DevRel Weekly - Issue 176

Welcome! 👋

Happy <insert day of the week here>, DevRel fam 😊 These last few weeks have been a bit chaotic for me, so I appreciate your patience with this week's issue of DevRel Weekly. I promise your patience will pay off!

We've got everything from how to handle your first month at a new job (what should your focus be on? what questions should you ask? how do you handle the chaos?) to how do you protect your team from internet trolls and how do you create a safe and inclusive space for your community? Let's dig in.

Best,
Mary (@mary_grace)
DevRel Weekly Patreon

p.s. If you're looking for more information about DevRel or know someone who's new to the industry but looking for a way to get started, I stumbled across this brand new resource from Sarah Lean this week. Disclaimer: I haven't read it yet, but it's on my list! If you pick up a copy, let me know what you think!

Tidbits 🕔

Your Needs Aren't (Necessarily) the Member's Needs

A reminder: don’t assume your own needs match your member needs.

Your role as a community leader is to figure out how your people like to gather / learn / build together.

-Mathilde Leo

Advocacy is an Attitude

Advocate isn't a title, it's an attitude.

You should be advocating for your customers every day, in every role - because what you improve for that one customer, you improve for everyone.

-Sonia Cuff

It's About the Audience, not the Numbers

Developer relations is about building real authentic relationships and connecting with a community, not the sheer size of your audience.

You should be asking yourself, are you talking to and connecting with the right audience?

-Sean Falconer

Assume Zero Knowledge -- Helpful or Harmful?

Whether you think docs should assume a minimum knowledge or not, this discussion that started as a result of Sarah Lean's tweet is a great one! Here's her original premise:

When you write documentation, assume the reader has zero knowledge. Don't assume they are at the same level as you.

Assuming someone knows something sets everyone up for failure!!

Tangibles 🤓

Community Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: The Actionable Guide

Whether you feel like you have a good handle on DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) in your community or not, this interview might be a useful resource for you to bookmark. Not only does Jephtah Abu take the time to define each of these terms, but he digs into actionable steps of how to improve your current community. Some of these takeaways are simple, but can have an incredible impact.

Harm Reduction for Developer Relations Teams

As a manager, one of my top priorities is making sure my team is enabled to do their best work. One piece in this equation is making sure they feel safe, whether they're speaking at a conference or engaging with various communities online. Knut Melvær recently detailed how he's approaching harm reduction for his team in this article.

CW: Online harassment, mental health, trauma

Your first 30 days in a new DevRel role

Every company has a different version of what onboarding looks like, but what do you do after your basic company onboarding is complete? How do you get up and running with all of the new tools, learn who all of the proper stakeholders are, and get a handle on what the best plan of action might be? Not to worry. Tessa Kriesel has a plan for you!

Storytime 📚

Dev Spotlight

The best at creating technical content for developers and IT leaders. Trusted by Twilio, Salesforce, MongoDB, SolarWinds, and more. Schedule a call now.

Storytime 📚

DevRel Podcasts and Videos

Starting from Scratch, Engagement, Overcoming Anxiety, and More - Q&A with Jono Bacon - Connectors Tribe (video)
Developer Relations and the No-code Space with Max Katz - Scaling Developer Success
Why Does The Business Care? with Michael Heap - Polyglot
The Road To Becoming a DevRel with Alex Jover - Views on Vue
Growing and Scaling Open Source Communities with Anita Ihuman - Scaling Developer Success
Organizing meetups to landing developer advocacy role with Rob Axelsen and Anil Kumar Krishnashetty (video)
Improving Developer Experience with Sarah Wells - Engineering Culture

Events 📆

DevRel Events

Whether you are in Developer Relations or in Community Building and Management, we have a bunch of events coming up posted in our Event Collection. You should come check it out!

Jobs 👩‍💻

Developer Advocate

TileDB is looking for it’s first Developer Advocate! Spun out of MIT and Intel Labs in 2017, built by a world class team and backed by high-profile investors the company is rapidly growing. We are pioneering the industry’s “universal database,” a database that goes beyond tables and SQL to handle and analyze any data format, file, model or dashboard with any tool at global scale and which delivers unprecedented ease for data sharing, collaboration and monetization. Bold? Yes. Reality? Absolutely.

Developer Advocate

So many DevRel jobs out there. Why Retool?

Existing strategy and reasonable expectations: craft your charter to do what you do best, show results, and stay sane

A respectful, collaborative, and highly functional team, including community, docs, DevEx folks

A product revered by developers and a highly engaged community: harnessing the love is basically low hanging fruit

Let's talk!

Senior Developer Advocate

At FusionAuth, we help developers secure their users' data and build applications faster by providing a secure, flexible, API-first, dev-friendly authentication and authorization server. We are bootstrapped, profitable, and seeking Developer Advocates to promote FusionAuth’s solution through education as well as to participate in our growing developer community. Your work will educate the world about auth (often a confusing and frustrating topic), extend our reach, and make devs' lives easier.

Jobs 👩‍💻

DevRel Jobs

Have you been wondering how to advance in your career? Maybe you're just starting out on your DevRel Journey. Either way, you have come to the right spot. Our extensive Jobs Collection is packed full of new opportunities.