Who Do You Work For?
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One of the traditional dev rel questions is: what is the best part of the organization for dev rel? Marketing, engineering or something else? This is not that question. This question is about who do you work for: the developers or your company? In this talk, Mano will explore the dynamic tension between advocating-for and advocating-to developers. And he'll take a look at how different business models and company cultures can further shape how you approach your work.
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Who Do You Work For?
- 1. Who do you work for? Mano Marks, Developer Relations Director, Docker DevXcon 2018 @manomarks
- 2. Marketing Engineering Product It’s not this conversation
- 3. It’s this conversation Company Practitioners
- 6. Critical Understanding Practitioners Features Stability Coolness Save/Earn Company Money Users Data
- 7. But you just want to Build Community Talk about cool tech Go to conferences Give out tee shirts
- 9. Only in DevRel Would We Ask So, who do you work for?
- 11. Factors Company Size Team Size Company Maturity Product Maturity Community Size Community Engagement
- 12. For Instance: Big Company, Big Team
- 14. Strategies Help your company understand why it makes the product
- 15. Strategies Be honest with users about why the product exists
- 16. Strategies Help the company understand why meeting user needs advances their needs
- 18. What is important to you? Money Passion Feeling good about your job Your next job Community Integrity
- 19. So, who do you work for?
- 20. You work for you
- 21. @ManoMarks, Twitter and GitHub https://manomarks.github.io/ https://2018.dockercon.com/
Editor's Notes
- Who pays you really determines what you are doing. When your company doesn't understand the value of what you do, they think you're burning money building brand. When your company does understand the value of what you do, they think you're raking in money. To understand that better, you have to understand what motivates the company, and what motivates the user. Companies are actually easy, if they have it figured it out themselves. Money - Cloud providers, OS vendors, etc. Users - Consumer products, ads supported users. Data - Selling data, or building products off data (Google Reader, Cambridge Analytica...) But you want to do Community Cool tech Advocate for developers Print stickers Complicating factors: * Size of company - Big companies have more flexibility to have people work on different roles, have different impact on the community: https://twitter.com/julioaws/status/982681302100037633 * Stage of company/product Early stage products are almost always about driving adoption. You don't sell much without lots of people liking your stuff. And you get to improve the product quickly because people are willing to give you feedback. Mid stage companies care about things that drive revenue a lot. Assume initial value of the product is shown, and now you have to prove to investors, execs, etc. that that product is doing what it needs to do. Later stage companies need to defend their positions as well as expand usage, more flexibility Facing in: Most important things to do, assuming you want to do this job for awhile: 1) Understand how your company benefits from your program. Tangibly, how does it impact the bottom line. 2) Make sure the company understands this. A lot of people throw something out there without knowing why. Create and then figure out the business model. Help them understand that benefit. 3) Identify how your particular activity drives that. Facing out: 1) Understanding how the company benefits will help you shape how you do outreach. And help you set expectations with your users. If something is free, users are often suspicious until they understand why. Being upfront about that, in a nice way, helps users understand. Why do this open source project? Because we hope you'll buy support/infrastructure/other projects. Why a free API like Maps? Because we want to drive web search volume. Make the web better and we can put more ads on it. Tension Best scenario, major overlap between company and user. More usage drives more money for company, helps solve problem for user. Increasing tension when these diverge. * Increased usage doesn't fit revenue model * Increased useage causes issues with infrastructure without returning results * Increased free usage doesn't drive paid usage This can feel like a trap for DevRel. Here's some strategies for coping: 1) Drive improvement in product (Don't charge for previously free stuff, make paid more attractive) 2) Drive adoption in a way that relies on paid usage. Focus on enterprise products for awhile. You'd be surprised, many users will still happy to find out more. 3) Find another job. No seriously, sometimes the writing is on the wall. If a company stops investing in a product, find one it is investing in, find another role, or quit.