[rzazueta]

I work as a full time consultant helping companies build their developer experiences and put together solid developer-focused strategies while also helping them transform their infrastructure to support a platform-focused development approach.

It's extremely interesting work, and pays pretty well. But it's a very interdisciplinary role. I consult and engage in infrastructure architecture, API design, product strategy, product marketing, corporate strategy, sales, engineering... it depends on the project, the goals of the company, and their willingness to take this seriously.

I do a LOT of writing, very little of it ever gets published.

I transitioned more than a decade ago from engineering to a more business focused role, which then transformed into an advocate role. Ironically, I don't think full time devs make the best advocates - I find sales engineers and solutions architects are better suited for the role. They already have the experience in working directly with customers and reacting to their needs. They write demos and documentation for that audience already. And they have the technical chops to be able to cover a wide range of topics where most software devs are focused on their areas of interest. All they really need to do is work on their marketing skills (largely so they can better work with their marketing teams) and polish their communications to make them a bit more accessible beyond just the developer audience (dev advocates work with developers, yes, but also are critical to getting business buy-in).

If you want to become an advocate, but don't have the kind of background I'm talking about, I suggest you just start advocating for the things you love now on your personal sties. Research and post blog posts with your opinions about topics happening in the areas you;re interested in. Use your social media to share that information and start building a name for yourself. Build that portfolio, then use ti land a dev adv position somewhere - or hang out the shingle and go it on your own Guy Kawasaki style.

[random_kris]

What would be advice to a developer who at some point aspires to be on your level?

I have 5 years experience under me belt. I'm a good developer but maybe with worse presentable skills

[rzazueta]

Work on your communication abilities. As I said above, start a blog and start writing about the things you find interesting in tech. Write tutorials, commentary, introductions to new things, etc. within your topics of focus.

For public speaking, if you feel you need some training, find a local Toastmasters and join it for a while. If the first one you try isn't good, try another - different clubs operate differently and so suit different people. But Toastmasters is designed to fit around a work schedule, so I find it better than taking a class.

If you already feel like you have a handle on public speaking, join a local meetup and offer to speak - I have never met a Meetup that isn't scrambling for speakers and usually fills them in with corporate schills like me cough.

Build an audience. Start a newsletter and send them updates every time you publish something new (if you find yourself especially productive, limit your newsletters to once a week or twice a month). Submit your work to places like Hackernoon and here.

If you can't do this on your own, do it for your current employer - that's more or less what I did. Talk to your management team about your interests in developer advocacy and ask them what topics you can talk about. Your marketing team in particular will fawn over you if you do this. Developer advocacy is not ALL marketing, but it part of it is an arm of marketing, so working with them will get you far pretty quickly.

I;d say it takes about six months to build a following if you stick to it and a full year before you really get something resembling a handle on it all. Be patient, though, and stick with it if you enjoy it. If you don't enjoy it, don't push it - I love programming and still do a fair amount if it on the side, but it's not at all my full time job and not something I find I have a lot of mental space to afford proper focus to when I need it like I used to be able to. That may also just be aging, though.

I still think of it as the most fun job you can have in the industry.

[rzazueta]

I feel like I just gave the marketing side of the answer... completely forgetting the advocate side. Sorry.

On the advocate end, as a developer, you already know how your peers work, what frustrates them what delights them, etc. Expand your audiences and see what other developers using other languages in other organizations are doing and start to build your own thesis on what makes for a good developer experience - portals, documentation, outreach, code and API design, etc.

Read some technical books and blogs focused more on the design of the things you;re interested in rather than the usual nuts and bolts O'Reilly type stuff. Get a sense for what others are advocating for in your area of focus and determine whether you agree or not. More importantly, work on articulating why you agree or don't. Like, really dive into that stuff - that's where you'll find the kind of knowledge that will help you better build a strong thesis you can share with others as well and find solutions and opportunities to improve processes and tooling. Then, start advocating for that better way - experiment with things, talk to your peers and get their feedback, then collect it all and publish it.

I became passionate about APIs and API design a while back because I was managing an API program that, while solid, left a lot to be desired. I spent a lot of time researching APIs and API design - we're talking 2009 here - and there was just starting to be a wellspring forming around RESTful APIs. But one of the key challenges I saw was that no one really could explains what RESTful was - even the experts.

I set about transforming the SOAP API we were using into a RESTful design - not coded, mind you, just the design. Even though I wasn't on the engineering team, I brought my design to the VP of engineering and they wound up using it as they refactored the code.

This eventually led to a gig as a strategy consultant with an API management company where part of my job was to go on stage and share our research in order to build our credentials and sell our services. I took my interest in API design and turned it into a new service for us to offer our customers, then went on stage all over the place to introduce my methodology. I've basically been riding that wave ever since.

Cool story- a number of years later, I had a meeting in Lisbon with a major Portuguese company to help them define their digital strategy. As I was delivering my high level overview of API architecture and design, I saw this dude who was part of the engineering contingent furiously typing on his phone. I assumed I had lost him and figured, "Fine, I'll make sure he;s paying attention when I get to the tech stuff."

At some point, I brought up my API design methodology, and he suddenly blurted out something like, "THAT'S who you are!" He was trying to figure out why he knew me and had been Googling for the answer. Turns out, he and his team had been using my site to train themselves on API design and were rather devoted about it. That was nifty.