Two years after leaving backend for devrel: what I miss, what I don't, and what nobody warned me about
Achieng Owino@achieng_devrel
Contents
Not a thread this time. Just a reflection, because several of you asked in DMs whether you should move from engineering into developer relations.
What I miss
- Owning a system. For six years I could point at a payments service and say: that is mine, it moved money for a lot of people today, and it did not fall over. Devrel work is spread across talks, docs, samples and conversations. It matters, but you can rarely point at it.
- The green deploy. That small satisfaction at 4pm on a Tuesday. I still write code, but sample apps do not page you, and somehow that makes them less satisfying.
What I do not miss
- Reconciliation at 3am because a partner bank's settlement file arrived with a different date format. Again.
- Being the only person who understood the ledger. That is not job security. That is a trap.
What nobody warned me about
- Travel and visas. Most big developer conferences are in Europe and North America. With a Kenyan passport that means visa applications, appointment waits, bank statements, invitation letters, and sometimes a refusal two days before the talk. I once gave a keynote on a video call because my visa did not arrive in time. The organisers were kind. It still stung.
- Metrics. Devrel gets measured with vanity numbers: views, followers, booth scans. I push for one number instead: how long it takes a new developer to make their first successful API call. When that goes down, I am doing my job.
- You are always "on". Every comment you make is read as your company's position. I write "opinions mine" in my bio for a reason, and I still get emails about things I said as myself.
- The loneliness of remote devrel. My team is spread over five time zones. Most days my colleagues are names in a chat. The developer community became my office, which is part of why I write here so much.
So, should you move?
If you love explaining things, enjoy writing, and can live without owning a system for a while: try it. Keep coding, keep a side project that can break, or you will lose both your credibility and your joy. If you mainly want to escape on-call, a better team will fix that faster than a new job title.
Sawa. Back to writing docs nobody reads until they need them.
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Comments
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Sign in to commentGrace Wanjiru@grace_wanjiru
Achieng this is so honest. The visa part, I know three Kenyan speakers who gave their talks by video this year. Kindly keep writing these, the young people I mentor read every one
Achieng Owino@achieng_devrel
Asante Grace. If even one of them walks away measuring something better than booth scans, I am happy.
Brian Kiprono@kiprono_codes
"Being the only person who understood the ledger is a trap." Wueh. Our CTO needs to read this, I am that person for M-Pesa at my startup 😅
Achieng Owino@achieng_devrel
Then write it down, Kiprono, before you go on leave. Your future self on a beach will thank you.
Renee Whitfield@renee_em
"If you mainly want to escape on-call, a better team will fix that faster than a new job title." Best career advice in the post. Would you say the same to engineers moving into management?
Achieng Owino@achieng_devrel
Almost word for word, yes. Many people move into management to escape something instead of to do something. The thing follows them.
Kuya Migs@kuya_migs_codes
As someone who basically does devrel on YouTube without the title: "time to first successful API call" is such a better metric than views. Salamat Achieng 🙏
Oluwatobi Adeyemi@tobi_freelance
The visa wahala is real. My friend was invited to speak in Berlin, the visa came 3 days after the conference. They put his slides on the screen with his photo 😂😭
Efua Mensah@efua_designs
"The developer community became my office" 🥺 chale, this is why your threads feel like they are written to us. Thank you
Sam Whitaker@segfault_sam
docs nobody reads until they need them is also how i describe my code comments