New job title: Developer Advocate

I've had a lot of job titles in my career:

• Technical Writing Intern
• Queen of Documentation (It was 2000, OK?)
• Technical Writer I, II, III
• Technical Communicator
• Senior Technical Writer
• Technical Writing Consultant
• Documentation Architect
• Documentation Mercenary

You might notice a theme there. I've been a technical writer for a lot of different companies, because that's been my career, my expertise, and my passion. I want to take everything that's great about technology and make it easier to use, more transparent, more thoughtful, more humane.

Lately, I've been having trouble describing what I am doing in terms of writing alone. Two job interviews in a row, my interviewer stopped asking me questions about my qualifications so they could take notes on my ideas for their product. My conference talks are sort of nominally about writing, but actually about patterns I'm noticing in the world and in technology. I love writing, and I'm never going to give it up, but it's also…not quite a good fit anymore.

Through the power of All-Women-In-Tech-Are-Connected, I got an interview for a Developer Advocate position. I would never have applied for this position on my own – it's so far beyond what I think of as my skill set. But in the discussions and interviews, I really came to believe it was not just a company I could work for happily, and a product that I think is useful and not toxic, but a position that lets me get out there and do the kind of thinking and helping and problem-solving that I love.



Photo credit: Women of Color in Tech Chat

Developer Advocate is a super broad range of positions, actually, but our interpretation of it is basically me continuing to do all the things I'm doing now: conference speaking, blogging, listening, and noticing. It's just that now I'll be doing all that and getting paid for it, instead of using it as a loss leader for my consulting. I get to go out in the world, find out where developers and users need help, and figure out how to make it happen for them. We're seriously at "pinch me, I must be dreaming" levels of exciting here. I even get to keep writing a little, although I may have reached my personal career goal: not writing the release notes.

Yes, I'm being deliberately coy about my new employer. That deserves its own post. I'll just say that I think we're going to get along well, they say I get to continue to be a pink-haired weirdo, and I will feel proud of the product.

I honestly feel like changing my job title is like the day you get new shoes and you realize you'd outgrown the old ones without noticing.

Oh! This is so comfy.

This post was originally published on heidiwaterhouse.com