Episode 3 | We’re Not Trying to Kill DevRel

For us are we trying to kill Debra? Welcome back to Velocity. The podcast where we ask the hard questions. No, in all seriousness, it was interesting because I, when we first founded F&F, I went to a conference shortly thereafter and I got so much pushback from our beautiful, wonderful friends and developer relations. You really? Oh yeah, they were like, why are you trying to kill Debra? And I was like, first of all, I've dedicated a decade of my life to this. I'm not trying to kill Debra. So you have more reason to kill anyone. And then knowledge to do so. No, I think it's like a totally different discipline, but it is interesting how people kind of overlay Debra with influencers and I think it's an interesting kind of interpretation of the work. Well, I think it is too, but I feel like we need to zoom out and define what Debra is. No, thank you. Gotta go. Goodbye. Emily Frieden. How would you, maybe this can be our icebreaker question for you to say, how would you define Debra? In one sentence. Who are you and what's your role and I'll tell you different answer. No, I feel very passionately that developer relations is constantly being put into an organizational box. The debate we are having is wrong on the grounds of how it's trying to define it. So typically you'll hear developer relations, oh, is it marketing? Is it product? Is it development? And it's none of those things. Developer relations is the equivalent of a special forces team, in my opinion. They do not fall directly into a particular category or sort of branch of a company. Because you're not going to hit the same like OKRs. It's not predictable nature to develop relations. Develop relations is solving the problem in front of you and trying to prevent bigger problems down the road. Yes, I totally agree with all of that. I also think it's hilarious that I asked you what is Debra and you basically said, I reject the premise of the question. That can't be a good sign for the future of this particular discipline. No, I think I mean people have floated the idea of having a chief Debra officer, which I find to be ridiculous. Really like seriously? Oh yeah. Yeah, I think that's very. Debra people? I have no interest in that. I think it should be, you know, there's debates on where it should roll up in the company. But for me, the most effective difference I made for the companies I worked with in developer relations was fundamentally preventing the company from doing or making poor decisions that would impact the developer community negatively and potentially harm the brand. And to solving problems quickly through the vast network of my friends, because I'm very popular. No, but I think that is where. That is where developer relations really shines because I can pick up the phone and call someone at any company and say, hey, we have this issue, how can we fix this? And we don't have to escalate through this legal form of path. No, but that's so interesting though, because like any kind of informal backdoor, backroom network like that, like you can only call so many favors. And I think a lot of companies that hire. Yeah. Debra all people who are known for being able to do that don't seem to understand that they can't just push that button 12 times a day every day. Oh, and that they also don't have to give, right? Because if I'm going to ask favors, it is very much like diplomacy, I think, in that kind of context, where it is an economy of favors. And if you're at Apple and I'm at Google, then if you need something, I have to deliver on that favor, which takes some work, because it is this kind of like. Yes. It's not purely transactional, but it is a community that of helpers. I mean, if you're at Apple and I'm at Google, it definitely is transactional. I mean, it's like $20 billion to keep my search engine in your browser. But the company level for sure. But at the personal level, like, I mean, you know, if a friend needs help, I'm going to help. Absolutely. You are. Yeah. And I think DeVreal people have been exploited for those connections over the years. And that's part of what has made a lot of DeVreal people honestly feel burned out. I would say. I was explaining this to someone because it's interesting. I think, you know, again, it's a different episode where Twitter. What happened to Twitter? But it feels right now that our social circles and tech are somewhat calcified, based on where they were because there was this fracture. And I was explaining to someone that a lot of the people that I used to be on the conference circuit with are doing their own thing, taking a break. Like, you know, a lot of us are burnt out. A lot of us are burnt out. Doing DeVreal well requires an awful lot of. It's not even that it takes more hours than other kinds of roles. It takes a lot of hours of being really on. And it doesn't have a lot of, you know, like predictable patterns that you can fall back into. You're kind of solving different problems every day. That is not really a shelf stable way to live. And I feel like a lot of the really, really good DeVreal people have known. They do it for two or three years and then they need to go take a sabbatical and engineering again. Or they need to go back to marketing for a little while. And that's not a knock on them. It's just like you do. You strip your gears trying to do that for a period of time. Even someone like a Kelsey Heitau, right? Like he was incredible. And he got to the point where he could retire. Yes. Like he wasn't going to do that for 20 years. That's an impossible pace to keep. Absolutely not. And I think Kelsey is such an interesting case study because Kelsey is an incredible human being. I have incredible respect for him. And so many people ask in developer relations, how do I find the next Kelsey? And my answer is you wouldn't recognize Kelsey if he came and sat in the interview chair. You wouldn't hire the Kelsey because Kelsey is like an exceptional human and stepped in and rose into a role. But a lot of times companies will reject the Kelsey's outright because they don't fit this box. They aren't hitting you. Okay. Well, what are you doing? Are you a content creator? Are you an engineer? Like they try and kind of like frame it. And the truth is it can be all sorts of different skill sets that exist in them. Yes, there's no great man theory of history that comes to dev realm. How dare you bring up great man theory right now. It's all systems and choices and incentives and motivations. And on that bummer note, I feel like dev realm. As a lot of people think of it, there are conceptions of it are still stuck in 2019. This pre-pandemic world where there was a lot of conference travel, a lot of assumption that dev realm would serve as this. I don't want to say like a public facing ambassador, pitch person for your product, but that really was what was expected of folks. And I think even some dev realm folks kind of got to think of themselves in that way. That was their self conception. That was also not a shelf stable way to go about things. And the combination of the pandemic and the end of zero interest rate meant that a lot of dev realm folks have had to modify their roles or their teams have changed their charter. Since then, what do you see as the future of dev realm? So I think you're exactly right. I would say that in 2019, that was probably the pinnacle of that flavor of developer relations. And it was focused on this sort of celebrity type personality within tech. And there is value to that to a degree. But I think we focused way too much on that. I mean, I was saying this in 2017-2018, we were hiring people who literally just wanted to be tech famous, which like there's nothing wrong with that. I'm not knocking people. Totally. But if you go into that role in particular, focused on you, you're not going to be successful. You're exactly right. And I want to say something, maybe a little controversial here, given that we theoretically run an influencer marketing company. Which is that I don't think developer celebrity itself is what it was or is ever going to be again. Yeah, no, I think we're all just way more jaded than we were five or ten years ago. And we just don't care. Right? Like, I just want to do my job and get paid for it. Tell me what I need to use. Right? I'm not going to put you up on a pedestal for doing it. Yeah. So the influencers who work with who are tremendous now, like they just create value and write interesting stuff that people want to learn from, you know? Well, and it's focused on the content, not the personality. I think where we've been wrong. Yeah, a bunch of people got up on stage and said, I am so and so, and this is why I'm amazing for 25 minutes. And the truth is, I don't care. I don't want to hear myself do that. Like, that is not interesting. I'm sure you are amazing, but. But it's like a cool, you know, like that's not appropriate for a talk. And so, yeah, I think the pendulum swung all the way over here. It was really focused on this kind of outward facing purely promotional, what I would call evangelism. Yes, and unfortunate, but apt. I think term. Yes. And so, you know, you have this kind of approach. And now people are trying to figure out, okay, what's next to your point. And I think it has to get Chris on what the value add to the company actually is. And a lot of people default to content creation, because that's the easiest thing. But I don't actually don't think that's the best use of developing. Really? True story. No, I think that's like the easiest way to solve the problem. Like, okay, we're going to have them right. I mean, I heard one team, like they wanted each advocate to write one blog awake. And I was like, one blog awake. I'll get paid to write one blog awake. Are you kidding me? Yeah. Like the lowest bar. I know. Do it ever. If you had GPT, right? No, I think it's, you know, again, it's this very multifaceted role. And I think, you know, when we had Kendall on the show, he was talking around making sure that product marketing or other marketing functions inform product of how the product can be improved. And that is where I think developer relations really starts to shine. But it's often invisible labor. And that's the issue. Famously well-compensated and recognized by everyone. Because if you find out, you know, my value in going to a bunch of conferences wasn't the talk I gave. It was, you know, you can argue having like a brand name up on my slides has some value. I actually don't think it has a ton of value. It's the people I'm talking to. It's a feedback I'm getting. It's the relationships I'm building. That is what ultimately has value to the brand. And it is this sort of acknowledgement that the brand is choosing to invest in particular developer communities. That has a ton of value to them. We're kind of seeing a pull back around that. We are. Yeah. And I think that sort of thing always follows the money, too, doesn't it? So like we see, like we work at AI companies where they have these fantastic, you know, built out dev rail teams that are well-funded and have lots going on. Right. But if you're in one of those companies that last got funded in 2022 and it's so clear that no more is ever coming, you know, that's not a place you want to be if you're on the dev rail team. Right. Because you're going to have to be showing revenue contribution one way or the other. And so it's not that I think dev rail development shouldn't create content. They absolutely should. I think dev rail should be, you know, helping leaders write, you know, it's helping, you know, kind of create these core messages, making super technical, deep content to that helps people onboard to the product, expand a product, etc. That is all very much worth it. But if it's, you know, I'm going to sit on my phone and tweet all day, like, no, thank you. If you had to come up with a better name for the discipline of dev rail and get everyone in the world to adopt overnight, what would not be on the list? That's a really hard question. Was that a lead-in? Do you have an opinion around this? I don't. I really wanted to surprise you with it and see what you thought. I can just go. I mean, I feel like dev X is a different thing. It is in my opinion. Although I think a lot of dev rail people fluidly move in and out of that. Yes. Right. How would you define the difference between those two? So I think people move into dev X when they need to prove that they have impact to product. No, I think developer experience is actually super valuable. It is, but that is much more technical than I think most of the people who call themselves dev X actually you know, are day to day. For me, dev X is, okay, how do I actually make this product more delightful and more usable to a developer? So very product-aligned. Very product-aligned. Whereas what we're talking about with dev rail is it's a little bit of support for sales, a little bit of support for customer service, a lot probably a support of product marketing and associated disciplines. Certainly some support for product and design and engineering, all that kind of thing. I don't know if there is a term that fits that, other than you know, what we're already using, but I worry that developer relations as a term is a little bit poisoned. So I wonder. I think people have always hated it. So I've always worked in a relations. I've worked in public relations, I've worked in community relations, I've worked in developer relations, and I think people don't like the relations because people forget- People don't like the relations. That's coming to a t-shirt near you. No, I think when things are going, it's a great design, right? When things are going well and everyone loves you, people think why are we investing money in this? But when you stop investing money in it, people don't love you. And you see this over and over again. It's like a 24 month cycle, isn't it? Oh, I'll pick on Netlify. Netlify was like the most beautiful tech product. We loved Netlify. Everyone is excited about Netlify. Sure, I still have a bunch of personal sites hosted on Netlify, but I'll never pay them a time for it, and they're in less than problem. But like, you know, I would say on a top at a certain point, if I had to list top 10 tech companies that I think are going to go big, Netlify was 100% on that list. Yeah, they had the funding, they had the people, they had the developer love, right? Yeah, developer love. And the developer love came in large part because they had stellar DevRel team. And then they slowly either let those folks go or did away with the team. And you know, there are other things that contributed to Netlify's current standing, I'm sure. But I think that was a huge component of it. Because when you let go, when you stop investing in developers, developers stop investing in you. Developers stop investing in you, yes, with their zero dollars. But they're, but they're time and attention. And you know, everything else. I mean, the very least I suppose that helps your valuation. I think the pendulum swing that we see, of course, is it's like, oh, crap, the product's got to make money now. So we're going to go up market and we're going to try to sell to the enterprise, do that for two years. Wait, what happened to the developers? You know, it's just over and over again. If your company is going through that right now and you're listening to this, I promise you not alone. We probably hear that weekly current companies we talk to. Yeah. Right. And I think, I mean, you know, getting back to us, like the influencer marketing, I think is such a good partnership with developer relations. Because in large part, it can drive toward that more technical content, drive toward the messaging that they want. Okay. Well, that's the obvious question. Then where does developer relations classically speaking leave off and where does influencer marketing leave on? Yeah. I don't know what the opposite leave off is. I mean, I imagine there's there's squishing us there. For me, your dev rail team should be the experts on your brand and products for your specific audiences. So let's say for a dev tool, that would be developers, probably in a particular ecosystem, they need to understand, you know, what businesses are these people in? What are the challenges? Where does their product thrive? Where are the third rails of their product? What is it good for? What is it not? And then how to actually kind of ease that burden as people utilize it. And creating content around that and really kind of driving driving those. Very first party. Very bespoke. Very. Yeah. Not a lot of opinion around it. It's just the voice of the product. Well, I think you can have opinions. So I think the individuals, you know, I always had opinions around Microsoft. I'm opinionated. But I also don't think like that was a, it was sort of taking the brand and putting Emily spin on it. But you're right. Like I was wrapping the brand. Yes. A lot more than I could as an independent. Of course. And everybody knows that whether it's consciously or not. Right. When you speak on behalf of the brand, it's so weird because it's like you may have this big following and a bunch of people that respect you. But the minute that you go to work for the company, people automatically discount anything that you have to say about that brand thereafter. Well, they put an asterix next to it. Like, okay, you know, and I think the where it it becomes a trust exercise is do I trust this human enough to know that they are not actually being disingenuous with me when they're talking about this product and saying that it's good. And part of that is being open to saying what's bad about it, right? Which brands are well, and again, getting back to someone like Kelsey, one of the things that made him some ask was that he had no problem. Yeah. Engaging where there were problems and speaking about them plainly. Absolutely. But I'm sure that rough, rustled feathers at, you know, no comment. So yeah, I think, you know, you have, you have these kinds of situations where you're sort of fighting the internal battle and defense of the external battle. And that is part of the challenge of Debra. Where would you put the line between influencers and Debra? Anywhere that, you know, has dollars flowing toward me personally. That's it. No, I think look, we've kind of covered this already, but we know that external influencers can say things the brand can't. And that extends to people who are repping the brand as employees full time, right? So while you may be getting sponsored to say something as a creator, like you didn't have to take their money. Yeah. It's not like you're going to lose your job if you didn't take that money. So there is a built-in expectation of, okay, this creator chose to partner with this company for this specific campaign. They may not care about her like every feature of this product, but they cared about this feature enough to sponsor and do a partnership with them. I think as well, once you're trying to burst out of the, we might call it the solar system, right, of people that you're already talking to. Yeah. As a, you know, brand account or a developer adbit account, you're kind of captured. You have the audience that you have. Oh yeah. You're hitting them over and over again. And that's great. But, you know, how do you grow beyond that? It can't be at your own speed, right? You've got to be able to level up and reach hundreds of thousands of people that you're not already talking to. Influencers are great at doing that. So I think this is kind of where you started the conversation, but this is why we always try to take the content created by the developer relations folks and get more light and air on it through what the influencers are doing. So it should be a win-win. It should be a both-hand study the roar. It is. No, we love working with DevRel teams. Often because they have really high quality developer focused, you know, content and understanding in a way that, you know, product marketing sometimes doesn't. There are some very technical product marketing teams, but I would say on the large part. Like, DevRel is great. They should be funded. They should have huge influence on marketing budgets. All these are all things that we advocate for. Absolutely. Yeah, and I think, you know, when you're talking about that solar system of reach, I wonder sometimes I almost became less valuable to the brand when I was hired. You know, you touched on this earlier. It's like, oh, well, you're locked in. But even, you know, the products and technical sort of specialties that I really focused on were focused on that ecosystem versus really being able to look at the broader. Like, I've learned so much even the last year and a half of this business. Yes. Just talking to other tech companies. Oh, they're doing that. Oh, that's such a cool approach. Oh, that's interesting. In a way that I haven't, because I've so been so locked into a particular culture and brand. Yep. Yeah. Having that ability to see the whole landscape is really important. It is. We have been bragging to our producer about ending these episodes like right on time. And I'm pretty sure we're there, but I have one more fun question for you. We have a lot of people. Okay. Do we really? Yeah. Wow. See, look at that. I'm anticipating. Okay. Who is on your personal dev role, Mount Rushmore? Oh, oh, gosh. With no disrespect to anyone who you do not mention. Okay. I think Sue's Hinton is someone I worked with at Microsoft. Yep. Who she was and is fucking genius. Like, she's one of the smartest people I've ever met. And her kind of enthusiasm to both learn and teach is almost unmatched. I have just a tremendous amount of respect for her and her work. And she would pick things up so quickly. I learned so much from Sue's. She was someone you could kind of like hand something to and just be like, figure it out and be like, 20 hours. Like, this is the app I've built. How? Love, Sue's. Who else? I think, you know, we don't talk a ton about influential or dev realm managers enough. I think a lot of times the people who end up in high ranking leaders of developer relations teams are the worst part of that team. And I, I, I, you know, I think in part because dev realm hasn't been broad enough as a discipline or large enough for long enough to have a clear group of leaders that have done the work. So often you end up with people who came in very early on who worked in another discipline or did marketing or kind of like fell into this. And managing these kinds of teams requires like very steady ego because in that, you know, in the peak where you're dealing with all those people who are very well known and very well popular, you have to manage them and give them feedback. That's a very particular kind of person. So I will, I'll flag Ashley Willis as someone who is. Ashley is amazing. We've both worked for Ashley. Yes. In fact, I would say Ashley probably has more responsibility for this company and this partnership existing than anyone else because we trusted each other. Having never met because we knew both new Ashley. But yeah, she's, I think, one of the strongest managers of dev realm across the industry, being able to handle those, those egos. And the full flex of like a human being, I think, you know, anytime you have someone who has a lot of empathy, you also have someone who is very sensitive. And kind of walking someone through their emotions requires something, you know, a leader who tells people to stop crying on a call is probably not the best dev realm. That's so exhausting. How do you do it? Oh, it'd be terrible. Let's see, who, I don't think it's too more. You feel like you have to put Kelsey on there, right? Oh, of course. I mean, Kelsey, hi, Tara. I'm trying, because we've already praised Kelsey, hi, Tara, you know, it's like we're gilding the lily at this point. Who else? I think trying to think of people with different skill stats with it. Who's on yours? We have like a combined Mount Rushmore. I mean, I don't know if he's ever technically had a dev realm role, which is what makes these so hard, but he does so much that I would consider to be what a great dev realm person does is Jared Short. Oh, yeah. Jared is incredible. He's an AWS like dev tools hero or something, and he's just he's a straight up product engineer. He's done that for a long time. I managed him for a while back at a consulting company I worked out a few years ago where I would say we were both doing more dev realm than anything else, but his ability to, you know, just like I think what defines a lot of the great developer relations people who create content. Yeah. Is there just having so much fun? Yes. Yes. You will never beat someone who is having fun. You're right. You just won't. You're right. And he's a person who would take a new tool, a new technology, a new product and say, oh, this looks like the most fun thing to play with that I've ever seen. And then he'd go away in four hours later. He'd have the most hilarious sample app that you'd you'd ever played with, right? And because his love is baked into it, then that automatically attracts the love of other people. I love that. So I, you know, anytime I meet a Jared Short, there's only one Jared short. Yeah. Like that's that would be a quality I'd be looking for in any great dev realm engineer. Well, and in that category, I would put Seth Juarez, I'm Cassidy Williams. Cassidy's great. There he is. Just people who whose enthusiasm is unmatched and whose genuine love for people and developers is ever present. I love that. Yeah. Good humans go a long way. Yeah. I think these are, I mean, I could go on and on. There's some incredible people in the industry. They really are. And it's anyone who is willing to spend their free time building things Sarah Dressner is on this list. Like, building things more on the dev excide. She's incredibly also from that great Netlify roster as with Cassidy, right? Yes, exactly. But, you know, having this balance between engineering and product and marketing, like if you can get all of those, someone who is technical, someone who can speak, someone who is, you know, humble, shows up, you know, pulls up their sleeve and does the not always glamorous work. Because that is the difference between, you know, the people that I really admire and look up to in this role and the people that I don't admire, that's the difference. Are you willing to do hard work for no gain? Or are you in it when people are watching? Exactly. Yep. Those are the kind of folks who have the staying power and will have a great career, no matter where the winds of change are blowing in the dev realm industry as a whole. Oh my gosh. And I think that transfers to influencers. When you have someone who is naturally enthusiastic, naturally giving an humble, they, they stand the test of time. Some of these influencers, there's an arc to their story. They're absolutely is. Yeah, people who are genuine are going a long, long way with that. So we're not trying to kill dev roles when I'm hearing. I mean, like what we really want to do is make them feel like there's a career in this for them to leave their jobs and become full-time influencers. Oh my gosh. We've had some of our influencers quit their full-time job and I love it. Like the fact that we're able to impart, fund that and make them feel secure and that makes me so happy. Yeah, that's huge. I mean, you are valued. Yes. And you deserve to be recognized and paid for what you do better than anybody else. Yes. Well, thanks once again for joining us. I have been Forest, Brazil. This is Emily Freeman. My co-founder at Freeman and Forest. Our thanks to Britain, Noel and Tyler Freeman are wonderful producers on this episode. As always, it really, really helps us if you like, share, subscribe, however you engage with your podcast. Tell your friends. And if you have something you want us to talk about, like let us know. You know, tweet at us. Tell us what we need to talk about on the next episode. Thank you.