WHY I LEFT DEVELOPER RELATIONS (dev rel) | @endingwithali

Fantastic video!!

I’ve had a lot of trouble trying to navigate this new role and how much of myself I’m going to put forward for work. Even the ego inflation and deflation of trying to figure out a “brand” and a “point of view.”

<3 you and your voice are appreciated (by me and I’m sure many others).

And ur name ? Ali or it’s ? I’m just curious

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Amazing video, thanks a lot for making this and sharing your thought process.
As someone who recently decided to pivot from full time development to devrel, I need to hear from experiences of people like you who have been around for a while and learn what to do and what to avoid.
I'm very sorry to hear that your experience in devrel has not been the greatest, I'm sure I'll run into a lot of these issues myself at some point. I already feel like I'm on the edge of moving back to full time development just because I really miss actually coding, but so far it seems like I lucked out and joined a company and team that is really nice, understands and prioritizes developer experience, and gives us the freedom and resources to do what we want. I don't know how long all of this will last for, and stories like yours are a constant reminder that its a fragile industry and I have to be careful of the looming sharks of grifters and layoffs and burnout.

great vid Ali :)

#7 - The biggest challenge I have in getting Dev Rel started where I work is associating it to revenue.
What's the ROI? How do we measure it?
Until we crack that nut, Dev Rel won't get the recognition it deserves. #9 is probably a result of the same, since it leads devrels to infighting instead of cooperation.

OMG what an amazing video.
I have immense respect for DevRel and the vital role they play in tech companies. It's crucial to find ways to support their success in various aspects. As a field, we still have much to learn, so thank you for making this video

Really appreciate your insight and feedback here. This aligns with alot of my own observations. Really, really sad to hear about poor culture and back stabbing aspects in some of your previous experiences. That kind of stuff would never fly with our team, but I also know that our team is rather unique and I'm so lucky. Thanks for sharing.

I have just made a similar career move and so much of this rings true for me. Thanks for the great video.

Hey Ali, as I said on the stream, UNCANNY the timing of this video and my pivoting to devrel just 2.5 weeks ago. That said,your points are clear and give me valuable information to consider as I move forward along this path. All the best!

"devrel is career limiting" - i think that devrel isn't an endgame, but it can be a way to get where you want to go, or take a side angle for a bit.

Very few companies have a "chief devrel officer", but doing work inside devrel for a while can definitely help be a sidecar enhancement to an engineering role or other roles too.

also spending too much time in devrel is burnout city. even if you want to do devrel "long term", taking a break for a year or so to work in SRE, engineering, product, or something else will just make you better at this role.

btw, i nod very hard throughout this whole video for many things. I don't know that it means the function is inherently broken, but it's way more broken when money isn't cheap.

Thank you so much for sharing All ❤️

FACTS were spoken, Ali 🔥

Smashing content Ali. Glad you put these words down, out there. DevRel is, now, in this business climate, a dead profession/end. Venture capital is no longer cheap and a program requires a long - multi year - investment, something companies cannot do right now.

Zero lies here Ali. Great video.

Great one! As someone who has been thinking about leaving DevRel, I can only support those statements. Also, DevRel pushes your active network to Dunbar limits, and hence negatively impacts social life. And ofc the DevRel roles ones that suffer from the burnouts the most. It is hard to call it a healthy job

DevRel is seen as icing on the product cake. We need to prove it's a key ingredient.

End wokeness

Thank you so much for making this!!

Interesting discussion, Ali and thanks for sharing! Overall I agree with most everything you are saying, it's a tough role but for the right person, a lot of fun, inspiring, rewarding. But given it's the intersection of technology and marketing (DevRel, Developer Marketing, Technical Marketing), will have a lot of the frustrations and politics that are often seen on the pure marketing side of the world (IMO). It's also a much newer field so I feel that DevRels are pioneers in their own way.

But I believe that anyone coming from a DevRel background, going back to software development/engineer, will bring back a ton of skills and have grown as an individual to really shine in that purely technical role (assuming they can code). So if DevRel is a stepping stone for you, great. If you want to make it a full-time career, great! But for sure, you will test yourself and be a better professional for having tried.

(Spoken as a non-developer professional who worked for a Dev Marketing team of a very large company, )

Thank you so much for this! I agree with a lot of this and can relate in so many ways.

Great insights, Ali! I did developer relations at a big company way back in 2005, and I can tell you that every single one of your points was just as true, even back then.

gl hf dont die. Thanks for the insights and video.

Great insights and very on the mark. I always found DevRel to be difficult, especially the politics!

Thanks for sharing your experiences here Ali, there's a lot that resonates! Best of luck in your new adventure, it sounds like you're fitting in well and finding your value!

I know me saying this won't necessarily change how you feel, but...
1. you shouldn't be embarrased for being laid off
2. if anyone thinks less of you for having been laid off, it is their fault

You’re amazing. Thank you for being candid about this!

I'm with you. I'm one more not so great experience away from saying it's time to get out of devrel. I was Stack Overflow's forward face for years and it stopped becoming the empowered position we created because we needed it and started just being a synonym for content creation.

Amazing video! 👀

I was with you until #9. Then you went dark arts (whisper networks, off the records, back channels etc.) and it kind of surprises me that you'd then be surprised and upset when people went dark(er) arts on you. I try to stick to the light.

Very helpful insights, thanks for sharing them. I hope your new career path is a great fit full of success and joy. 🙃

Thank you for making this video. A very very honest take.

Good luck in your new position!

Amazing to learn DevRel struggles

Most of the time small companies or startups hire for such roles and lack of management of the team always exists even when I joined my as devops intern in a startup company i too face lots of communication and management gaps.
As according to my opinion most small companies just try out new things in which dev rel is one
just to see whether they make business impact or not in positive way

Oooh nailed it I’ve been out of the dev rel game since 2020 every thing you talked about is right on point.

Firstly, thank you, Ali, for putting this all together in this fantastic video! I think it's very kind and brave of you to put your struggles and experiences out there in order to help others know this before jumping into an unwieldy role.

After 1 year as a DevRel engineer, in a company I started as an ambassador in my “spare time”, I can say that I can relate to most of the points. But luckily we have put them on the table, and we have managed to form a team with fair workloads and tailored to our preferences.

It is a road with many stones in between, and it is always difficult to reach a consensus, as you said, we all have strong personalities that sometimes clash, and it is important that we know when we have to give in. I am learning as I go along many things that I didn't know about myself until I got to this role, I would love to chat with you one day to share hardships

I hope your new adventure is going great!

Thank you for putting this out there. I wish you the best of luck with your new career path.

Thank you for sharing your experiences and your journey! As somebody trying to get their first "tech job" it's dope to hear these perspectives on different roles that us outsiders don't always have a clear understanding of. We're often bombarded with the happy fluff. I greatly appreciate you sharing the bad along with the good 💯 Good luck as you continue with the pure software engineer role!

Great video Ali! Thank you for sharing your personal experience in this field. It would valuable for a lot more people.

Excellent video! I haven’t experienced all of these issues, but certainly feel like I don’t get to write code often enough. It makes me worry about my waning engineering skills all the time.

I’ve also certainly struggled to gain the support of the Software engineering team.

This was very Insightful and Raw Ali! :) Thanks for making this one, gave me a Broader perspective on DevRel.

This is a fantastic video and giving a plus one as someone who moved into devrel and then back into a SWE roll because of these same problems. Thanks so much for sharing!

I don't understand why DevRel is the first thing to go in a downturn. Nowadays, developers are an essential route to market, so I'm not sure why companies don't invest in DevRel to the same extent that they do sales and marketing.

First time knowing about dev rel

Well done. Definitely an important perspective for past, present and future del rels. Thank you for sharing! Let’s catch up soon.

When you announced #7... that line delivery gave me Chills

the best way to keep from being let go is being in Sales and/or working on the projects that actually make money....everything else is considered a Cost, not a profit....so if you are a Developer and can do Software Sales, you are golden....if youre a dev, you can learn SW Sales...

maybe u wanna update your tiktok profile description.

Several of your points (like 7 in particular) is why I've been exploring RevOps philosophies.