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Episode 71: Developer Advocacy from Nuxt to React with Debbie O’Brien

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The role of developer advocate is a fairly new one and can therefore be difficult to define as it continues to evolve. In today’s episode, Alex, Tessa, and Ari get together with Debbie O’Brien, Head Developer Advocate at Bit, to discuss how she transitioned from being a developer to team leader to working as a developer advocate and she unpacks the elements that drew her to the role. Debbie shares her passionate take on KPIs as well as the lessons she learned from the book Surrounded by Idiots. We delve into the traits that make up a good developer advocate and discuss why there’s a need for companies to introduce the role of junior developer advocate. Later Debbie shares some of the learning challenges you’ll experience as a developer advocate and how she adapted to learning React under high-pressure circumstances. We end the show by hearing everybody’s picks, ranging from AI software and counterintuitive fruit gums to the world’s most expensive headphones. For all this and more, join us today! 

Key Points From This Episode:

  • Introducing today’s guest Debbie O'Brien.
  • What it means to be a developer advocate and how the role has evolved.
  • Why KPI analytics aren’t always useful.
  • Debbie shares what drew her to developer advocacy.
  • How Debbie went from developer to team leader to developer advocate.
  • Debbie shares what she learned about leadership from Surrounded by Idiots.
  • How developer advocacy can be a very time-consuming position.
  • Why it can be difficult to determine whether you want to work in tech.
  • Determining what kind of people you want to work with.
  • How working in developer advocacy means you get to be at the forefront of new developments and technologies.
  • Some of the concerns around developer advocacy’s ability to connect with and help developers.
  • How Debbie’s company is helping companies migrate over from legacy stacks.
  • Why empathy is as important as technical skills in development advocacy.
  • Why the role of junior developer advocate is important for the industry and should be actively created and nurtured.
  • Why writing a starter guide is a good job for a junior developer advocate.
  • Why it’s difficult to get into developer advocacy.
  • Debbie shares what it was like learning React under high-pressure circumstances.
  • The type of learning challenges you will experience as a developer advocate.
  • We hear this weeks' picks! Rowntree Fruit Gums, Elgato Stream Decks, GitHub CoPilot, and more!

Tweetables:

“Maybe the most successful model for a junior developer advocate program would be one at a company large enough that could have them do product rotations.” — @GloomyLumi [0:35:23]

“I feel like KPIs are kind of, it's that classic criticism of measuring something because it's measurable, rather than measuring the things that you need to keep track of like, it's just quantitative data.” — Tessa [0:08:30]

“I started thinking about what are the parts of my job that I love and what is the part of the job that I don't like, and then try and look at what kind of job fits the job that I love. And everything seemed to fit into developer advocate.” — @debs_obrien [0:40:54]

“Having worked on small, medium, and large codebases, I know one of the big things that I think you need to keep in mind when you're doing developer advocacy is, ‘Okay, how do you integrate this with an already existing project?’” —@fimion [0:32:58]

“There should probably be a starter role, maybe it's not a junior developer advocate, maybe it's like a content creator and then you kind of go up because you could be a very, very, very good content creator, and not necessarily be a developer advocate.” — @debs_obrien [0:35:50]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Special Guest: Debbie O'Brien.

Episode source