DevRel Weekly - Issue 173 - What really is empathy, anyway?

Welcome! 👋

hey DevRel Weekly family 👋 Hope you're all doing well.

I've been noticing more Twitter threads, personal stories, and tips about how to get started in DevRel, as well as blogposts or interviews about what the first year as a new DevRel professional is like. I love that the amount of information out there for young DevRel professionals is expanding -- it makes me so happy to see that there is content for all of you who are just starting out to make sure you don't feel alone.

I don't always feature these stories, preferring to stick to less personal story-telling and more practical resources you can put into motion at your work today, but if you're interested in hearing some of them, let me know! I could easily move some over into a collection for you to peruse.

Best,
Mary (@mary_grace)
DevRel Weekly Patreon

p.s. If you've ever felt like a multitasking ninja, this bag may be for you 😅 (If you know who designed it, I'd love to give them a shoutout!)

Tidbits 🕔

Do your members want to contribute?

You can build a successful community if you have members who want to contribute to something bigger than themselves.

-Rashmi Rana

Invest your time

The most valuable investment that you can provide to your community as a #cmgr or a #communitymember is time. Invest your time in getting introduced to new members of your community and helping them with the onboarding and how they can make the most of it.

Additionally, most #cmgr are nurturing their communities as voluntary efforts and spend resources from their own pockets to deliver the best experiences. If possible, do make monetary donations as these can serve as boosters and help plan better initiatives.

-Sangeeta Gupta

Start practicing DevRel tactics with what you already know

If you are into #devrel or want to get into it, then this is for you

DevRel /DevAdv is not about the position, but more like a practise.

You don't need organisation initially to start experiencing it

Start practising with the tech stack you are learning or you know already

-Vanshika Srivastava

Tap into your lived experience

Every human has experience in community.

Some of us experienced belonging. Others experienced exclusion. Some both.

Either way, that experience taught you important lessons about human connection.

If you're building a community, don't forget to tap into your lived experience.

-David Spinks

Tangibles 🤓

You’re Doing It Wrong — Recruiting a DevRel

If you're trying to hire your first DevRel professional, this article by Shai Almog and Wesley Faulkner will help you know what not to do. 😉

The Importance of Empathy

We talk often about how important empathy is in Developer Relations but do we actually know what it is, how to practice it, and how to interview for it? Rebecca Marshburn walks us through each of these questions and more in this recent blogpost.

Meet Developers Where They Are

I often say you have to meet your community members where they are instead of expecting them to come to you, so I love the code-based approach Joe Kutner took with this article. Just like we need to be engaging in the same online communities and consuming the same content, we need to meet them where they are with their code -- using programming languages, tools, and commands they're used to.

Storytime 📚

Dev Spotlight

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Storytime 📚

DevRel Podcasts and Videos

DevRel: What's Your Story? with Wesley Faulkner, SJ Morris, Jason Hand, and Mary Thengvall - Community Pulse Live!
How Dabbling in Careers Led to Community and DevRel with Caroline Kerns - We Belong Here
Why DevRel? with Ana Cidre - Auth0
Student to DevRel! How did Hackathons and Communities Help? with Aditya Oberai - Aviyel
Accessibility and Developer Experience with Kitty Giraudel - Developer Experience Podcast by Algolia
The Perfect 10: 100 Minutes with DevRel and Community Leaders - Common Room

Events 📆

DevRel Events

January seems to be the month for small groups gathering to share what they've learned about particular topics, which I love to see! Check out our up-to-date Event Collection to see what conversations you might want to take part in over the next few weeks.

Jobs 👩‍💻

Senior Developer Advocate

Are you interested in practical, open source ML tools? At deepset we're building Haystack - a Python framework for composable natural language processing (NLP). Our users have leveraged Haystack to build scalable, API-driven NLP backends for a wide range of common NLP services, such as semantic search, document ranking, question answering, summarization, and more. As a Senior Developer Advocate, you have to ensure product builders become successful with Haystack. Our biggest focus is to make the barrier of entry to NLP as low as possible through outstanding developer experience. We are a remote-first company backed by leading VC firms.

Developer Advocate

We are an open-source company and the pulse of ZenML's community is our driving force. As a Developer Advocate, you will help us fulfill our mission by connecting with other developers, contributing to open-source, and sharing your knowledge and experience about ZenML and other leading technologies at conferences and meetups, in contributed articles, and on blogs, podcasts, and social media. Your work will foster a community inspired by ZenML and will drive our strategy around developer love and our participation in the open-source ecosystem.

Head of Developer Community

At Ethyca, we believe that privacy is a human right. We recently launched the world's first open-source privacy devtools to help engineers build systems with respect - a Privacy-as-Code approach that was called "astonishing" by the International Association of Privacy Professionals. We're seeking an experienced builder to help grow our fledgling privacy engineering community. You'll have scope to help define the community strategy and test the content, channels, and activations that resonate with our developer audience.

Jobs 👩‍💻

Developer Relations Jobs

Are you feeling bogged down doing the same old work? Maybe you've outgrown your role there. Have you seen what we have just added to our Job Board? We might just have the perfect new role waiting for you!