Original: https://codingcat.dev/podcast/1-21-becoming-a-developer-advocate
▶ Watch on YouTube & Subscribe to CodingCat.dev
Questions
- How did you make the decision to move from a very top level director position into a Developer Advocate role?
- What does a Developer Advocate do day to day?
- How has COVID impacted DevlRel
- How would you describe a DevRel Team?
- Developer Evangelist
- Developer Advocate
- Developer Experience
- Developer Marketing
- How do you build up a DevRel Team, what are the KPI's that would say it is actually working?
Links
Technical Overview: Becoming a Developer Advocate
1.21 - Becoming A Developer Advocate: https://codingcat.dev/podcast/1-21-becoming-a-developer-advocate 00:00 - Intro
00:10 - Meet Tim Benniks
02:00 - Tim's Role transition
09:00 - Expectations
13:50 - Day to Day changes
15:45 - Agency vs. Consulting
16:45 - Building Dev Advocacy at Uniform.dev
19:15 - How to gauge a successful Dev Advo
When applying the concepts from Becoming a Developer Advocate in a production codebase, teams working with Career should align their implementation with the roadmap.sh Developer Career Paths (Structured engineering skill trees, system design, and career progression). Structuring your workflow around repeatable patterns, automated verification, and clear separation of concerns helps prevent regressions as your application scales.
Key Engineering Takeaways
- **Core Topic Focus: **Practical strategies for Career covered in "Becoming a Developer Advocate" (Learn from Tim Benniks about how he changed from being a director of Web Development into his new role as a Developer advocate).
- **Production Implementation: **Combine the architectural patterns demonstrated in this podcast with the official roadmap.sh Developer Career Paths for type safety, performance, and long-term maintainability.
- **Hands-On Video Walkthrough: **Follow along with the live coding demos and discussion on YouTube (Becoming a Developer Advocate) and subscribe to CodingCat.dev on YouTube for weekly deep dives.
Video Chapters & Timestamps
Jump directly to any segment of Becoming a Developer Advocate on YouTube using the timestamped chapters below:
- 00:00: Intro
- 00:00: Meet Tim Benniks
- 00:00: Tim's Role transition
- 00:00: Expectations
- 00:00: Day to Day changes
- 00:00: Agency vs. Consulting
- 00:00: Building Dev Advocacy at Uniform.dev
- 00:00: How to gauge a successful Dev Advocacy
- 00:00: What is Uniform.dev
- 00:00: How to build a dev community
- 00:00: Gaining business because of Advocacy
- 00:00: Skills of a dev Advocate
- 00:00: Purrfect Picks
- 00:00: Mac Mini M1
- 00:00: No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention
- 00:00: What the heck is a Developer Advocate (freecodecamp)
- 00:00: Jason IPSUM
- 00:00: Developermode.com
- 00:00: Keyvalues.com - What exactly do developers do?
- 00:00: Wrap Up
Resources, Links & Official Documentation
- *Watch on YouTube: *Becoming a Developer Advocate Full Video (plus Subscribe to CodingCat.dev)
- *Show Pick: *Earning Developer Love (picked by Alex Patterson)
- *Show Pick: *What exactly do developer advocates do? (picked by Alex Patterson)
- *Show Pick: *What the heck is a Developer Advocate? (picked by Brittney Postma)
- *Show Pick: *Jason Ipsum (picked by Brittney Postma)
- *Show Pick: *No rules rules culture about Netflix (picked by Tim Benniks)
- Tim Benniks Guest Profile & Episodes on CodingCat.dev
- Tim Benniks on GitHub
- Tim Benniks Official Website
- roadmap.sh Developer Career Paths: Structured engineering skill trees, system design, and career progression
Related CodingCat.dev Tutorials & Podcast Episodes
- What's A Firebase Developer Advocate: Discover the latest from Google IO and Firebase with insights from a DevRel engineer. Watch now for developer tips and community highlights to boost your projec...
- Storyblok and achieving better Accessibility from Developer Experience: All about Storyblok and how achieving better A11y can be done through developer experience.
- Fostering Developer Education: We sit down with Lauren Lee (LoLoCoding) to talk about fostering developer education. We review how Lauren switched from being a teacher to become the Director ...
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
What are the main takeaways from Becoming a Developer Advocate?
Learn from Tim Benniks about how he changed from being a director of Web Development into his new role as a Developer advocate. 1.21 - Becoming A Developer Advocate: https://codingcat.dev/podcast/1-21-becoming-a-developer-advocate 00:00 - Intro
00:10 - Meet Tim Benniks
02:00 - Tim's Role transition
09:00 - Expectations
13:50 - Day to Day changes
15:45 - Agency vs. Consulting
16:45 - Building Dev Advocacy at Uniform.dev
19:15 - How to gauge a successful Dev Advo Throughout this podcast, Tim Benniks breaks down real-world implementation details for Career so developers can apply these patterns directly in production.
How do you implement Career best practices in production?
When adopting Career in a production stack, start by validating your configuration against the roadmap.sh Developer Career Paths (Structured engineering skill trees, system design, and career progression). Focus on incremental adoption, automated testing, and observability so your team can measure performance and developer velocity improvements at each stage.
Where can I watch the full Becoming a Developer Advocate walkthrough and find related code resources?
You can watch the complete video session for Becoming a Developer Advocate on the CodingCat.dev YouTube channel. For a deeper dive into Career, check out our related guide: What's A Firebase Developer Advocate.
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