Hello friends can we check out the Tiffin Tech March the merch that isn't merch because I'm not
selling it right now anyways maybe one day but for now just internally high energy Tiffany okay
take two take three take four I don't know today we are going to be talking about my journey into
developer advocacy and developer relations this is a question I've been getting asked a
lot recently is what exactly is a developer Advocate what do you do and today I want to
talk to you about what I do coming from five years of strictly software development into
developer relations I'm going to share with you about what I do on a day-to-day basis uh what it
really entails to be a developer Advocate and hopefully give you kind of more insight into
to what I do but also to to the role itself and if I seem a little confused when I say
that it's because giving you insight into the role itself really varies uh company to company
person to person and I'll get more into that throughout this video but hopefully you will
leave this video with knowledge on what the heck do I do and also what a developer Advocate is to
maybe see if it's right for you maybe you're a software developer right now maybe you're in
Tech in another area or maybe you're just getting into Tech and want to know about it also before
we get into it make sure to hit that subscribe button for more Tech coding career life videos
leave in the comments other topics you want me to cover as you know this is how I make my
videos is based on what questions you have what you want to hear from me okay let's get started
but I'll go somewhere else okay when I started making this video I was going to do a vlog style
and I promise you more Vlogs are coming to Tiffin Tech about my day-to-day routine but as many days
they're crazy busy so rather than vlogging I'm just going to walk you through my day the first
thing I've been doing recently in the morning actually before we get into developer relations
and that just to tell you a little bit about my morning is I've been going to work out in
the morning so I get up at six every day leave the house by around 6 30 and go to Pilates and
this has really helped me gain Focus throughout the day I felt like my days were often so fuzzy
and I was tired and I just needed that boost of energy and honestly working out in the morning
has been a huge Savior for that I feel like then now throughout my days I'm more productive more
focused and honestly more happy when I get back from my workout I always take some time to do some
Tiff and Tech emails and focus on that for the first part from I would say about eight to nine
my workout's from seven to seven fifty get back do Tiffin Tech content and emails and then at 9
I start my day now there are really three main areas that I focus on in developer advocacy one
being developer education another being content and the last being community and a lot of times
these three pillars overlap of course you know with content being for developers with Community
intertwining with developer experience so it's all kind of intertwined in a way or oftentimes
it is but then there are times where the content is on its own the community is on its own focus
and the developer education is as well and why at the beginning of this video I was like
kind of looking confused or laughing to myself is because from company to company developer advocacy
or developer relations can really vary and what I mean by that is I was actually just looking at job
postings for developer Advocates not because I'm looking for a job at all but because I just like
to see what other companies are looking for what they're doing in that space I just find it really
interesting and good to ensure that the skills I am building and where working towards aligned
with what is in demand of course and at the end of the day the most important thing is serving
the company and working at and ensuring that we're meeting our goals and finding ways to do that that
I'm growing as well too so one of the things I noticed though is there's a lot of variety that
can happen in these job postings so for example I saw a company hiring for a developer Advocate
and half of the time it said 50 of the time you will be coding and then there's some developer
Advocates where they work under the marketing team so they actually don't code that much but you have
to have a very strong knowledge of Technology of coding depending on what the product is that you
you are advocating for so what is a developer Advocate I'm actually going to get my phone and
see what it says on here on the on the internet the internet knows uh what is a developer this
is what says the first thing that comes up for me anyways a developer Advocate accessibility
the liaison between an organization station and its relevant developer Community or communities
the main responsibilities are to help the developer Community do better work faster
and more efficiently and yeah I would agree with that for the most part I think that sums
it up in a pretty nice nutshell okay my camera just died let me though go back a little bit I
was thinking well I was charging actually but how to frame this so I want to share with you exactly
why I ended up going into developer relations and leaving software development on its own
I have been doing software development full-time both front and back end for five years and it was
great I got promoted at my last company to senior developer very quickly I started to lead a team of
developers it was great I was working in angular at the time really enjoying it and everything was
going good so many skills that I wasn't utilizing doing purely software development and I think one
of the main things was I really wanted to start connecting with others talking to other people
sharing basically doing what I do at Tiffin Tech but with a company and why I chose to go down
that path is I love doing coding and technical things but I also love the community building
and teaching aspect and I just felt like in my career if I looked a long term how I wanted it
to progress it wasn't going purely the technical way it wasn't purely code encoding coding software
development I was progressing my career in that way and I just wasn't feeling fulfilled I felt
like there was so much more I could offer into what my skill sets were and that's not to say
you can't have an amazing career being a software developer and growing it that way it just I knew I
wanted to really find the mix between soft skills and technical skills now to get into developer
relations and developer advocacy what skills do you need this is a question I get asked a lot
if you don't have developer experience can you become one and I think yes you could definitely
become a developer Advocate without the technical experience but it'd be very difficult meaning you
are speaking to developers you're often building tutorials for developers showing code on screen
solving their technical problems no you have to you have to be a developer before I think
at least to some degree or at least have very strong skills to develop maybe you only were
a developer for a year or two years but you need something there and that goes to the next question
is well do you code in this role and once again that can vary company to company some developer
Advocates as I mentioned they code all the time others don't and for me I when I'm how I like to
look at it is you aren't building for production you're building for other developers so this might
be through doing demos getting on webinars with other developer Advocates and building a project
with them making video tutorials answering questions in Discord different things like
that so you get to still flex your coding skills to varying degrees but you're quoting knowledge
in this role and one of the things though that I was nervous about getting into this role is
am I going to lose my technical skills and I think that's a huge fear that a lot of people
have if they're considering going into this role for me it wasn't a long-lived it was a short-lived
fear I guess you could say mainly because I have Tiffin Tech where I do different code with me's
I build cool things cool technology cool coding projects with you so I knew it wasn't something
that I would lose but rather just find other ways to do it and to me that was really exciting so
I absolutely love what I do it is a combination of as I mentioned those three pillars so working
directly with the community if people who are using your product have questions like developers
have questions around it also to sharing and educating about our tool that we make and how it
can be integrated into other projects the really good thing the company I work for is called stack
bit and the really good thing about it is it works with many many different Frameworks so it's not as
though I am honed in on one specific technology it can allow for many different Technologies to
work with which I really love and get excited about because then you're speaking to people who
are using many different Technologies as well and I think my favorite part of this role is
getting to flex men wear many hats Flex different skill sets and one of the challenging things I
would say about this role is around Community you're working towards building a community
but a quality Community I should say and what I mean by that is quality essentially meaning people
who are using your product are excited about your product maybe you're targeting A specific group
of people meaning people who work at large Enterprises or individual developers who are
Freelancers whatever the case may be that's what I mean when I say quality is having a very specific
target market and building a community around that and that is probably one of the biggest
challenges because with that it's you have to be authentic and find your voice but also to provide
value it's like it's a very challenging thing which is exciting though an exciting challenge
I think and that's really what it is so I'll give you a little a little insight as to what
my day today for example uh entailed I started my morning when I started work it's now I think
it's almost six here so when I started my day I started with a few meetings so I met with the
developer relations engineer we meet once a week and kind of talk about what he is working on here
for focuses a lot on documentation and then we it's really great when we connect because we can
talk about how the documentation can be turned into content and shared and also to I give him
updates on what I'm working on and focusing on for the week then after that meeting I had an outbound
meeting I think that's what it's called upon meaning I met with another developer relations
individual at another company and we are working on building out a demo project that will be we'll
be doing a webinar around using his technology at his company and mine at my company which is going
to be really cool and exciting and that was they had those two meetings and then I took some time
to work on a video I have been creating around how our product works at a high level so this is
a video that is for Developers for a developers page we are working on and it goes a little bit
into how to integrate the tool initially with a product project I should say then after that I had
lunch I had two more meetings one with a design individual one with the developer experience
person who we connect with as well he is always building really cool projects and I always connect
with him on what he is working on too then after that what did I do today after that I continued
on the video I was working on the how it works video and then I did research For an upcoming
webinar that we were doing another demo one so it's a lot of media things research building
content oh and then I didn't and then making sure Discord is functioning well meaning if anyone has
a question around it but this could vary day to day once again it might be more so preparing for
a webinar a few days ago I gave a demo and it was not targeted towards just developers so it had to
be more higher level but it's really cool I just I absolutely love this role I think it's a great way
to really grow your career I'm super passionate about growing my career and continuing to
level up step up and this just seems like a great balance between getting to interact with
leadership and a lot of wonderful individuals not only within the company I work for but externally
and build that network but also to keep your technical skills up and yeah I I don't know if
I did a good job of this I'm gonna do vlogs of day in the life of a developer Advocate
it's just today this week has been nuts but a vlog will come soon and in the meantime if you
have any questions I didn't answer around it leave in the comments and I will answer them
as you know I answer every single comment and okay it's been a day I love you all and I will
see you all soon thanks everyone hit that subscribe button if you haven't by the way
thank you