🥑 It's ripe! I'm back as promised with results from our 2023 Developer Relations compensation & culture survey.

Now presenting: The 2023 Developer Relations compensation & culture report!

This year's report is produced with thanks to inimitable collaboration from industry leaders around the globe and builders like you in communities like this one. It highlights the lived experiences of 136 Developer Relations professionals and it offers data focused on compensation, roles and responsibilities, expectations, and personal wellbeing in the industry in an effort to present a more holistic view of a career in DevRel. With it, we hope to empower more informed conversations for everyone in the community.

5 highlights from the report:

1️⃣ Across all industries and geographies, the median total gross compensation, pre-tax, for Developer Relations professionals is equivalent to $175,000 USD.

2️⃣ Developer Relations professionals most commonly report into marketing or Developer Relations/community departments.

3️⃣ According to 61.5% of respondents, the primary responsibility for Developer Relations professionals is creating educational content and resources.

4️⃣ A notable majority of DevRel professionals, 58.6%, are tasked with delivering on a primary business objective: product awareness.

5️⃣ When asked what would improve their physical, mental, or emotional wellbeing the most, 53.8% of respondents seek access to data that allows them to show the impact of their role on business objectives.

There are many ways to consume its contents. I invite you to try them all:

• Read the blog post

• Download the full report for free

• Share the synopsis on LinkedIn

• Or on Twxtter

• Circle your favorite parts and discuss with a friend under the shade of a 🌳

...

Last year, this group had some great ideas for improving the report. So if you have feedback for how we can level up next year's report too, I'd love to hear it!

With great admiration,
Rebecca and all the cats at Common Room

Hi everyone!

I'm currently working as a Software Engineer, primarily focused on backend development.

Lately, I've been exploring Developer Relations (DevRel) as a potential career direction.

I'm curious about how people have made the transition from traditional software engineering into Developer Relations.

For those currently working in DevRel or who have made a similar transition:

• What skills and experience are most important to break into DevRel?

• How much emphasis is placed on coding and building projects versus technical writing, tutorials, blogging, and public speaking?

• Is having a portfolio of projects, demos, and technical articles important when applying?

• What AI-related skills or tools would you recommend focusing on, especially for someone interested in AI Developer Relations?

• Are there any entry-level or associate-level DevRel opportunities for people coming from a software engineering background?

I'd really appreciate hearing about your experiences, suggestions, or even mistakes to avoid during the transition.

I'm not necessarily looking for a shortcut into the field. I'd genuinely like to understand what the role involves and how I can fill the gaps, build the right skills and experience to make this transition.

Thanks in advance! Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Hey folks, I’m Aspleenic, your newest friendly neighborhood r/DevRel mod!

I’ve been involved in DevRel since the mid to late 2000’s (long before it was called Developer Relations) and things have changed quite a bit.

I can post my observations but I would love to hear where people think we are, what we’ve learned from the past (the good and the bad), and where this work goes in the future.

Happy to discuss all angles!

DevRel Foundation is a newly created open source foundation, and is part of the Linux Foundation. Its mission is to elevate the professional practice of developer relations and increase awareness of it as a driver of business value. You can read more details in the charter. The foundation was officially launched last week.

Join the discord channel for discussion or follow along on GitHub organization. Recommend to join the community mailing list and participate in the discussions.

Hi,

I'd like to share an opening for a Developer Advocate at SerpApi.

SerpApi is the leading solution to integrate search data into web applications. Our API scrapes search engines, solves CAPTCHAs, and keeps up with changing page layouts in one simple GET request. Our customers include Airbnb, Nvidia, Meta, Shopify, GrubHub and more.

Link for the role: https://serpapi.com/careers/developer-advocate

Hey everyone,

I transitioned into tech a couple of years ago and landed a DevRel job right away. I love what I do, but the issue is that I’ve never had real, hands-on production experience. Besides triggering imposter syndrome I feel stuck and unsure how to advance my career. I’d appreciate some guidance.

1. I've been learning our product through docs and small projects but, I want to dive deeper. I've asked several colleagues, including my manager if I can join client calls. I want to learn about their real-world challenges and questions. So far, no luck—aside from one SE manager who invited me to a standup (which was great but intimidating). I don’t want to keep pestering people, but I feel like I’m missing out on learning. How can I encourage my team to include me more without coming across as a nuisance?

2. I give talks at conferences and meetups, and people see me as a subject matter expert (SME), which is exciting but also nerve-wracking. I’m always afraid someone will ask a question I can’t answer, or they’ll find out I haven’t worked directly in production environments. Should I switch to a more technical role, at my company or elsewhere? Or, should I trust I'm on the right path, despite my lack of deep technical experience?

3. Since part of my job is content creation, I’ve thought about sharing my journey from a non-technical background to where I am now. I want to inspire others who are considering similar paths. But I worry that by being too transparent about my lack of hands-on experience, people might start doubting my expertise. Do you think it’s okay to openly share my background, or would that hurt my credibility?

Thanks for reading this far! I’m all ears for any advice or insights. If I get enough feedback, I might even make a video about it to help others who are in the same boat! 😊

Hi, I’ve been a SWE for a couple years and now considering the transition into DevRel. Just curious what the day to day looks like for DevRel and how much engineering you still do? How has the role evolved with AI?

And if anyone’s made the switch - why did you / how did you know the switch made sense?

Thanks :)

Hey DevRels!

I am a recruiter/headhunter in the AI/ML/HPC space.

I have 4 open DevRel roles right now at startups of various stages. You guys are in demand!

The first three listed are 1st DevRel hires, the last is management for a team of 3.

• Founding (Junior) DevRel - Foundational Model builder - 1+ years in DevRel - San Jose

• Founding DevRel - LLMOps Platform - 4+ yrs exp. - San Fran

• DevRel - GPU Orchestration & Inference Platform - AI Infra exp. needed - US Remote

• DevRel Lead - LLMOps Platform - 5+ yrs exp. - US Remote

If you have DevRel experience in AI or AI Infra, I’d love to chat.

Drop me a DM!

Im a software engineer (6YOE) currently very curious and interested in devrel. I wanted to get some insight on why you love/like your job? What does your day to day look like?

Looking for advice from people who’ve made the engineering ↔ DevRel/DevEx move, especially senior /staff engineers.

Context:
- 5+ YOE, mostly backend/infrastructure
- Moved to the UK last year; now at a public tech company
- Good compensation, equity (~£100K TC) and WLB
- On track for promo next quarter
- Enjoy speaking, demos, and working with developers along with hands-on core distributed systems engineering

Offer:
- Series C AI company, mostly SF-based
- DevRel role under Marketing
- Materially higher compensation (1.5-1.8x) and more upside
- Cross time zone and likely poor WLB

My hesitation: I want more visibility and developer facing work but don’t want to move away from engineering. I also want to preserve the option of returning to core engineering and senior/staff IC levels.

For those who’ve done this:
- How reversible is the move into DevRel?
- Does reporting into Marketing matter?
- Would you trade a strong, stable engineering trajectory for materially higher comp and AI startup upside?
- What would you clarify before accepting?

When I talk about what I do, most people focus on the community half - the forums, the events, the developer relationships. That part is visible.

What nobody warned me about was how much of the job is internal advocacy. Getting the feedback you collect from developers to actually reach the people who can act on it, in a form they can act on.

Collecting signal is the easier half. Someone tells you the API auth flow is confusing. Another person can't find the webhooks documentation. A third mentions in passing they nearly gave up during onboarding. You know these things.

The harder half is walking into a product planning meeting and making a compelling enough case that something changes. That requires being able to translate "developers are frustrated with X" into something specific enough that engineering can act on. It requires understanding how prioritisation works at your specific company. It requires trust with leadership that you have to build before you urgently need it.

The DevRel practitioners I've seen burn out fastest are usually excellent at the community half and completely unsupported in the internal half. They build something real. The signal is there. And then it disappears into a process that wasn't designed to receive it.

How do others handle this? Particularly curious about how people structure their feedback reporting - what formats actually get traction with product and engineering.

Hey everyone, Like many of you, our DevRel team has been under the microscope. The constant question from leadership was, "Was that event sponsorship worth it?" and for a long time, our answers were based on anecdotes and what felt like success. In this economic climate, that's just not good enough. We knew we had to find a way to make our value visible in a language the rest of the business - especially finance - understands. So we built what we call the DevRel Value Model. I wanted to share it here to get your thoughts, critiques, and hear what you all are doing.

Phase 1: Comparing Apples to Apples (No Money Involved)

First, we just wanted to know if our events were successful in relative terms. We assigned a simple weighted score to every activity:

• Talk attendee = 1 point

• Workshop attendee = 3 points

• Hands-on activation (e.g., booth demo signup) = 5 points

Then, we’d calculate a Total Score and divide it by the event cost to get a Value Index. This let us say things like, "Event B performed 15% better than Event A on a per-dollar basis," which was already a huge step up.

Phase 2: Translating a Community Metric to a Business Metric

This is where it got interesting. We worked with our finance team to agree on a theoretical value for a single developer registration on our platform (e.g., $10 for this example).

We then created "registration equivalents" based on our weighted activities. The logic is that higher-engagement activities have a higher likelihood of leading to a registration.

• 10 talk attendees ≈ 1 registration equivalent

• A single workshop attendee ≈ 0.6 registration equivalents

• A single activation ≈ 1 registration equivalent

So an event with 200 talk attendees and 50 workshop attendees generated (20 + 30) = 50 registration equivalents. At $10 each, that’s $500 theoretical value.

Why This Works for Us: This model is intentionally theoretical. It's not perfect sales attribution, and we're clear about that with leadership. But it shifts the conversation from ambiguity to credibility. Instead of being a mysterious cost center, we can now show a directional ROI for our programs, from events to content. It's helped us defend our budget and prove our strategic importance.

I explained the whole journey and detailed the math in the full article if you're interested (https://tpiros.dev/blog/devrel-value-model/).

But I'm really curious to hear from this community:

• How are you currently measuring DevRel success?

• Have you tried tying your activities to a monetary value? How did leadership react?

• What are the biggest flaws or risks you see with this kind of approach?

I lately transitioned into Devrel and want to automate some parts of my work, Any suggestions on what agents/automations do I build?

What are you guys using at your company? Please suggest

I’m a mid-level engineer at a company that recently launched an SDK. Lately, I’ve become “the guy” for onboarding—first through internal training videos, and now I’m being tapped to create a full course for SDK developers and external partners who will be building on our platform. I’ve stood out as someone who can code but also explain things well and support other devs.

This sprint, I was told not to take any dev tickets so I could focus entirely on course content. It feels like I’m shifting into a DevRel-adjacent role—maybe temporarily, maybe long-term—and I’m honestly excited about it. There’s a chance I’ll be doing both going forward: dev work and content/training.

I’d love advice on: 1. Is this a common entry point into DevRel? 2. When and how should I bring up title and compensation? What pay range is fair to expect? 3. Is a dual dev/dev-rel setup sustainable, or is it a fast track to burnout?

Your feed might be flooded with April Fools day posts today, but we're happy to report two very real announcements!1. We are giving you one more day to submit your talk.

That’s right, you now have until Wednesday, April 2nd at 11:59 PM ET to apply to speak at the premier Developer Relations conference. Head to nyc.devrelcon.dev today!2.

If you were bummed about missing early bird tickets don’t worry. We’re running a one-day coupon code for $100 off your ticket. Use code APRILFOOLS today and secure your ticket before prices increase again!

We’ll see you July 17th - 18th in New York City.

So I recently got upgraded from a technical writer to a devrel (wondering if that is common). I see all the devrels making videos and demos.

I usually use loom but I'm not sure if I like that for social media. Any suggestions? How do I work on this? What are some other good tools? Any advice on video editing/background?

Hey folks, I’ve been curious about Developer Relations (DevRel) and wanted to get some insights. Are DevRel roles more common in scale-ups, big corporations, or startups? Wold love to hear about any trends you’ve noticed.

Hey /r/devrel,

I’m excited to share Annotate, a tool I built to write and publish Stripe style walkthroughs. Annotate lets you for explain code step-by-step. Check out an example of what you can create with it.

I’d love to get thoughts on a few points:

1. Did you immediately know what I meant by "Stripe style walkthroughs"?

2. Are there any other documentation styles you particularly enjoy? Please share your favorites!

3. What features would you like to see in a tool like Annotate?

Thanks for taking a look, I appreciate any feedback!

I’m curious how everyone here approaches internal events (hackathons, lunch & learns, tech talks, etc.) and what metrics you use to determine if they were actually successful.

We all know the easy metrics - attendance numbers, post-event surveys - but I’m wondering about the deeper impact. How do you know if an internal event truly moved the needle?

Some things I’m thinking about:

- Do you track knowledge retention or skill application after workshops?

- How do you measure community building or cross-team collaboration that results?

- Are there leading indicators you watch (Slack engagement, internal tool adoption)?

- How do you balance qualitative feedback vs quantitative data?

- What’s your follow-up cadence to assess longer-term impact?

I’m especially interested in hearing about frameworks or approaches that have helped you connect event activities to business outcomes, or convince leadership that internal DevRel is worth the investment.

What’s worked for you? What metrics have you tried that turned out to be vanity metrics? And how do you avoid just throwing events for the sake of events?

I’m talking to a few devtools teams who use YouTube/Twitter “dev influencers” for launches and tutorials.

Everyone tells me the same thing: they spend a ton of time checking
- are they actually shipping code / contributing to OSS?
- is their audience mostly real devs vs. generic tech/business followers?

If you run DevRel or developer marketing:
- How do you check whether a creator is a real engineer vs. just “talks about code”?
- How long does that vetting usually take per person?
- Have you found any tools that help with this, or is it all manual GitHub/YouTube stalking?

Curious what others are doing and what’s considered “good enough” here.

i think the 'developers don't engage with our content' complaint is misdiagnosed. We keep treating it as a content problem and pour more effort into the blog, the changelog, the newsletter. but every one of those formats demands the same thing, a developer who stops, sits, and reads. that slot barely exists anymore.

the slot that is wide open is the commute, the gym, the dog walk. That time only takes audio, and audio is the one format devrel almost never ships. i think it's because the gut reaction is 'an ai voice reading our changelog is beneath us.'

ran into a tool recently that auto-generates a daily audio digest straight from a repo's commits and PRs, real rss feed, already running for stuff like the kernel and postgres. not a produced human podcast, just here is what changed, in your ears. sounds janky in theory and i half expected to hate it.

the objection holds right up until you look at how many people actually opened the changelog you hand-wrote last quarter. audio nobody asked for still beats text nobody reads. tell me where that breaks for your community, because i can't find the hole.

fwiw that tool is Podlog, it auto-generates a daily audio digest from a repo's commits and prs with a real rss feed, already running for the kernel and postgres, https://podlog.io?utm_source=s4l&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=podlog&utm_term=reddit&utm_content=post_7de12023-9558-4399-92b6-124e2e11471b