DevRel Management and Leadership: Guidance, Skill Development, and Book Recommendations
Becoming a developer relations manager or leader is best learned on the job via training, coaching, and mentoring. But don't discount the value of books!
Over the summer, I’ve been running a series of free ad hoc mentorship calls for folks in the community. It’s been a privilege to chat with people from all over the world, and I’ve learned a lot about common career challenges. A recurring question I get from both current DevRels and also people looking to get into this role is how to become a developer relations manager or leader.
In this post, I plan to share some of the advice I typically provide, along with several book recommendations I have found useful on my journey to becoming a DevRel leader.
Management and Leadership: Two separate skills
There are a lot of great articles already written about the difference between leadership and management, and if you are early in your career, it’s worth exploring this topic. When I’m mentoring, I often find that folks conflate the two skills and roles. This is understandable, and a lot of senior DevRel people that are visible in the community are both managers and leaders. I’m thinking of awesome folks like Lorna Mitchell, Brian Douglas, and Tim Bergland. In my experience, anyone with a job title similar to “Director of DevRel”, “Head of DevRel”, or “VP of DevRel” are acting as both managers and leaders.
However, there are many more excellent DevRel managers that aren’t visible on the Interwebs or don’t aspire to be in leadership positions. I’ve been fortunate enough to meet these people when interviewing, mentoring, and hanging out in community spaces. They don’t necessarily want to cultivate a public profile (or deal with the baggage this can come with), so they “chop wood and carry water” and exclusively focus on setting up processes, systems, and opportunities for their teams. This is a valuable role, and these folks provide a lot of leverage. They enable their teams to get stuff done at scale.
Whether you want to be a DevRel manager or leader, my advice is to work systematically on developing your skills in the following order:
Become a (near) expert in your chosen technical domain, i.e. Java, Kubernetes, CI & CD, APIs, security, etc. You have to be able to empathise with your community and customers, you need to be seen as technically authentic, and in the future, you’ll be assessing the technical quality of other teammates’ work.
Craft your developer relations “individual contributor” (IC) skills, i.e. writing, presenting, creating demos, podcasting, audience identification, etc. As you advance at this stage, you also need to enhance your ability to evaluate others’ work. Volunteering to moderate community contributions or review event CFPs can be invaluable!
Work on management skills and gain experience in planning, prioritization, and people management. If you aspire to leadership, you will need to develop your understanding of the wider business context and how your team contributes to company goals.
Cultivate leadership skills that encompass advanced domain expertise, senior DevRel IC skills, and management++, i.e. vision, goal setting, alignment, communication, and system/organization debugging.
Ideally, these skills should be learned with the support of a good DevRel manager or mentor within your company. Nothing beats the real-life experience you gain by actively working and aiming to level up in your chosen domain. However, I appreciate that not everyone is fortunate enough to have this opportunity or access to a good manager or mentor, and books can therefore provide a solid foundation.
My favourite books for (aspiring) technical managers and leaders
I sent the following Tweet with my technical management and leadership book recommendations early in the month, and it proved popular. I’ve included a list of the books below and also included some Amazon UK and USA affiliate links if you fancy contributing to my future book fund!:
The Manager’s Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change (Amazon UK | USA)
97 Things Every Engineering Manager Should Know (Amazon UK | USA)
Although none of these recommendations are about DevRel management per se, I’ve found them much more useful in comparison with general management skill development books. The career path and challenges of managing engineering teams are quite similar in comparison with managing DevRel teams. And you’re often working hand-in-hand with engineering management in any DevRel role, so these books give you a common language and framework when interacting with your engineering peers inside and outside the organization.
In addition to learning general technical management and leadership skills, you will also benefit from learning more about business skills. I specifically recommend learning about go-to-market (GTM), such as marketing and sales, as DevRel typically work very closely with these departments. As you move up through the ranks within an organization, you will also be expected to develop a deeper understanding of how the work you and your team do contributes to the wider company goals.
Levelling up your DevRel skills and knowledge
Although the “traditional” path for DevRel leaders is first to become senior ICs and then managers, this isn’t the only career path. As Tanya’s Staff Engineer book discusses, it’s perfectly possible to be a technical leader without managing people. We’re starting to see more Staff Developer Advocates, like the awesome Rich Burroughs.
Regardless of whether you want to manage people or not, I often recommend the following content if you are looking to level up your DevRel leadership game.
MKT1 Newsletter by Emily Kramer and Kathleen Estreich
All DevRels should understand the basics of the marketing funnel and how to collaborate effectively with the wider marketing function. I’ve learned a lot from Emily and Kathleen, and find myself constantly using their models and frameworks.
The Product Led Geek by Ben Williams
If you’re a DevRel working in the developer tooling or SaaS space, there’s a good chance you’re adopting some form of Product-Led Growth (PLG). Ben’s newsletter draws on a wealth of his PLG experience from one of the leaders in this space, Snyk.
What’s Hot in Enterprise by Ed Sim
If you’re looking to become a DevRel leader, Ed’s newsletter will give you pointers for future technology and trends, as well as a VC’s perspective on successful go-to-market motions.
Software Snack Bites by Shomik Ghosh
Much like Ed, Shomik provides a wealth of context about the wider developer tooling and SaaS GTM spaces. The podcast with DevRel leader bdougie is an essential listen.
The Pragmatic Engineer by Gergely Orosz
The Pragmatic Engineer regularly provides great insight into current technology and technical organizational trends. I’m a happy, paid subscriber to Gergely’s newsletter.
And here are a couple of additional book recommendations:
Developer Marketing Does Not Exist: The Authentic Guide to Reach a Technical Audience (Amazon UK | USA)
This is the go-to book for creating technical DevRel content.
Developer Relations: How to Build and Grow a Successful Developer Program (Amazon UK | USA)
This is currently the go-to book for building out a developer relations team and program. The models and diagrams presented throughout the book are super useful!
Want to know more about DevRel?
I hope this post has helped clarify the journey from DevRel individual contributor to management and/or to leadership.
Please comment below and let me know if you would like more content on the DevRel career path.
And don’t forget to subscribe! I’m aiming to share a post every two weeks or so.