Goodebye Forever Probably: Why I’m leaving developer relations

Goodebye Forever Probably: Why I’m leaving developer relations(whitep4nth3r.com)

12 points by sixhobbits 8 hours ago | 5 comments

zulux 6 hours ago |

Man, I’m out of touch.

I grew up when tech was us nerds making things.

Value was in building things and solving problems. Not in vague connection, curated vulnerability, or coordinating other coordinators.

the_real_cher 6 hours ago |

How come theres no x-relations in other jobs?

You never hear about Nurse Relations or Mechanic Relations.

gordonhart 6 hours ago | |

Tons of traditional companies have x-relations employees, they're just not titled as such. Attending trade shows, developing distributor relationships, constructing and distributing demo materials, building local/state/federal government support networks, driving the branded truck around town — all of these are very common in non-tech industries and are basically analogous to DevRel engineer responsibilities.

zerotolerance 6 hours ago | |

This is an excellent question and the answer is maybe not too surprising. Where mechanics buy their own tools and nurses have little tool purchasing power, developers produce machinery that is costly to change and if they struggle to use something (activation risk) then we can't get that lock-in to stick. DevRel isn't for the individuals, it is for influencing the aggregate so they get their companies stuck with the solution.

jeremywho 6 hours ago | |

I always thought of developer relations as essentially a tech-sales role. Isn't that ultimately what its trying to do, "educate" people to use your product?

hilariously 6 hours ago | | |

It depends but generally its a marketing focused role with an inherent sales pitch - helping you to solve problems with their software means you buy more of their thing and get their brand out there.

Seeing a lot of it collapse into "solution engineering" (tech focused sales) or "forward deployed engineers" which basically are all different versions of the same idea with less marketing focus.

coffeebeqn 3 hours ago | | |

This definitely exists in the medical sector but it’s in the sales org. Plus I’m sure they have people who come over to show how to operate the MRI machine you bought

stavros 6 hours ago |

  On birds, nature, and being carefree
  The good parts of DevRel
  The difficult parts of DevRel
    Arbitrary measures of success
    Fighting to be valued and justify my existence
    On being the face of a company
  AI is killing developer education
  What’s next for me

It took me quite a bit of time to realise this wasn't modern poetry, but the TOC.

mproud 7 hours ago |

Headline typo

On birds, nature, and being carefree The good parts of DevRel The difficult parts of DevRel Arbitrary measures of success Fighting to be valued and justify my existence On being the face of a company AI is killing developer education What’s next for me