Moving DevEx from DevRel to Engineering

#devrel #devex #engineering #reorg

I wasn't sure if I wanted to share this, but I've had a few folks ask about our reorg out of DevRel and into Engineering.

Please enjoy this stream of conscious listicle.

This is what I have energy to write right now.

Things I expected

Different manager
Different peer group (first time ever having peer managers!)
Different position on an org chart
- Reporting to VP (now) vs. director (previously)
- Still second-level as CTO, still within Products
Our scope increased to own SDKs, a new function entirely
Our scope decreased - removed Community Slack, Community Hub, and Community Forum

Things I didn't expect

We immediately received +1 headcount.
- Prior to the reorg, I wasn't anticipating hiring this year.
- Hiring is hard, but it's been very hard recently.
Engineering recently streamlined hiring, which was vastly different from the process and way we hired in DevRel.
- Outcome: we had to rework our hiring process immediately.
Engineering had completely shifted away from quarterly planning and OKRs. DevRel did both quarterly planning and OKRs.
- Outcome: we had to shift to smaller incremental improvements and more of a continuous delivery style.
New manager career path, streamlined with other Engineering Managers.
- But I don't feel like an Engineering Manager...?
Updated DevEx Engineer career path (to be closer to streamlined Eng career path, but ultimately needed to stay separate).
- This is still a change, and changes to people's inflight career paths are hard.
Community feedback was ok, but specific customers' feedback was best.
- Puts us in direct conflict with building for everyone, paying customer or not.
- Note - this was a company shift, so no matter where we sat I think this would have been a change.
We were labeled as a product development team (Docs & SDKs), but often function as a support team too, particularly for Docs.
- This means we have a LOT of interrupt driven work.
- Some seasonality too - weeks before the 2x yearly minor releases we see a huge uptick in PR reviews.
Nearly constant (re)introductions and internal team marketing to describe scope changes.
- These have slowed, but I'm still finding some people think we are part of DevRel, not Eng.