I wish this person the best of luck in their next role.
I've known some great DevRel people, but it's a difficult role. The company can frequently have very different ideas about what DevRel should look like than the person hired into the role. The best DevRel people I know spent their time doing things to fill in gaps left by the company such as providing better documentation, example repos, and filtering through all of the noisy chat across Discords and subreddits to get additional feedback into the company. For the right person it can be fun, but playing cleanup crew and trying to keep customers happy by patching all the holes left by other teams gets old.
I don't know this person specifically, but from the way they write it's obvious that they like doing Twitch streams, podcasts, and workshops, but they don't like doing it for a company:
> After all these years I can finally say out loud: I do not want to be the face of a company. I do not want to speak at conferences or on podcasts or do workshops in order to try and sell you a product. I do not want my value determined by arbitrary gamified metrics like how many video views or blog post views or company sign-ups I generate in a landscape that is completely out of my control. I do not want to be perceived. For being perceived is breaking me, and I need to put myself back together.
This paragraph is basically "I hate DevRel work".
Unfortunately, doing those things for a company is the point of the job. If they hated this, then burnout was inevitable. Streaming to a couple hundred people on Twitch and traveling the world for workshops and getting paid for it sounds fun to a lot of people pursuing DevRel, but the part about looping it back to a company's best interests has to be at the core of it.
In practice, "what's actually best for the community" (growing a community of engaged engineers who feel listened to and who understand what you're doing) is not necessarily easy to show by metrics. I think the author is making a subtler point that, even if you don't hate DevRel work, the most useful kind of work is often unappreciated or devalued by decision makers.
True, but in practice "the community" as the DevRel person sees it is different than the customer base that the company wants to address.
For example, this DevRel person talks a lot about their Twitch stream and all of the work they put into a game on it that also used Sentry (their DevRel employer). It's all very cool and impressive work, but for a company like Sentry with 100,000+ there are millions of engineers across those companies that make up their developer base. Streaming to a couple hundred people on Twitch doesn't even register as interacting with the community.
Reading some of the linked posts there's an ongoing frustration with being asked to provide metrics and prove value, which gets to the core of what I was trying to say above: What some people want to do for DevRel for a small audience (Twitch streaming, podcasts, workshops) is often at odds with what the company expects them to do for their large base of active developers and users.
[flagged] Probably by users, but it seems honestly a very weird post for users to flag. Unless HN users are now so frantically anti-anti AI that even a personal story is flagged to death unless it full-heartedly endorses AI.
About their ongoing availability of their personal website (that does have some audience, however niche), the author states
> As for what the future holds for whitep4nth3r, I’m actually not sure. I know I’m not that important in this vast and strange ever-evolving world; I know this won’t affect many people in the grand scheme of things, but I’m sure some of you will be wondering if I’ll still be around.
I literally clicked thinking this was going to be a sad read about some developer having some sort of illness (perhaps like losign sight) instead it read as someone on the internet throwing a fit, and decided to write a rant about being hating their job and giving up on it?
I wish this person the best of luck in their next role.
I've known some great DevRel people, but it's a difficult role. The company can frequently have very different ideas about what DevRel should look like than the person hired into the role. The best DevRel people I know spent their time doing things to fill in gaps left by the company such as providing better documentation, example repos, and filtering through all of the noisy chat across Discords and subreddits to get additional feedback into the company. For the right person it can be fun, but playing cleanup crew and trying to keep customers happy by patching all the holes left by other teams gets old.
I don't know this person specifically, but from the way they write it's obvious that they like doing Twitch streams, podcasts, and workshops, but they don't like doing it for a company:
> After all these years I can finally say out loud: I do not want to be the face of a company. I do not want to speak at conferences or on podcasts or do workshops in order to try and sell you a product. I do not want my value determined by arbitrary gamified metrics like how many video views or blog post views or company sign-ups I generate in a landscape that is completely out of my control. I do not want to be perceived. For being perceived is breaking me, and I need to put myself back together.
This paragraph is basically "I hate DevRel work".
Unfortunately, doing those things for a company is the point of the job. If they hated this, then burnout was inevitable. Streaming to a couple hundred people on Twitch and traveling the world for workshops and getting paid for it sounds fun to a lot of people pursuing DevRel, but the part about looping it back to a company's best interests has to be at the core of it.
In practice, "what's actually best for the community" (growing a community of engaged engineers who feel listened to and who understand what you're doing) is not necessarily easy to show by metrics. I think the author is making a subtler point that, even if you don't hate DevRel work, the most useful kind of work is often unappreciated or devalued by decision makers.
True, but in practice "the community" as the DevRel person sees it is different than the customer base that the company wants to address.
For example, this DevRel person talks a lot about their Twitch stream and all of the work they put into a game on it that also used Sentry (their DevRel employer). It's all very cool and impressive work, but for a company like Sentry with 100,000+ there are millions of engineers across those companies that make up their developer base. Streaming to a couple hundred people on Twitch doesn't even register as interacting with the community.
Reading some of the linked posts there's an ongoing frustration with being asked to provide metrics and prove value, which gets to the core of what I was trying to say above: What some people want to do for DevRel for a small audience (Twitch streaming, podcasts, workshops) is often at odds with what the company expects them to do for their large base of active developers and users.
Small discussion (18 points, 8 hours ago, 11 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48774195
Why can't we vouch for flagged stories like we can for flagged comments? What's there to counteract flagging, just upvotes?
We can under certain conditions (not all flags are the same). It wasn't flagged when I linked it (might be because of the typo?)
[flagged] Probably by users, but it seems honestly a very weird post for users to flag. Unless HN users are now so frantically anti-anti AI that even a personal story is flagged to death unless it full-heartedly endorses AI.
I think the posts main mistake is expecting the reader to care about or know this author.
About their ongoing availability of their personal website (that does have some audience, however niche), the author states
> As for what the future holds for whitep4nth3r, I’m actually not sure. I know I’m not that important in this vast and strange ever-evolving world; I know this won’t affect many people in the grand scheme of things, but I’m sure some of you will be wondering if I’ll still be around.
So I'm not sure your criticism makes any sense
Jeesh guys, if you don't care, why did you comment or read it?
I personally thought the post was quite interesting and I honestly felt a strong desire to subscribe. It's a shame they're shutting down.
She linked to it on her social media and got the word out to people that know her. I don't think she expected it to 'break containment' like this.
It is also a post located on her own personal website, which naturally contains information about herself and is focussed around herself.
I don't think there is any 'mistake' here.
I expect the post is written for readers who care about or know the author.
It’s a personal website…
Does remembering a time when blogs and personal websites were a significant part of the Internet experience now mark me as old…
It seems that the expectation today is everything is written or created for an audience and probably for monetization or “influence”.
What did you expect, though?
dead-dove.jpg
I literally clicked thinking this was going to be a sad read about some developer having some sort of illness (perhaps like losign sight) instead it read as someone on the internet throwing a fit, and decided to write a rant about being hating their job and giving up on it?
Uninteresting rant by a nobody, why is this posted here? Account created 13 days ago en passant.