The Art of Landing a DevRel Role
Plus, finding out if you’re supported or resented, the state of APIs, your opportunity to make DORA better, what metrics your colleagues in product are thinking about, and why Twitter can’t innovate.
In this week's episode of Dev Interrupted, we’re focusing on the increasingly valuable role of DevRels. Francesco Ciulla, Developer Advocate at the open-source daily.dev community - which has more than 100,000 daily active users - joins us for a DevRel deep dive
Listen as Francesco explains how a career change in his thirties set him on a path towards becoming a developer, being hired by the European Space Agency and, eventually, landing a role as a developer advocate, crediting much of his success on his ability to leverage social media to advance his career.
Outside of his personal story, Francesco shares updates on what’s happening at daily.dev, his thoughts on how to connect with devs, why YouTube is such a powerful platform for software engineers and settles the debate on the kind of content developers are most interested in.
“It's better to be Batman on one social media than Mr.Nobody on all the platforms. So having one strong platform, I think is the key.”
Episode Highlights:
(3:05) Francesco's career change to programming
(10:15) How to leverage social media as a dev
(16:10) Best ways to connect with devs as a DevRel
(22:28) Challenges of being a DevRel
(25:42) What platforms should DevRels be using?
(30:07) Community building on YouTube
(33:12) Technical vs non-technical content
The Download
The Download is engineering leadership content we’re reading, watching, and attending that we think you might find valuable.
1. Understanding whether you’re supported, tolerated, or resented
Engineering leaders are put in the most awkward position of any role in modern companies. Your dual mandate of achieving operational excellence while also strategizing how the engineering org impacts the business is rarely understood by anyone who doesn’t actually hold the position of VP of engineering.
Will Larson’s thoughts and work on bridging the dual mandate is consistently empowering, especially in the case of understanding what happens when new executives are brought in.
Read: Balancing your CEO, peers, and Engineering
2. The State of APIs Report
If you’re wondering why Reddit was adamant about charging for their API, it’s because they’ve been leaving money on the table as LLMs and other third parties leverage their data. In the latest State of API Report by Postman, 43% of companies said they are generating over a quarter of their revenue with their API. This is just one of the illuminating nuggets in the State of APIs Report.
Read: The State of APIs Report
This Week’s Download is sponsored by “What Metrics Make Engineering Teams Elite: A Free Look Inside The Top 10% Of Engineering Orgs”
LinearB analyzed over 2,000 dev teams to create an exclusive report tracking what engineering metrics make teams elite. The report goes into detail on:
How elite engineering teams measure their performance beyond DORA metrics.
What makes engineering teams elite in terms of the development lifecycle, developer workflow, and business alignment?
Explore how your team stacks up in terms of metrics like cycle time, deployment frequency, and planning accuracy.
Learn what tools elite software teams use to hit these industry-leading benchmarks.
3. Join the 2023 State of DevOps Report!
LinearB has partnered with DORA and Google Cloud to bring you the most rigorous, academic DevOps research - and we need YOUR help!
The survey takes just 15 minutes. It tells researchers how you develop and deliver software, all to help us collectively understand how to make the software world better for everyone in the DI community and beyond!
4. Why Twitter stopped innovating
If you had to guess the root cause of a company’s innovation rut, you probably wouldn’t say the company had too many ideas. Pablo Jablonski - former senior engineering manager at Twitter engineer and current VP of engineering at United Masters - makes the strong case that it’s an oversaturation of ideas turning Elon Musk’s acquisition into an albatross around his neck.
Thanks for reading this week’s edition!