Can DevRel be your first role?

Ram: I have very fond recollections of my first ever job, as I think a lot of people here would do. It was the first time I had my own little space in this world that I could call mine. It would be very dirty and unkempt on a Thursday. It would be very clean on the following Monday. It would have a lot of leftover food, things like that. It had my name on a small piece of paper. My workplace also had a coffee machine, and again, it was probably the worst coffee in the world, but it was coffee in my workplace. It was free.

I could enjoy a cup whenever I wanted to. I can pretend that I was inventing the most bleeding edge technology just because there was a cup of coffee sitting on my table. The ID card. I used to hate wearing that when I went to college, like a lot of people here probably did.

But I wore mine with pride. It had the name of my company and things it would get me in and out of doors, things like that. Of course, I've swapped an ID card for a conference pass in the past many years, but it's still something which is a matter of pride. And finally, the biggest thing or the thing that had the biggest impact in the workplace for me was an extended monitor. I had never seen one before and ever since, I've never been able to work without one before. And so I think the first role that people have really makes an extraordinary non-linear impact in their career. And for some they want DevRel to be that. So in the next 20 minutes or until decides to kick me off stage, let's crush some dreams and put some points forth about why that might not really be the case.

Welcome to my talk everybody. This is about answering a somewhat controversial question. So designations apart. Today I'm going to be chief controversy officer for DevRelCon Bangalore, and we're going to try and answer this question about whether or not a fresher is an appropriate hire for a DevRel role. And for this I'll be using a combination of things that people love. So let's start with a very memorable debut. It was not memorable at all. It was a very mediocre debut as a fresher, this person was only somewhat.

Okay, let's look at another fresher in the same, in a slightly different industry. Again, one that we love. Nobody can forget this first role. There's some others as well, which were somewhere here and there today. This picture is iconic, but back in the day, this was just, and this is probably my favourite of all, a debut that I will never forget in his first ever role, Maman, MSD, he did not quite live up to people's expectations. And so is it okay to fail as a DevRel or what is it that can set you up for success as a DevRel being your first ever role? Or is it even appropriate for you as a fresher watching this from some corner of the internet tomorrow?

I don't know. That's the answer. I mean, the favourite answer of the tech community is it depends and it depends. It's such a multivariate answer in this case. And let's take a deeper dive into some of the factors that influence this answer, and let's see if we can sort of shift the answer in favour of something more concrete. A DevRelrole really depends on what the company wants you to accomplish. Also, that's a very odd statement to make because even that can change from time to time. There's really a spread when we talk about what your organisation intends for you to accomplish as a DevRel, there's always forces that are much beyond your control.

As a DevRelprofessional who might be very experienced, who has a very little experience, who comes from different backgrounds, you will always feel the tug of something that the market wants, that your developersers need, that your product team wants to prioritise, that you feel as an individual that nobody understands about your product and you really need to write a blog, make a video, do some Instagram.

I don't get Instagram reels that much, but people do it. People love it. I'll leave it to them. So the biggest factor that will influence whether or not a fresher can or will be an appropriate hire is where the company is placed that in any particular point in time and what it is that they want to accomplish. Do they want to go from zero to one users? Do they want to go from orders of magnitudes more to move from having a thousand, I don't know, active users every week to a hundred thousand or a million active users? So your whole notion of where you want to go differs, and at that point, they could either choose to promote from within, in which case they'll pick one of their senior engineers or somebody who already has a particular quantum of experience with the product and give them the opportunity to become more public facing and create those assets that are necessary versus hiring someone from left field and hope they'll be of help and be just as effective because they possess certain other skills.

Now, there's ways in which you can map out what exactly a person brings to the table in terms of DevRel. There's ways in which you create axis like these and maturity levels on these axis. This is actually pyramid, but we are looking at it from above. But let's not get into a geometry lesson when everybody's evidently very hungry. So you can then map the particular skillset that you desire with the particular skillset that individuals you're trying to hire, possess. And based on that, you can make an objective decision of whether or not a person that you're hiring for this role makes sense to hire or not. Now, quick show of hands. How many people here value a college degree who think that a degree is important for a person to perform this DevRelwhatever job?

Not a lot of people. Now, let's change the paradigm a little and say you have a kid, some of you do, some of you don't.

Say you have a niece or a nephew, somebody you care about, they're sick, you want to go to a doctor and then you feel more comfortable if the doctor has a bunch of diplomas hanging behind the wall, yes, no, maybe, yeah. But the same doesn't apply when people have to write critical pieces of software or write documentation about how to use software. Now, suddenly you think that college degrees are very important when you want a doctor, but you don't value it as much when it comes to people just have to write software. How hard can that be? Again, show of hands. Based on the information that you just heard, do you want your doctors to be people who actually practise or is this I smell lunch, but also do I smell a little bit of hypocrisy here? So we want a person who is well-versed in the craft of being a medical practitioner, but not somebody who's watched all seasons of the web series that everybody likes to watch.

This is not a case of hypocrisy, but it's more a question of diversity in thought. Some of us value certain things and a DevRel profession is not very different. Having a college degree might not make that much of an impact as you imagine it to be. So based on that information, if you're a fresher just out of college, it does not imply that you have an inordinate advantage or you're at a disadvantage for having just a degree, but not enough. Now let's do another quick thought experiment around this term. If somebody has demonstrable experience of what it is that you want in them, do you think it makes a better chance for you to hire them? So as a quote, fresher with limited amount of work experience or no formal work experience, if you're still, let's say active within a community, let's say you organise meetups and things like that.

Let's say you won a hackathon and now you want to bring that joy to a lot of other people. So in that case, because you have demonstrated experience in an allied field or a closely related field or an adjacent field, depending on how you want to call it, is it a good idea to developers that kind of experience as a fresher before you want to get hired? Is that what a lot of companies might look for? That's another question. And so let's take another example. I'll keep falling back to cricket. As you can tell, it's going to be a theme. Let's say you want somebody to coach your kids in cricket.

Now, do you go out and find a person who has played the game well and so can demonstrate a good amount of the ability to coach your kids? Or do you just find somebody who's very passionate about the sport and just because five of their 50 slides have cricketers on them, you allow them to coach your kids or God forbid your dad can pull strings and so you become cricket's.

Biggest administrator. So I don't want this to become a political discussion because we are recording. Mind you, the biggest skill I've developersed as a DevRel person is knowing what to say and what not to say when on a camera. But you can see numerous fields like this. Now, let's say Ika is on one of her very famous vacation trips, and then she gets on the plane and then the pilot says, oh, I have no idea how to fly a plane. I saw a bunch of videos and for 15 days I've been watching how to fly a plane, and so I'm confident that I'm going to fly this. Now, it doesn't feel the same way, but when it comes to hiring somebody for a technical job or for a DevRel job, we are happy to consider people in bootcamps. We are happy to consider people who are some way in the middle of their degree.

Another thing that a lot of people come to me and say, college dropout, and they mentioned that during a conversation and they say, imagining that it adds a lot of glamour, and the Google's founders were college dropouts and Facebook founders were college dropouts. Mind you, Google's founders dropped out of college when they were doing an advanced PhD, not when they were doing BTech from Ms. Aya Institute or something. So let's be very clear about that. So when you say stuff, there's a lot of context in Weightage that gets added. And anyhow, you know the story. So again, the answer continues to be it depends, and let's see if we can change that. There's no clock.

So I don't know how long I'm speaking for, but anyhow, what's the company actually looking for when they're trying to hire? Answer is very easy, but we'll get there in just a bit.

A company might look for in as a fresher who's applying to tonnes and tonnes of these jobs. You might imagine that a company is looking for somebody who can broaden their experience and they're following this model of whether you want people who have a breadth of experience or whether you want people with a lot of depth in their experience. There's other models that describe, oh, this is how employee satisfaction is, and this is how you have to build an environment inside an organisation for an employee. There's also hierarchies that have been built around this. Building models is very easy. You create a shape, you repeat that shape a number of times in different shapes and in different sizes and colours. You add some words that make medium to low sense. You create some intersections and charts around these shapes, and then you use some very simple terms in the middle of all of this.

And then finally you translate it into Japanese, for example. And speaking of Japanese at Atushi San, thank you for your sponsorship dollars. It goes a long way in bringing events like that here. But the point is making all of these models is a lot of fun. It's very easy. You can create something out of nothing and call it, but what is it that companies are really looking for? Companies are really looking for ways to save money as much as possible. Ask any founder who's starting off and they're looking to hire somebody.

Ask anybody in a mid-size firm the problems of creating a requirement. Ask anybody in any size firm. They'll use an extra fancy term, but it means they're trying to save money and squeeze as much out of the rupe as possible in order to make that hire successful for their company. And so I don't blame them for this because there's a lot of hidden costs that we don't even know when it comes to hiring.

Anybody who's been involved in hiring a number of people and who've looked at a number of resumes and who've done a number of interviews as an interviewer will attest to the fact that it's excruciatingly hard at times. At a lot of times finding the right candidate, and nobody has any visibility into what that cost is. Nobody has any visibility into what it takes to train a person. In particular domains and fields is like as a person who's just, I have a resume, let me upload it to as many sites as possible. So people who are trying to find these jobs and as a fresher, please be mindful that there's an enormous quantum of cost, which is complete wastage that goes into trying and creating a ship shape. DevRel, professional or any professional, yes, but today is about DevRel and creating a DevRel professional out of somebody that's trying to graduate.

Be mindful the answer still. It depends. And I have about eight minutes before all of those tables are ready with food. There are however certain indicators that can give you an edge. So if you are a fresher and you're trying to get hired into the DevRel space, there are certain things that can differentiate who you are and what you're capable of as compared to a lot of people who are vying for the same space. Now, you could be a person who does a lot of contributions to open source projects. You could be somebody who's very passionate about developersment. You could be somebody who likes to learn in public and write about it and get a lot of people to view your computer, get five very faithful followers to view your content.

You could be a travel blogger. I know somebody here is, and that is an indication of here's a person who goes through certain life experiences and likes to write about and share about these life experiences.

Oh, if only I could focus their attention on certain technical problems, maybe they would make a good DevRel hire. So if that is your passion, follow it, be competent at it, and maybe it'll lead you to a DevRel career better than what a technical education can. Maybe you're good at writing things, maybe you're good at reading a lot of stuff and finding out mistakes. Extremely valuable DevRel skill because documentation, I can't stress that enough. Maybe you're good at creating conversations, nothing about certain subjects, but to ask the right questions, to find the right people to sit across from and ask these intelligent questions. And maybe that's your superpower that'll lead you into DevRel. A lot of these things might be stuff that a company wants to do inwards within themselves, and a lot of times they might be looking for stuff to do outwards and be outwardly.

And because DevRel is what it is, it is so many different fields and so many different dimensions in one single professions. And so the answer continues to remain as a fresher. If you have these skills, are you ready to be hired? And we don't know yet. And like I was just alluding to, DevRel has a certain number of peculiarities. And the best way to understand and realise that is to take a look at some of the job descriptions that we as a community are putting out. No, who are alike. One wants people who are engineers.

One wants people who are storytellers. One wants people who are community people. One wants people who've demonstrated qualities of being introverts and sit by themselves and will code and code even when they're in a conference and someone, people who are just chatting away in the corner, paying no attention whatsoever to what people are saying on stage.

It doesn't matter. Everything is right. You're completely at liberty to do what you want. But also remember that the biggest challenge in being a DevRel professional is that no two days are the same. You know what this is like? I don't know how many people here have been to Hy Bath, but there's a place in Hyderabad where hopefully DevRel Conwell happened next year, right? There's a Kingfisher aircraft that just sits in the open, okay? And whenever I see that, I grew up in Hyderabad, so I have fond memories of the place.

And whenever I see that, it feels like it's a perfect description of what I go through as a developerser. And I was qualified as an engineer, like movie directors and cricketers and music artists. I was once an engineer. I went to an engineering college. But now I find myself increasingly in a space occupied by sales and marketing conversations.

But also you see all those scraps of paper lying there. That's documentation work that I have to do on Thursday. So DevRelis so many different things during the week. It can be something on Monday, something on Wednesday, something else on Thursday, and you have to really be prepared to, you can't say no. A lot of people come and give you the advice, learn to say no. Oh, it's the one big important skill that you have. No, okay, I'm saying no. It's very difficult as a DevRel person to say objectively no to certain work because we're not necessarily building something that is meant for machines to consume or humans to consume.

It is the intersection of both humans and machines will feel the impact of the work that you do. And there's no way to really communicate what can and cannot be urgent. You have to really change colour with whatever task you're sitting on.

I think that's a nice analogy, and you can keep on and talking on and on about breadth and depth and things like that. It's not going to matter. You have to take up whatever it is that comes your way. There's going to be enormous skills gap. And what I mean by that is last week I was tasked with buying a camera, buying a light, and figuring out what focus and key light are. It has nothing to do with cloud platforms that I'm paid to evangelise. But I spent 18 hours looking at videos, reading blogs, and going through Instagram feeds. And now my YouTube shots is full of these camera people's videos, which I don't know how to get rid of.

And the thing was, I had to configure a video setup. And so that is something you might have to do as dev. I was last, no, a few weeks ago, I was in Salt Lake City at an event and I was carrying anybody here know how to fold T-shirts.

Number one skill that you need to have as a developerser relations professional is knowing how to fold t-shirts and how to do it fast and how to do it neatly. It can't be like the cupboard in your house. The t-shirts are the representation of your product or your project to the world has to be good. So again, I cannot stress on how many different skills you need and you need to learn all of this on the go. There's really not a lot you can do in terms of compromises. And the other thing I wanted to do is list out all of the different titles that I've seen, developerser relation professionals come. Don't try to read it. It's horrible.

Don't try to take a picture of it. It's worse. Now, given that there's such a massive spread, it represents two things. A, there's definitely a space for you as somebody starting out in one of these title.

Mind you, I have not added junior, senior principal. Exactly, all star ninja. I'm not even going there. So there is probably some space for you, but there's one absolute non-negotiable that I believe you need skill to succeed in a dev role, and that's the ability to think of someone else. So in your mind, you need to be able to relate with another person, specifically a developerser or somebody in the community. And you really need to be able to empathise and understand their problems. Whether you're a fresher, whether you are 14 years into DevRel or you have 22 years of Kubernetes experience, I don't care if you do not have this singular skill, in my opinion, you're not going to be able to succeed as a DevRelperson. I read this fantastic line somewhere while looking for material up for the stock.

I thought I should really share it with folks.

And there's apparently a report and things like that. It's more than just a big psychological concept that you try to explain to people. It's something way more tangible than that. And the answer to whether or not DevRel can be your first role is yes, if you possess the superpower of empathy, you have a chance if you can write a good resume and clear 14 rounds of interviews. But the point is, it's the foundation on which your entire skillset for this role is going to be based on. And I'll quickly demonstrate why that's important. Imagine a user in your community. There's a lot of things that go around a user in many different ways, but for you to succeed as a developerser, if you're able to think in terms of, or if you're able to imagine what it is that your user is actually saying about problems they have or projects they want or things that they want to accomplish, what is it that they're doing as they're saying these things?

It could be complaints, it could be they're writing code, they're using AI assistance, they're reading on stack overflow. All of it is valid. You should also be able to imagine far enough and understand, they might say things, they might do things, but what it is that they're really thinking, I love your product, or that could go so many different ways. And finally, can you also accurately describe what a user actually undergoes as they go through your product or project? This is an exercise in empathy, whiteboarding of sorts for users in your community. And I think this is something that happens to you as a DevRel, and it's something that you really need to be able to do. And that might not necessarily emerge unless you first put in the effort of being somebody who does something, right? You could be a videographer, for example.

You could be somebody who's done a lot of programming.

You could be somebody who's built communities. But I think some of that foundational experience is definitely necessary in either a formal or informal setting before you can lay claim to an actual job room. Papa is here, final slides. You're building a team of human beings as a DevRel, not building a technical product. So it really matters to have that kind of empathy. All the rules that you've heard and all the lessons that you've heard, and all the books about Steve Jobs and Elon Musk that you've not read, but audio books or YouTube summaries or Gen AI summaries these days. All that you've read may or may not matter, but you as a dev, as a fresher can apply for a DevReljob. If you find the right kind of synergy between the company that's hiring and the kind of experience that you bring to the table or promise to bring to the table, don't come to it because there's a lot of travel.

You have a fancy lifestyle, lot of free stickers and t-shirts. You can attend a lot of events. You can still do that without having to go through the burden. And travel is on the top of the list, mind you. But yeah, that's my talk. Thank you for being a wonderful audience today, and thank you to the organisers for having me. And I'm going to KubeCon after this, again, travel. And I was all about, I was going, there's an international event that's making its way to India for the first time, things like that.

What I overlooked was there's another international event that first came to India today that's De Khan. So big thanks to the organisers for doing that. And yeah, if you have any opinions or hot takes on my somewhat controversial opinions, I'm very happy to chat with you. Thank you once again. Have a great conference.