I'm not a developer advocate, but I've looked into becoming one and have talked to a few friends who fall under that title. From what I understand, it is a really different job depending on the company. At some companies, it can be, essentially, a sales role where you are selling software from a developer's perspective. At other places, it's more of a speaking/blogging/communicating about code job. You normally write demo apps to show off tech and then demo them around at conferences/meetups and online.
This is a really good response. I have been a developer advocate for about a year now. I like to think that almost 20 years of development as a freelancer and software engineer for a few larger companies more recently, that all of this knowledge of how to build web apps, use JavaScript, HTML, CSS, how to work with others and deploy code as well as how to teach others to code are the pre-requisites for my job as a React developer advocate. I mostly write demos using the React components that my company makes and also provide general industry and programming related education to those as well as find a way to support initiatives and goals my team (KendoReact) wishes to achieve. I am also a liazon between the React community, our customers that are React developers and the engineering or marketing teams. I relay info back to our teams as well as blog, speak and attend conferences, write documentation, contribute to open source, and pull my own resources as a designer and developer together to create different types of content for our readers, customers and basically anyone who will listen to me talk! lol
Yes, must have Soft Skills, there is a book on it lol. Really by John Sonmez, you should read it. :)
That's just me, I will say that each dev advocate usually has a unique job tailored to the type of technology they are advocating for. As someone who works with React, the skills I need are web. If I were a dev advocate for let's pick a random company ... "Niantic" ... I may need to understand things like Pokemon Go, the programming language that it and the other games they develop are built with like C#, I will need to have a good understanding of developing native applications and then as well be able to write well and teach skills involved with that area of technology.
Typically advocates keep documentation up to date, keep contact with the community, do demos and blog about the product, pass feedback on questions, and basically help facilitate a good developer experience with the company. It's a semi-technical role with high soft skills requirements.
You can think of them as public relation persons representing some software or dev methodology (SaFE agile comes to mind). You can see a lot of them giving speeches at conferences.
Well, not exactly 😄Dev advocates are more of salesman persons than developers, at least I got that impression. I don't have a good example, but what came up to my mind at first is Peggy Rayzis from the Apollo graphql, if I understood correctly her main job is to go from conference to conference and talk about Apollo. She does have some knowledge about programming, but she doesn't actively contribute to Apollo development. Correct me if I'm wrong.
I guess this really is one of those roles where you can't pin and say this is what they do. It really does differ from company to company and person to person. I wonder how they measure their growth.
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It's always seemed to me that a developer advocate is a new-ish title that has the same spectrum of meaning that "software engineer" does in that it can and usually does mean different things depending on where you work. It also can go by different names. To some, it's software engineer, others is software developer, or programmer. Dev advocates can be called engineering advocates or technical relation specialist and the like. From what I've gathered, they are kind of the externally facing version of a scrum master. Where a scrum master runs deflection for the developers and serves as the middle man between whiny executives, sales people, or other developer teams, a developer advocates seem to do the same thing, but with the customers, clients, and partners outside the company that have a vested interest in the product being done right. Not sure if this is accurate, but that's what it seems anyway.
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I'm not a developer advocate, but I've looked into becoming one and have talked to a few friends who fall under that title. From what I understand, it is a really different job depending on the company. At some companies, it can be, essentially, a sales role where you are selling software from a developer's perspective. At other places, it's more of a speaking/blogging/communicating about code job. You normally write demo apps to show off tech and then demo them around at conferences/meetups and online.
This is a really good response. I have been a developer advocate for about a year now. I like to think that almost 20 years of development as a freelancer and software engineer for a few larger companies more recently, that all of this knowledge of how to build web apps, use JavaScript, HTML, CSS, how to work with others and deploy code as well as how to teach others to code are the pre-requisites for my job as a React developer advocate. I mostly write demos using the React components that my company makes and also provide general industry and programming related education to those as well as find a way to support initiatives and goals my team (KendoReact) wishes to achieve. I am also a liazon between the React community, our customers that are React developers and the engineering or marketing teams. I relay info back to our teams as well as blog, speak and attend conferences, write documentation, contribute to open source, and pull my own resources as a designer and developer together to create different types of content for our readers, customers and basically anyone who will listen to me talk! lol
Yes, must have Soft Skills, there is a book on it lol. Really by John Sonmez, you should read it. :)
That's just me, I will say that each dev advocate usually has a unique job tailored to the type of technology they are advocating for. As someone who works with React, the skills I need are web. If I were a dev advocate for let's pick a random company ... "Niantic" ... I may need to understand things like Pokemon Go, the programming language that it and the other games they develop are built with like C#, I will need to have a good understanding of developing native applications and then as well be able to write well and teach skills involved with that area of technology.
Thanks for sharing Eric. I'm going to read that book (Soft Skills).
So it is really more of an umbrella term for a wide range of roles. Would saying
"Product Evangelist who knows the ins and outs of the how the product is built and works"
be more of a generic description?
Typically advocates keep documentation up to date, keep contact with the community, do demos and blog about the product, pass feedback on questions, and basically help facilitate a good developer experience with the company. It's a semi-technical role with high soft skills requirements.
You can think of them as public relation persons representing some software or dev methodology (SaFE agile comes to mind). You can see a lot of them giving speeches at conferences.
Source: medium.com/@ashleymcnamara/what-is...
This clarifies a lot of things. One person that immediately came to my mind after reading this desription is Dan Abramov from the React team.
Well, not exactly 😄Dev advocates are more of salesman persons than developers, at least I got that impression. I don't have a good example, but what came up to my mind at first is Peggy Rayzis from the Apollo graphql, if I understood correctly her main job is to go from conference to conference and talk about Apollo. She does have some knowledge about programming, but she doesn't actively contribute to Apollo development. Correct me if I'm wrong.
I guess this really is one of those roles where you can't pin and say this is what they do. It really does differ from company to company and person to person. I wonder how they measure their growth.
It's always seemed to me that a developer advocate is a new-ish title that has the same spectrum of meaning that "software engineer" does in that it can and usually does mean different things depending on where you work. It also can go by different names. To some, it's software engineer, others is software developer, or programmer. Dev advocates can be called engineering advocates or technical relation specialist and the like. From what I've gathered, they are kind of the externally facing version of a scrum master. Where a scrum master runs deflection for the developers and serves as the middle man between whiny executives, sales people, or other developer teams, a developer advocates seem to do the same thing, but with the customers, clients, and partners outside the company that have a vested interest in the product being done right. Not sure if this is accurate, but that's what it seems anyway.