I'll have a go!
DevRel is developer relations. The job involves communicating with and supporting developers.
DevRel happens at companies whose customers and/or users include developers (think Twilio, GitHub, Stripe).
It's an umbrella term and means different things to different companies.
But some examples of things they do are: giving technical talks, writing documentation & tutorials, organising developer events, recording video tutorials. It might also include things like improving the onboarding experience.
The role exists because developers working on the codebase are busy and tend not to want to spend a lot of time doing external facing work and marketing teams usually don't have the technical knowledge required.
It's been around since the 1980s in some form but has been growing steadily in the last 10 years or so.
Aside from giving talks and maybe event organization, the rest of those functions (docs, tutorials) already have roles.
The more naked truth is here:
> marketing teams usually don't have the technical knowledge required
DevRel is marketing that targets developers. They do all the things marketers do: drive adoption, control perception, pressure product teams in customer orgs, and drive product-market fit.
Just like marketers try to build champions in C-suites and pursestring-holders for sales to use to land and expand, devrel builds champions on dev teams in orgs where devs have more control or influence over budgets.
> Which roles have you seen docs & tutorials typically fall under?
Technical writers write docs for existing users, and in larger (200-300 employee) orgs also training/education writers create tutorials and develop curricula for new and onboarding users, and content marketing writers write tutorials to demonstrate features.
These roles free up devrel to focus on community outreach/engagement, marketing content, and direct leadgen.
> DevRel often make significant contributions in areas that fall outside of marketing too (especially product)
Hopefully, so does everyone in an org capable of doing so, including the roles I mentioned above.
I don't mean to sound down on devrel, but to claim the role's focus and primary mission isn't developer-targeted marketing is rather disingenuous. It's a marketing role, usually reporting to a marketing manager, producing marketing content, with the goal of generating leads that sales can turn into revenue. That the work looks more like running or attending hackathons or giving technical talks at developer-focused events doesn't change the goals or measured outcomes.
Interesting point, I should have made the distinction on company size. Most of my knowledge comes from speaking to early stage DevRel.
I hope I'm not being disingenuous. I'm not disputing that the bottom line always comes down to growth metrics similar to marketing. My goal is to build my own DevTool so my motive is to figure out how all this stuff works.
I'll give you an example. I spoke with Brandon West who was the first DevRel at SendGrid and he said "If you're considering a DevRel job thinking about what size of company you want to join & whether you want to be on marketing, engineering, product side - because DevRel can work on all of those departments. If you want to have your hands on product, then a startup will work better than something with big efficient machinery and you're there to be the spokesperson" https://podcast.bitreach.io/episodes/the-early-stages-of-dev... from 3m5s. Throughout the whole episode the feeling I get is that everything was messy and Brandon was doing everything that needed to be done. He's like a hybrid of engineer and marketer.
You made a good point though and Brandon supports your point too - it seems to be a lot more delineated and specialised beyond the startup stage.
> That the work looks more like running or attending hackathons or giving technical talks at developer-focused events doesn't change the goals or measured outcomes.
Great point! You're right the measured goals are similar in marketing and DevRel. I guess that's the question. Is the activity of the role or the objective the defining characteristic of the role?
>It might also include things like improving the onboarding experience.
lol, maybe accidentally brutally honesty and ordering in that list of roles. Maybe I was the idiot for ever thinking the huge, lavishly lavishly paid DevRel team at Azure would result in the platform being less of a nightmare for users.
I used to know his name, but i doubt he stayed either. The problem with Azure and DevRel is because of teams being driven bottom-up.
Oh and they repeatedly drive away the few ppl who care enough to have a comprehensive view of the OSS/real world and internal systems. Gaslighting and behind-your-back conversations is what you can expect even if youre a mild-mannered shy quiet boy that just happens to have a fucking clue about where GCP and AWS still mop the floor.