Less Dev, More Advocate

Let me begin this article by saying that this is purely my opinion and is gotten from my core marketing background and my experience and knowledge as a developer.

Enjoy as you read. 😁❤️

For the longest time now, I have wanted to be a dev advocate, or DevRel engineer/personnel.

This is a very valid dream, one that keeps me up at night [see what I did there? 😏]. This is still a dream as I am yet to actualize it, although I got a step close by getting work as a marketing executive at a fast-growing finTech company.

What I have been doing in the meantime though is following as many people as I can find that have “Developer advocate/Devrel/Dev evangelist” on their bio.

The aim is to look at these people long enough till I become one of them.

In my consistent checking of these people’s work, however, I have discovered something: most of these people are more dev, less advocate; or more dev, less rel.

It is crazy.

Coming from a marketing point of view, it is insane! No real work is being done for publicity or to get back returns, just a bunch of people writing supporting code and docs (no disrespect, please 😭 I love what you do).

Don’t get me wrong, these supporting codes and docs are necessary, but is that really the core of marketing?

In my opinion, DevRel or Dev advocating is at the intersection of developing (developers) and marketing,

but because companies go ahead to hire people who were/are mostly developers, they entirely miss out on the marketing aspect of it.

I understand why companies do this though. It is because these advocates or relationship managers are also expected to write a lot of docs, and some “background” code. This makes sense. Who best to write the docs than someone who developed(or at least contributed to the development of) the product?

(As an aside: some docs are so badly written, it is painful. This is because some of these advocates are, again, just developers without the knowledge of how to sell their products, or even explain what this product does).

I have talked enough through this article, and it is seeming like I am discrediting the work of these people that I so greatly admire.

Far from it. I love and respect every single DevRel or Dev Advocate I have come across, and believe that they do amazing and awesome work.

To conclude, my advice to companies hiring dev advocates or DevRel is to invest in a candidate that knows as much about development as they do about marketing. This way, you get the value of two in one. Also, consider someone who is able to reach people. It is important to not just consider people who create content (by writing or video), but people whose content is easily understood. The people with this hard-to-understand content are those who turn around to write hard-to-understand docs and keep driving your potential customers/users away.

Dear coys, the goal is to make a profit, and without a proper developer-marketing strategy, you cannot see the returns for all the investments you are making on your developers and your advocates.

That being said, I am Dumebi. I have 1.5 years of experience in Growth marketing, 1 year of experience in software development, and an almost crushing eagerness to learn and grow. I have experience in event management and organization and community building, and I am an excellent and detail-oriented writer.