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What is this Developer Experience thing?

Amara Graham on January 31, 2022

Every time I answer a question more than once I look at it as an opportunity to write a blog. Unfortunately, in this extended March 2020 we continu...
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Ben Potter

Great post! I started in DevRel ~ 1.5 years ago. This post is very accurate, especially around sharing community feedback!

Like you mentioned, I have noticed some "Developer Experience" teams (often in the enterprise) focus on supporting their internal dev teams instead of the outside world.

A lot of the activities are similar (demos, office hours, gather feedback) but focused on an internal community instead of an external. Do you find yourself doing both in your role?

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Amara Graham

Yes! How I usually try to frame things for myself and my team currently is that anything we do internally we should approach with the idea we will take it external in some capacity.

Sometimes the internal enablement piece is a critical component of "winning" priority or helping the company understand the business reason or value.

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Ben Potter

That's really helpful!

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Archie Smyth

Hey, I really like how you went full-send with this post. Currently, I am focusing on the usual full-stack engineering but, I feel I can provide value as an advocate (not particularly a devrel) somewhere in the future, mainly because it appeals to me and my communication skills are reasonable considering my background. Although, I currently lack professional experience with teams/organisations. You've broadened my view , in one post. Very thankful for this.

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Amara Graham

Full-send is pretty much 100% aligned to my personal brand. Thanks for your comment!

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David Montoya

This is great. Adding to your list! DevEx should also include designing and battle-proofing workflows, and striving for creating a unified experience, that is, standardizing and making it easy to do the right/secure thing

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Constantin

Hey, how would you convince the management of a company that is quite new to development to create this position and allocate budget to it?

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Amara Graham

Big ask! Is this for internal or external?

Either way I would start by presenting a data-backed case.

  • Why do you need this position/team?
  • What does success look like? Is there a specific set or problems you are trying to fix?
  • What does the company look like without this team?
  • What could you do with 1 HC vs. 2 or 3+?
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Constantin

Would be for internal

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Amara Graham

You can use what I mentioned above along with sprinkling in projects with the current dev team, but be super careful with scoping - "we can do this with x time and x people, but if we had y time and y people we could do this much more".

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Logan Lindquist

Hello from Austin

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Amara Graham

👋 What's up! Stay warm this week!

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Mia Moore

I was just having a conversation about this exact topic and specifically, the differences between developer experience and developer relations! Now I can link this blog instead :) Haha. Great post!

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Amara Graham

I would have rambled less but I hope it helps!

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Dipisha • Edited

Hi amara! Would like to connect with you about your experience in DX!

Would you be open to a quick 20 min chat next week?