2 p.m.
Today is a day without calls, which is fine. I have three scheduled for next week and a couple where I need to provide some times to people. I’m still at only one full loop locked down, so that’s a little scary, but there are enough irons in the fire that locking down 3-4 more by the end of next week still feels possible.
I’m using today and tomorrow for interview prep. I talked about improving tech skills and working on prepping for non-technical questions. The other things I have to keep expanding and refining are the other crucial elements of developer relations: community engagement and community building, documentation best practices, and best practices for helping developers onboard, get proficient, upskill, and succeed with your product.
Think of it like this. A senior frontend developer should know enough about different front-end frameworks to not only use them (or ramp up very quickly in them), but to have an opinion on why one is better overall or just for a specific task. I need to go in with reasons why I think Slack, Discord, or a forum works best for a developer community. I need to go in with opinions on measuring impact, improving outreach, and gathering and learning from customer data.
While I have experience with these things from prior work, there’s ALWAYS more to know. It’s table stakes to regularly do that kind of research in this kind of role. But you can get bogged down in projects and find you’ve built a backlog of articles, newsletters, and books you’ve set aside for your Continuing Professional Education (CPE). A pause like the next couple of days is a great time to start getting at it.
Thinking about “community”
One of the opinions I have is: “If you want to catch fish, you need to go to the river.” That boils down to meeting developers where they are. If there are communities that already serve your audience, support those communities and become a part of them. You might get pushback at the office because companies don’t like being dependent on things they don’t control. Meanwhile community leaders don’t like interlopers coming in and trying to take charge. It takes giving to the community and participating in it, without demanding anything in return, to gain the trust and traction you need.
When I was managing the Alexa Champions community, there was a new API where developer uptake was lagging Marketing’s targets. A PMM came to me and said “can’t you make the Champions develop some more projects with it?” I had to explain to him that we couldn’t make the Champions do anything. It was a recognition program to reward the people who organically influenced and gave back to our developer community. We could only give them good reasons to try it… and we had to NOT be too aggressive or they’d stop paying attention because we’d have stopped offering value in our communications.
I don’t know about you, but have you ever bought a product from an e-commerce vendor, and then they start mailing you about sales way too often? You just bought a $1300 laptop last week. This week “check out our laptop sale!!!” Next week “check out our laptop sale!!!” You quickly unsubscribe.
If I worked for that company, new purchasers would get a nurture drip to help them discover cool features and great ways to use their new purchase, not pitches to buy another. The drip would slow after a few weeks to a monthly check-in with maintenance and upgrading tips specific to their SKU or a broader category. Once they bought, the trick is to build the brand loyalty so the next time they need to buy, you’re their first (and hopefully only) stop. And yes, there would be pitches for the sales in the drip, but they would be subdued and focused on helping friends and family to get a laptop as great as theirs at a great price.
Last night’s “Book of Boba Fett” featured The Mandalorian training with the Darksaber (a black-bladed light saber created by a Mandalorian Jedi and sort of the Excalibur of the Mandalorian culture). The saber kept getting heavier and the teacher told him “it is getting heavy because you are fighting the saber.” Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) no wisdom was imparted on how to NOT fight the saber.
Still, “it is getting heavy because you are fighting [it]” is a perfect metaphor for trying to influence a community. If you are trying to bend the community to your will, you’ll find increasing resistance. If you understand its needs and serve it, sincerely model your behavior on people you admire for their service to communities, you will gain the influence you need. I probably need to spend some time next week re-reading Jono Bacon and reading that David Spinks book in my backlog. Cialdini’s book on influence (called Influence) might also be good to skim, but Jono and David are recognized masters of building, growing, and motivating communities.
Saying “no” is hard…
One of the HM’s I spoke to this week saw me give a talk at AWS re:Invent. I’ve felt like that was one of my worst talks ever. Meanwhile he thought the talk was great and admitted to feeling a little starstruck talking to me. Another HM yesterday seemed genuinely excited to be speaking to me. Neither of them were creepy excited, but when people are excited to meet me it does trigger my impostor syndrome.
I turned down both opportunities. Now, it wasn’t because of the impostor syndrome triggering. It was because I wasn’t feeling the product or the role. In the cold light of dawn, neither had the balance I’m seeking. But their seemingly genuine happiness that I was considering their role made me feel so guilty for turning them down. I mean turning down that recruiter over a culture page that talked about demanding “extreme time and energy to succeed” as if it were something to be proud of… That was easy. But turning down these two HMs who seemed genuinely happy to meet me was hard.
Wanna follow the search?
You can follow the search by bookmarking the Tech Career category, or if you have a feed reader, follow the Tech Career feed.