Author: Christian Heilmann
Compiled by: Zhuang Qi
| Defining Developer Advocacy
A Developer Advocate is a spokesperson, mediator, and translator between the company and its internal developers and external ecosystem developers. Inside companies, situations happen every day where developers and non-technical people don’t communicate with each other, or completely misunderstand each other’s viewpoints during communication, leading to tens of thousands of dollars being wasted every day.
The computer world operates thanks to developers’ efforts. A great product starts with a good idea, and information architecture, design, and user experience make it better serve users. But to realize it and provide service to users, developers are needed first. Unfortunately, in reality, developers are usually defined as “deliverers” rather than “thinkers,” which is incorrect. So, within the company, you can tell developers about or start something or a project that excites them.
Tip: An enlightened company will open your product or interface to third-party ecosystem developers worldwide. This can be a simple DataFeed, API, SDK, or even open sourcing the entire product. The benefit of doing this is that it allows global developers to discover product issues you never thought of while using the product. Innovation doesn’t just exist within enterprises; it should exist anywhere in the world. This means you’re “hiring” users who are already familiar with the product, while also needing to better激发 their excitement about the product, and provide help immediately during their contribution process. This is exactly where developer advocates come into play.
In this society (and certainly in companies), there are many dedicated and high-level developers, always ready to solve technical challenges. What you need to do is make them as happy and excited as a 10-year-old child who got a puppy. For geeks, programming on an attractive technology is like a child meeting a puppy.
If you can communicate with developers in their language, developers will be very motivated to solve various technical challenges. Conversely, they may seem weird and poor at communication. During their work, developers usually don’t get as easily excited as corporate marketing departments. If you can’t激发 their excitement, they might shift their energy elsewhere, like raising pets or other options.
| Start with the Right Mindset
As a developer advocate, chasing technology is always the original intention that should never be missed. Because in presentation after presentation, it’s easy to develop the habit of reusing presentation materials, but this also leads to presentations not having much impact.
If the company launches a new product, the developer advocate needs to experience it like an external developer. Then use it to do some development and record your entire building process, so you already have brand new article or presentation content.
Of course, every job has its own attributes, just as working in a government agency is different from working in a large multinational corporation. As a developer advocate, having developer experience is very important (the more the better). Because your job is to attract various developers to be interested in the company’s technical products, only after you’ve experienced it personally can you truly understand developers and help you do your job better.
Although becoming a technical expert is very important, you should also realize that there are many trivial matters in the company that need your attention. If you don’t have experience handling these matters (including failures and successes), it will be difficult for you to provide developers with the basis and reasons that can convince their bosses to use your product.
Developer advocates are mainly a new role transformed from developers, not from HR, PR, or marketing. Their main work is still development, but mainly revolves around examples, training materials, and demo presentations, rather than actual products.
| Find Your Position and Leverage Your Strengths
Of course, not everyone can become a full-stack developer advocate; you just need to find your position within the entire advocacy loop. Think about what you like doing most, then take action and create something. The most common responsibilities in the entire advocacy work include:
✅ Writing code tutorials
✅ Writing blogs
✅ Public speaking
✅ Product training
✅ Social media promotion
✅ Streaming operations
✅ Community support
You can check other content in this handbook to see what resonates most with you. Then take action, you won’t lose anything. If you focus on this career, you’ll likely slowly fall in love with it.
| About the Handbook |
This handbook can help you become an excellent developer advocate. Regardless of the product or company, just adjust according to your own working style for different markets and audiences. Because important principles are effective for anyone anywhere in the world.
Developer advocacy is a relatively new field of work, and the first obstacle you encounter may be introducing to people what a developer advocate is and why all tech companies need such a role.
11 years ago, I encountered a hurdle in my career development, and this is exactly what prompted me to write this handbook. At that time, I was already a principal developer, and the only way up was development lead, but this wasn’t what I liked to do. Then I started doing simple things outside of work, like introducing my company to developers, although I didn’t get corresponding recognition at the time. So, I came up with the role of “Developer Evangelist” and made it a brand new job position at the company. I was lucky that the company agreed and supported me to do this at the time. So helping others get opportunities like me was my original intention for writing this handbook.
In 2020, I updated this handbook, and at the same time renamed it, changing Developer Evangelism to Developer Advocacy. Because evangelism is a religious term, while advocacy has a better connotation. As an ambassador in the developer world, you are the person who pursues good developer experience for developers both inside and outside the company.
| About the Author
Christian Heilmann is a web developer with 20 years of work experience. In the past 10 years, he has worked at companies like Yahoo, Mozilla, and Microsoft, long engaged in developer evangelist/developer advocate work. Currently, he lives in Berlin, serving as Microsoft’s Principal Program Manager, leading the developer and developer advocate team. He has been blogging at christianheilmann.com since 2005, and you can find him on Twitter by searching codepo8.
Original address of this handbook: https://developer-advocacy.com/
Reposted from: Developer Relations »
