, pivot to an adjacent role, or leave tech completely.

Receiving the boon

It was the kind of question of faith that catalyzes people, and the people in DevRel are nothing if not adaptable and resourceful. The community responded to the layoffs with self reflection and problem solving. The tech industry is still unsteady, but DevRel seems to be recovering, with more programs reporting hiring team members (27%) in 2024 than losing members (18.1%) due to layoffs. This time around there is a greater focus on metrics, developer experience, and standardization in order to find a way to concretely quantify success.

DevRel v.3.0: A proposal

Developers are my favorite people to work with. They respond best to authenticity, and I am my happiest when I get to be authentic. Working with developers has provided me the opportunity to meet people who have become some of my greatest colleagues, friends, and communities.

The developer’s developer is someone who is not only intelligent but is also propelled by an insatiable curiosity – someone who savors the wonder of being a beginner and therefore never loses compassion for the experience of being new.

DevRel v3.0 strives to put everything in place so developers can explore and satisfy their deep curiosity.

Goals

The primary goal of DevRel has been and will always be to drive brand awareness. Building and nurturing community is the next most important goal. Community is where users are celebrated and champions are created. Community enables developers to learn from one another and practice the art of teaching.

Metrics

According to the 11th Annual State of Developer Relations report for 2024, more DevRel programs have a way to measure success than in prior years, with the number of teams reporting that they don’t measure success down to 7.3% from 9% in 2023 and 14.1% in 2022.

This may indicate an answer to the metrics questions that have plagued DevRel. And those metrics include:

• Active users
• Content engagement
• Revenue influenced

Strategy

So given those goals and those metrics, a DevRel program strategy could include:

• Content marketing: “Content marketing remains the most effective tactic for outreach to new developers.” Content – which includes blog posts, videos, tutorials, documentation, and webinars – that is rich in information and clear in its presentation of that information is one of the best methods of satisfying the self-serve curiosity of developers. Remind them of the delight of coding and even offer them a guided rabbit hole or two. Make it easy to be a beginner. And with SEO/PPC dropping to 4.9% from 10% in 2023 for effective developer outreach, can we finally admit that it’s just not that effective for this particular audience?
• Community: If there is a forum, make sure there are moderators – answer questions, respond to feedback, and uplift others. If someone does something really cool with your product, showcase it. Empower users to pursue their curiosity by giving them the tools and resources they need to learn; make them excited to share what they know.
• Events: Both speaking at and hosting events brings developers together, giving them the space, time, and permission to be their authentic selves in community. Bonus points if your event prioritizes providing ways to accommodate all abilities and lifestyles (i.e., closed captioning, low sensory spaces, childcare, sober options).
• Education: Education is an extension of content marketing (because every piece of material created and accessed via a product site is an opportunity to generate favor or disdain) where the focus is more on onboarding, implementation, best practices, and additional resources. In other words, education content is what happens after awareness.

Curiosity: The next frontier of DevRel

When Apple hired its first software evangelist, the team’s goal was:

• How do we help developers become aware of our products?

From there, the goal evolved into:

• How do we help developers become aware of our products?
• How do we help developers be better at their jobs?

DevRel v3.0 adds:

• How do we help developers become aware of our products?
• How do we help developers be better at their jobs?
• How do we help developers satisfy their curiosity?

Everything is already hard – don’t make it harder

The tech layoffs in the past couple of years weren’t hard on just Developer Relations. For the first time since the last tech bubble, engineers lost their jobs. In the 2010s, engineering was (perhaps wrongly) revered as a recession-proof profession, and coding bootcamps banked on it, promising students that programming could change their lives. Company-sponsored apprenticeships enabled those from “non-traditional backgrounds” to break into tech.

Almost all of those apprenticeships disappeared after 2020, and recent CS graduates from top universities are struggling to find work in a job market that is fiercely competitive. With companies rescinding their “remote forever” promises, the threat of AI replacing jobs, and the pressure to ship faster and faster, it is an uncertain time to be a developer.

Developer Relations programs have a unique opportunity to provide developers with an experience that allows them to reunite with their sense of curiosity. There is a little bit of magic and wonder when you run some code for the first time and it works. There often isn’t room for that magic amidst the demands of Jira tickets and roadmaps. Developer Relations can be that space where a developer gets to remember the magic of curiosity and stave off burnout.

Here’s how you can help developers explore their curiosity:

• Center the developer, not your product
• Embrace the beginner’s mind – assume a blank slate and enable developers to choose their own adventure
• Don’t make developers work harder than they already do; help developers arrive at the magic of Hello World as quickly and as intuitively as possible
• Invest in developer communities by answering their questions, listening to their feedback, and celebrating their victories
• Make the developer experience delightful

And while you’re thinking about how to reduce the friction between your product and your developers, don’t forget to nurture your own curiosity. As “engineers with people skills,” Developer Relations is populated with individuals who are skilled at switching between seemingly disparate contexts. It is a role that requires intellectual flexibility, technical skill, clear communication, and intense empathy. It is a role that is easy to get burnt out on, so don’t forget to prioritize yourself as much as you prioritize your developers. You’ll ultimately serve your developers better when you are feeling your most empowered.

Additional resources

• The DevRel Foundation is “an open community of practitioners who aim to elevate the professional practice of developer relations” as well as to “increase awareness of it as a driver of business value.”
• The next Developer Relations Summit is December 3rd, 2024. Hosted by the Developer Marketing Alliance, the summit is free and online. Learn more and register here.
• Add the Developer Journey Map template to your DevRel toolbelt! Created by Tessa Kriesel, this template helps you define and refine DevRel strategies and priorities.