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The Subtle Art of Being A Developer Advocate

Wassim Chegham on April 21, 2021

A few years ago I wrote this article called "What the heck is a developer advocate?" which tried to help people in the tech industry understand wha...
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anthonyjdella profile image
offline

Great post! I'm interested in being a dev advocate and this helps a ton! Thx

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Typing Turtle

Thanks for writing this. I'm trying to get the role of Developer Advocate established at my company today. I'm wondering if you can say more about how to track the effectiveness or convince the business of the value of the role.

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Nikolas

thats an interesting one: i guess the main metrics are/should be around engagement. Developers usually prefer to talk to other developers instead of more traditional roles like CSMs and other marketing/business folks. So i guess the main argument for hiring one is that a developer advocate is the only way that you can actually listen to and engage with the (dev) community.

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Natalia Venditto

Wonderful read, Wassim! Very informative of what developer advocates are and how they contribute to a product and its ecosystem, including the community around it!

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Cameren Dolecheck

This was a great explanation, thank you. Your first post about Dev Advocacy and it got me very interested in the role. It more closely aligns with my interests, skills, and aspirations than most traditional dev positions.

The biggest hang up I've had with Dev Advocate as a position is the compensation range seems to be about 2x less than software engineer. Maybe this is because most places put it under a marketing position? What are your experiences and insights into compensation for this kind of work?

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Pauline P. Narvas

Absolutely a wonderful read, thanks Wassim! I've been interested in DevRel/Dev Advocacy for a long time but decided that recently, I've been wanting to be more open about how I really want to push my career in that direction. This was super helpful! Thank you, keep being awesome :)

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Pablo Bermejo

Awesome post. The MS developer community is lucky for having you.

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Vanessa Measom

Enjoyed reading this Wassim! It spurred me on to write my own post, about my experiences as a Developer Advocate.

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Wassim Chegham

Just read and shared your post. Thank you for sharing! It's really inspiring!

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nagpavan-chilakam

Great article, thanks

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poalelungimihai • Edited

It's a beneficial article where are explained a lot of interesting facts about this developer advocacy. It's an excellent subject that requires a lot of attention. I think that in this way, people should defend their rights. I was being involved in such a process. I was helped to understand all the mechanisms with the help of weareecs.co.uk/social-research-ins.... You can also find a lot of valuable and fascinating detail about all this kind of process. A well-informed person is always a compelling one.

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Aravind Putrevu

Wonderfully written Wassim! I've been an advocate and a community organizer. You've articulated all the responsibilities very well.

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Adnan Ebrahimi

Very informative post about Developer Advocacy. thank you for sharing this Wassim!

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Phong Duong

I saw the developer advocate title on LinkedIn and wondered if it is really a job, what they actually do. Thank you for the explanation

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anthonyjdella profile image
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How would you compare Developer Advocacy for B2B and B2C companies? Should the role be the same?

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Wassim Chegham

There should be no difference because the Developer Advocate's audience is the developer community.

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Alexander Chichigin

You might want to know that hexa.run/ is inaccessible: first, wrong SSL certificate, after that -- not found.

As we're talking feedback. ;)

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Mel Kaulfuss

Thanks for writing this! I’m about to start my first Dev Advocate role & this post is invaluable to me (because I need to figure out how to do my job 😆)!!

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Wassim Chegham

Thank you, Mel. Good luck with your new role. Happy to answer any of your questions you may have 🤗

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Sergio GAMA

Very good post! The best profession!! I Love it! I'm taking the liberty to use your idea of Developer Advocate Iceberg in my presentation about Dev Adv/Tech Advocacy/ Tech Evangelist.