DevOps and DevRel with Matt Stratton

Brian Rinaldi 0:05
Hello, everyone. Thank you all for joining us for this episode of dim RELLIS where we have Matty Stratton as our special guest. Of course, I am Brian Rinaldi. I’m a developer experience engineer at launch darkly. And my co host is.

Erin Mikail Staples 0:24
Hi, I’m Erin. I am currently looking for my next adventure and several dev advocacy dev experience. Maybe a very online human that works with developers. The titles get more interesting by day. and Mattie Stratton,

Brian Rinaldi 0:40
yeah. Hi. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Matty, where do you work? What to do?

Matty Stratton 0:46
Cool. Yes. So my name is Matty. I am the director of DevRel for a company called Aivan. We are the trusted open source data platform for everyone. And I have been kind of working in the DevRel industry officially for like five years. Sounds about right. Unofficially a little longer than that. Been working in tech for a couple, two 30 Whatever years, maybe not 30. But I always tell people when when when I would talk to folks who didn’t know about DevRel or advocacy, whatever we do, you know, talk to you know, regular folks out there and they’re like, What do you do? I said, I worked in tech ops for a couple of decades, and now they pay me to talk about it. So yeah, very involved in the DevOps community, DevOps days stuff, a bunch of junk that we’ll just we’ll just talk about at some point. But you know,

Brian Rinaldi 1:38
That sounds that sounds similar to the answer I give to people about about that, because it’s really hard to explain. The other one I say is like, DevRel, it’s like, it’s marketing for developers who think they hate marketing.

Matty Stratton 1:50
Yes, I was gonna say the other way I say it is the way that’s gonna make a lot of several people angry, but that’s okay. As I say, it’s Guerilla Marketing. Yeah, indirect remark. indirect marketing is the nicer way to say that. Several can do, right.

Erin Mikail Staples 2:04
Yeah, I was gonna say that both sounds better than what I tell me. Because my parents asked me what I do, and they’ve only come on, they’re like, whole conception of like, what I do is talk on the internet, with strangers who are also nerds. And I’m like…

Matty Stratton 2:16
That’s not wrong. I was like, But show me the why.

Erin Mikail Staples 2:23
I’m like, not wrong. But also, you know, we’re gonna lean into it.

Brian Rinaldi 2:28
Yeah. So yeah, you know, actually, my, my spicy take on that whole marketing for developers who say they hate marketing is, I always tell I always say, because they say they hate marketing. Because even though that same developer who was like, yeah, if it’s marketing, I don’t, I don’t pay attention. And then they’ll walk away with their laptop covered in stickers, and their T shirt. The logo on it. I’m like, yeah, yeah, you really do hate marketing.

Erin Mikail Staples 2:57
I’m actually wearing a pair of LaunchDarkly socks right now. So you know, they are really nice socks. They are very, I like that word. I will say the one company that has to be is Oracle,

Brian Rinaldi 3:07
Oracle, but they have to have Oracle’s logo on them.

Erin Mikail Staples 3:10
They do I know. That’s the downside. But their stance, I’m sorry, sold out to the brands. So like, okay, DevRel for DevOps, I think like, when I first got into the DevRel Dev, technical developer advocacy space, I was always DevOps was that intimidating area for me to be totally transparent. And I got kind of a crash course working in machine learning where it’s very ops heavy, and you have those a lot of databases or the backend stuff, but how might DevRel not differ for DevOps? And it does kind of many of our other types of organization or better question, does it?

Matty Stratton 3:46
Well, it does. And like we, we’ve talked about this in a couple of different ways. And we can have a whole there could be a whole podcast talking about what DevOps means. And maybe it’s been running for 10 years. And it’s called the rest of DevOps, and you should listen to it. But, but when we think about like, sometimes you’re talking about is like OpsRel, and it’s, you know, it’s that sort of DevOps is kind of a subset of this conversation. And when I think about the type of Dev Rel that I’ve done, it’s always been in that space a little bit like I do not primarily, function well as a software engineer. And one of the general problems we have and we just all have to make our peace with it is like the word we mean half of the time is practitioner. And we’ve all shortcutted that to developer unless you’re at Amazon, and then it’s builder, which just confuses everything else. But like when we say developer most of the time in our type of part of the world of industry. We’re generally speaking about practitioner, technical, likely technical practitioner. So anyway, that said, let’s look at where Matty came from. Right. So my sideway entry into dev rel was doing sales engineering and customer architect type role. roles that had a lot of community focus when I was working at chef, which was a configuration management infrastructure as code, whatever kind of thing were very DevOps, the very, but also still, like, my peeps over there were ops folks, they were SREs or even before SREs. They were, you know, ops, right? We are infrastructure people, right? Who are learning how to do some developer things, or maybe not or wherever that comes in. And yes, we can talk about like, there’s apps for everybody, blah, blah, blah. And then I went in, then I was at PagerDuty. And that was my first like, now my title is advocate. And actually, my title over there was DevOps advocate, which was really funny, because I’m like an advocate for DevOps, they do that all the time. But it really was like what we would lump into like a developer relations role, but are the average consumer, like the people that we were advocating to, were not software engineer, title, folks, some of them were, but a lot of it was still like, the people having these conversations with tended to be infrastructure operations, SRE, whatever. And it was, and then same thing I’ve worked at pulumi, I’ve worked a bunch of different what’s another infra code. But I think where it comes to be interesting is depending on your product, because sometimes if it’s a very, and when I say developer oriented product, I don’t mean a product that developers use, but it’s a thing you use directly to make your thing, right. Like if your product is an API that you embed into your code, or it’s a library or whatever, that’s a certain kind of product, and you Dev Rel that in a certain way, if it’s a service, or a thing that developers use, you kind of think about the world in a whole different way. And the DevOps stuff falls into that, right?

Matty Stratton 6:47
Think about how, if you are, you know, like your product is fundamentally ends up being a library that you embed in your code versus your GitHub, right? Like, your the whole way you reason about whether people are using you and how you’re using it, right? Like it’s not how many times was my library downloaded, or how many API calls have happened, it’s how we were reasoning about the whole way of success in a different way, and how we show value in a different way. And we kind of isn’t about how we work or what we build. And I think that’s another way to think about it. A lot of times, Dev Rel for DevOps, if you will, is about how you work versus how you build, right? Like, you know, yes, you could make the argument and say like, if you’re, you know, if you’re like Kaz Lynfield, or someone who’s over at Google, that’s a dev rel for Kubernetes. Like, maybe that is what you build a little bit, it’s not so much how you work, but it’s also how you everything, these lines are fuzzy. Well, this deal, right? So the reason that matters is because how you think about your community and and giving them the things that they need. differs, right? Like because if you’re saying like, cool, I’m going to show you how to like, add this library into your code to build another thing is different than you now have to reason about the world in a whole different way. And I’ve been places where the point of the advocacy of the awareness of the community is getting people to think in a different way, because you have to think in this other way to even see the value of the product. Right? Like, you’re not going to dig Palumi, if you don’t think about infer code as being important yet. Right? Versus like, I already know, the problem I have, you know, I already know, I need to do this thing. And so I’m going to use Mailgun, because I already know I need to send emails, right? You don’t have, you don’t have to convince me that sending email is a thing I have to do. But if I’m reasoning about a different way to do incident response, I want to so you think and a different idea of focus, right? So that’s the first thing is to break down to say, what, what’s the what’s the reason someone uses your stuff? Is it for what they do, or how they do it, how they work or what their or what their thing they create is, and that goes back. And that’s not even about, like how you do conference talks, that’s even about the things you create to help them be more successful. Right? You know, it’s like, Is it is it that I’m creating content? If that’s the way we say it, or I’m putting things in place for you so that you know how to like respond to incidents better? Or how to organize your work better? Or is it this is how I take this thing and write the code this way and make these these pieces go together? Like it’s it’s different levels of that. And more of the how than the why when you think about quote unquote, DevOps, DevOps or OpsRel right now, we don’t do things we use things.

Brian Rinaldi 9:56
That makes total sense because I was thinking about that when as you were talking about Thinking about, you know, at LaunchDarkly, that we kind of sit somewhere in between because half of my job is telling you how to actually take the SDKs. And like, Okay, how do I use this in this particular project? Which is that how we do things, but then the other half is like, the whole point of that is how do we build, like, how do we, how we work? So I’m like, telling you, okay, here’s how you, you know, get away from like, branching and etc, etc. Right, like, so, you know, it’s it’s a more theoretical how, how we work kind of thing. So I think your, your distinction makes sense. And I think but there are there are cases like mine, where some of that blends together. It’s not like a clear cut line.

Matty Stratton 10:40
Oh, for sure. Yeah. I mean, there are places where it cuts out a lot like, like everything. What’s our favorite thing to say, in this entire industry? It depends.

Erin Mikail Staples 10:51
All the time, like, it’s the, you know, um, but I think it reminds me of, you know, I’m currently in the interview process, talking to a couple companies. And the example that I always give is, you know, because some people are, I asked, I asked companies like, why do you want dev rel? Or why is DevRel something that you’re choosing to invest in right now with this role? Like you’re hiring an open position? Why do you want several reasons? Reasons? Yeah. And it’s like, that’s like, I get some, like, sometimes it’s like, reasons or popularity, or like, we’re trying to grow our developer relations. And I’m like, and but the one thing that I always gets is, and I said it in an interview, and I was like, Well, I don’t know if I was like, the right question to answer and, and every, but it’s also how I feel is, you know, I use Pepto Bismol is my great example. For people who don’t want developer relations. It’s like, what happens if you build a community like of people who, like Pepto Bismol had a community strategy? What would that look like? No one would want to join. You don’t want to be like, if you’re using the products, Pepto Bismol, I likely don’t want to talk to you. Like, that’s not a tool. It’s not a viable if I’m, if I’m having to use that I’m not gonna go want to hang out on the internet, with other people using Pepto Bismol.

Matty Stratton 12:00
Well, sometimes, he’s a really good example that’s contrary to that, which is I always sort of would laugh about this when people you know, complain on Twitter about pager duty and what they’re, and then you will use I remember, there was like a sales rep for opsgenie. Who would like go and try to reply to them and be like, well, you should try opsgenie. And they would totally get flamed. Because the reason people were complaining about pager duty wasn’t the product itself. They were hate. They were complaining about the thing that made them have to use it, right? Like, that’s never gonna get any better. But they really liked the product. It’s like, you know, patriot, exactly. It’s a product that everybody loves to hate, because you hate that it exists. So not to pick apart your analogy, but like it’s a thing, but like you do have this problem. And maybe the product is so good that it’s the best that it could be in its in its you know, shitty situation, as you said in the chat there. Yeah.

Brian Rinaldi 12:55
Are you are you giving me crap for being in the Pepto community? That’s this is all about my Pepto Yeah.

Matty Stratton 13:00
Are you the one person who like scan the QR code on the back of the Pepto Bismol? Oh, my God.

Erin Mikail Staples 13:11
The the one community person at Pepto is like this here in person. I didn’t tell you know, champion GC strategy for this.

Brian Rinaldi 13:28
So, so speaking about, okay, I’m gonna, I’m gonna go ahead and bring it up, since you brought about like, why companies add different? Oh, we had.

Matty Stratton 13:40
Can I ask this whether there was there was a follow up thing to that Erin said the question that she asked, she says why. And I would just make I would make an even more refined way of asking that question, as we would say is what is the business value of developer relations in this company. And if they give you anything fuzzy, that is not an actual business goal, run away, because you will eventually have a business goal. Because awareness is not anybody’s goal. That is not a real business goal, it is important, and it does a thing. And I’ve said before, if you cannot show the business value of what you do, a way of showing value will be assigned to you, and you probably won’t like it. So if you can’t get a real good answer, like if if it is if it’s all hand waved that it’s probably a very dangerous place to be because maybe that’ll be true for a while. But at a certain point, chickens are going to come home to roost on that. And if you don’t know if you’re, if you’re not in front of it, that’s how you end up getting burned that all of a sudden, they’re like, oh, shit, we actually looked at this, and we don’t know what Erin does here that provides us value. So what’s the thing we know we know m AU. Now, guess what you’re tied to whereas if you start with a business goal, you know what I mean? And it can be an indirect connection to that business goal. It doesn’t mean it has to be a thing but the like, how does this connect To the bit and if it’s really vague, you are in for a bad time eventually, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not a week from now, but it will happen. And I think a lot of us have seen that happen. Yeah.

Erin Mikail Staples 15:12
That’s a really good point. And I think the other thing is, is the other thing I’ve learned through just career stuff. And you know, my first, my first job in community was open source community by way of Product Management. And it’s like, so I came from very much a product manager head of thinking of like, where are users dropping off? Where are users? Like, where are the pain points in the adoption process? And that is a very different process problem than how many paying users we have, like pain points, adoption is a different than conversion.

Matty Stratton 15:44
And they’re both business goals, but they’re both business goals. Yeah, they’re totally legit, right? That’s what I’m saying. business goal does not necessarily mean revenue. It doesn’t necessarily mean paying user, whatever. But, you know, so yeah,

Brian Rinaldi 15:57
I would agree with that. I think I think you can, ultimately, it is revenue, right? Like, ultimately, it’s revenue, obviously, like, and that

Matty Stratton 16:06
revenue number is what?

Brian Rinaldi 16:08
Yeah, I totally get what you mean. But I, I only bring that up, because I often hear that, like, within the community is like, oh, you know, I shouldn’t be, you know, have to be accountable for any kind of revenue numbers. And I agree with that, in the direct standpoint, but ultimately, like, I have to be able to, somehow it may be like a, you know, Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon kind of thing where like, but somehow or another the things we’re doing have to bring business to the company. Otherwise, there’s no point in in Devereaux, like, we were not aware. And like you said awareness is is a is a goal, but it doesn’t. It’s it’s too fuzzy to really tie into directed like when push comes to shove. And they’re like, Which team do we get rid of? It’s like, oh, I don’t even know what what’s this awareness doing us anyway?

Matty Stratton 17:00
if you would like to hear me talk more about this topic, I will put a link in the chat to the talk I gave at DevRelCon in Prague last year, which is basically also about the world is a little different than it was you know, and I say my talk, I say when I tell you these things, I might have had different statement in 2021, even in the beginning of 2022. And it’s, again, like you said, you maybe aren’t tied to a revenue number, but like the company exists for a reason. And I guess the final thing I just want to say about that you say we kind of like don’t think about it in this way. But like, part of the reason I make one spicy comment that leads into another one, which is we as developers like to believe, first of all, we’re like, we’re an industry built on empathy. And we get really mad when we get stereotyped into all devils do is fly around the world and give talks and whatever. And you know, who we love to stereotype the hell out of sales and marketing people. Right. And the thing about sales that I would say when it comes to this is the reason is because we have this perception that like sales is like the used car salesman, right? Sales and Marketing also, to a certain extent, are there to trick you into doing a thing. And I’m like, if your product is so crappy that the only way someone would pay for it is if they were tricked, then maybe you shouldn’t be there. Like, so that’s just the only general thing. There are definitely sketchy, toxic people in sales. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not like, hey, everybody and said there’s toxic and crappy people and everything we do. Right? And you were trying to take us somewhere.

Brian Rinaldi 18:30
Oh, no, I was. So I was gonna bring up Ali’s video which came up,

Matty Stratton 18:34
because the whole reason Ali’s watching right now is because he thinks we’re going to talk about her. So we definitely have to.

Brian Rinaldi 18:39
So yeah, so just in case for those who weren’t, didn’t catch it to ally posted this video why I left developer relations, which actually hits on a number of things that we’ve already talked about. Number one, the the, you know, the Why does a team. Why does a company have Dev Rel, it also even talks about like toxic people in in dev rel? So like they all of these things came up in her in her video. It’s really good. So like she had she lists, I’m gonna put a link for those folks who haven’t seen it yet into the chat. But she had nine things, most of which I felt like had a lot of truth in them. Like, like, I think, you know, writing, you don’t write so much code. I warn people when they’re thinking about becoming different. I’m like, You do realize this, you don’t write as much code as you might think you do. Like I know people. Imagine it’s like, oh, I just get to come up with fun demos and code fun demos all day. And I’m like, Yeah, I mean, that’s I guesstimate my job is maybe 20% writing code if that you know let’s

Erin Mikail Staples 19:47
I recently got out of an interview and I feel comfortable sharing this. This is public information. You can go find the job description on the internet. And I walked away after an informational call call and was like this is so not a fit Because the interviewer they had reached out to me, had seen my resume and my for hire page and had even sent me links to work that I had done. And I was like, yes, that’s my work. Then they were like, do you feel comfortable passing a technical exam, and I was like, Sure, I will do take some technical exam. And then they were like, on top of that, you’ll have to do a live coding session with our founders. That isn’t related to the job you are doing. And I was like, okay, and then they’re like, one of the red also a red flag about you is, you don’t have a computer science degree. And I was like…

Matty Stratton 20:34
why are you still in this conversation at this point? Even if you had all those things like these subs, I was like,

Erin Mikail Staples 20:43
oh, and then I like ask them and they’re like, Okay, you know, what’s that time? It’s kind of awkward. Like, let’s talk about salary. This is a senior level Developer Relations position. $115,000 in the New York City area. No guarantees of health insurance. No, yeah.

Brian Rinaldi 21:01
So So you’re saying you didn’t take it?

Erin Mikail Staples 21:04
I continue the interview process on that one.

Brian Rinaldi 21:09
Yeah, but But yeah, so I mean, I Yeah. To your point, I think you don’t. I, I’ve had arguments about this. Because like, you know, when you have coding tests and stuff like that, I don’t mind doing homework. Honestly, I don’t mind. Give me homework, because homework to me is like, I gotta know that you’re, I’d like your product. I want to be able to use the product and say, hey, you know what, this is a product, I would actually be out there talking about that. I’m cool with homework, coding,

Erin Mikail Staples 21:36
interviews, because I started doing the homework. And I was like, actually, I don’t want to, I don’t like this product. And I’ve walked away, like no harm, no foul. I just don’t like the product. And I can’t vouch for it.

Brian Rinaldi 21:48
But yet, so So analogous video, she’s okay. She doesn’t write enough code. Companies don’t know what they want. The influencer DevRel pipeline is another one she mentioned. I feel like that that one. I feel it. But I also feel like it’s getting a little bit better. Partly because of that, you know, companies are realizing they can get some value added. Well, that’s what

Matty Stratton 22:11
I was gonna say like, that happens when it’s like and Ali talked about in the video, too, which is like, Why do you have it? Sometimes you have, we have a devil, because my board told me I had to have one. Right? So then you’re like, What do I look at, but when you’re looking at, like what you want to accomplish, and there’s a whole pipeline into several that I think is under not, I guess underrated and it actually it is the SA to DevRel pipeline is so good. And I’m not just saying that because that was me. But like my dogs, my dogs are asleep enough, that was the solution architect or sales engineers or whatever, are very good at understanding how to make things useful, you know, and go into the into that place. And again, it’s not they can turn around and try to sell it. But a lot of it also goes back to all of this is like, why are you there and one thing I want to just bring up and this is true. And I think Ali kind of talked about this in a video, the parts that I saw, like I said in the chat, I, I started watching it right before this, and then my internet went out, and I got it back just in time. So I only saw the first half of the video. So I’m gonna watch the rest of it because it was really good. Because there was also and I’m not switching into this conversation, but there was the other side of the effect today, there was like a tweet from Emily Freeman that had to do with doing DevRel at scale. And like, there is a ocean of difference in conversation between DevRel at a seed round 12 person startup and DevRel at AWS or Google or Microsoft, in some ways, and in some ways not.

Matty Stratton 23:49
But when you’re looking at a certain time, and then and then in between, it gets even different like and then those of us sit in between those two, because there’s things that are true at that at either end that are different in the middle. So it’s always really important. I think in any conversations, we have to be really careful about broad general charities, because number one devil contains multitudes. And the lens upon which we’re having this conversation is very context dependent upon the size of the organization. That said, There absolutely are things that are true across the board. Right about why do you do it? What are you there with you understand, you understand, and also the not all devs? You know, anytime we get into like the one true DevRel right there’s there are real Dev Rel would do this or real DevRel can write code or real Dev Rel is good at speaking. There are people who are making because this is what is the whole point. What is DevOps developer relations. It’s about how do you relate and engage with your community of users and community as a whole other thing that’s become such a loaded word and there’s stuff I’m thinking about within my organization about when we talk about community. There’s perceptions about oh, you’re talking about the open source community and it’s like no other community is our universe, right? And there are people in our, in our, and again, and so many words we can’t use anymore because it becomes something else like it’s they they’re in our orbit, or lowercase orbits, right? They’re touching us, they’re part of it. And they may never be a customer, they may never even be a user of our product, but they are part of the community. Right? So, um, yeah, anyway, anyway, there’s certain things that are that are always true. And there’s certain things that are very different upon what you’re trying to accomplish. But first of all, anybody who’s like, well, if you were really real devil, you would not care about this, or you would do this or do whatever is like, for the birds, and I hate them, and they should go away.

Erin Mikail Staples 25:39
Well, I think to touch on like that point that you said there and like what Laura and Cassidy are putting in there. I think there’s also the spectrum of several dev advocacy developer experiences. Another one we see a lot or my first job in the space was head of open source community, which was basically being a pm on top of everything else. I think to Cassidy’s point, perfect timing is is an education problem, like, what is the role and like, personally, I have the take of whatever the tool or the product that you’re using, actually know how the product works. Like that is my biggest pet peeve is like, when people who are doing tutorials or content or whatever it doesn’t actually know, under understand the product, it’s a huge red flag for me. So if I see content created by a company, and they don’t use the product themselves, red flag, but also, like the level of technicality can change with company like, my formal background is in journalism. That’s fine. But it’s funny, because they see that on my resume, and they go, Oh, she’s completely non technical at all. And I’m like, my last job, I was in Python and using Docker every day, and no, like, No. And it’s, it’s a very different thing. But at the end of the day, it’s like, what, what objectives are you trying to accomplish?

Matty Stratton 26:56
And I think this goes back to like Cassidy said, it’s like, so many companies want different things. And that’s why I think it’s really important. You can’t you know, unfortunately, there’s there’s one general title that can mean 30 different jobs, and they’re all valid implementations of that job. But it might not be the implementation that a you want to do, and or B, you’re good at. And so that’s why it’s, you know, it’s important to ask a lot of these questions, and it was, you know, like, Laura says, in the chat, people forget, you’re interviewing the company as well. And that’s a big part of that is to say, like, Okay, what is this job? And it’s funny, because, again, you would do this for any other kind of a job, you’d be like, so what will I do here? And if they were like, you will do business things. You know, you’d be like, Um, no, maybe you could kind of tell me what I actually do, and like, what I’m accountable for and where I work, and it’s like, no, you’re gonna do business? That would be crazy. But we do this, we do this here, it’d be like, well, you’re just in charge of our community. What does that mean? What because what what I think it means is not necessarily what you think it means. And as long as those Venn diagrams are what I think it means, and you think it means overlap a bunch. But if they are very small, then it’s probably a bad place to be.

Erin Mikail Staples 28:09
So I’ve really loved the adoption of the term user ecosystem. And I think that’s one that I’ve really started to love. We use that in my last role. Lauren Sell was the person who like use it a lot. And it’s like, how do we think of our user ecosystem? So like, the larger, where are our users? And then what tools are they using or thinking about? And then how does this look across, you know, Customer Success Community open source developers like what are like, I’m thinking about it from that perspective. And that’s been like my obsession lately. Foreshadowing things coming on my blog.

Matty Stratton 28:46
I want to challenge the word user there because that ecosystem is not inclusive, exclusive OR inclusive, only inclusive of people that use your product, or use your tool. And it’s like, when I think about like, kind of concentric circles and like, again, things I’m thinking about writing and I’m deciding what level of this is me writing for my team and writing for the Internet and where these things go, and versus most of it just ends up in texts to other people as I think out loud, but it’s like, there are people that are part of that ecosystem, or universe or whatever, that are very valuable part of that, that will never ever touch anything related to your thing. But they’re part of that and I’m not gonna want to say like, you know, it’s easy to say, I’m gonna I’m gonna shortcut with the words because they’re faster and I hate them and it’s fine. They’re the thought leaders, the influencers or whatever the people in that space, who are part of that, right. Like, you know, if you’re in the Kubernetes space, if you’re a product related to Kubernetes Kelsey Hightower is in your ecosystem, and he is never going to touch your thing maybe but that’s fine. And it’s not that he’s in your ecosystem because you want him to endorse you. But the work he does influences and I mean not in the right way of influence not like influence our way but it affects that whole way we live like the way that I do DevOps work. When I did work for a living, was influenced, in a good way, like the right way to the word by the work done by people in that space by Andrew clay Schaefer by Nicole for has grown or whatever. So they’re part of so when I was like, at pager duty, for example, I would sit there and say that, and I’m not saying these things to name drop, come and tell you who they are and why it matters. We would say that John all spa who was, you know, learning from incidents, you know, expert created blameless post mortems. All of this stuff is in the pager duty ecosystem, and never would use pager duty. And that’s totally cool. But he’s part of it. And it’s not because we have to curry favor from them or whatever. They’re just part of the way we reason about things.

Brian Rinaldi 30:50
Exactly. So I you know, in listening to all talk about this, one thing that it’s has struck me is that there is has been a, so a lot of the growth, I think a DevRel, over the recent years has been these people like this single for one person DevRel team at a small startup kind of thing. And that’s, I think, like getting going back to Ali’s video, I think I felt like a lot of that stuff, like aligned with experiences at small startups where they hadn’t, kind of where we talked about where they were told they they needed a dev rel, but what didn’t have clear idea of what they wanted out of a dev rel, or they just had this vague idea that hiring Devereaux would suddenly like Oh, I’m gonna suddenly, you know, be be we’re going to build are automatically like bringing somebody who’s an influencer, we’re going to suddenly get all these followers and get all these users and blah, blah, blah. And it was just like, none of that. Number one, none of that ever really pans out the way they think it will. And number two, ultimately, it becomes like, Well, what do you what, that’s not they, they start to realize that’s not stuff that brings affects the business. Like, it’s just, you know, I can get have tons of followers on Twitter, which I don’t anymore, but like, you know, but it’s not necessarily going to drive money or real. Like, it can build some awareness, but it’s not the ultimately like that important of a business goal.

Erin Mikail Staples 32:21
So I like I love where you’re going with this, but I have a real life story, which actually exactly counters that. Okay, this is really interesting. And it’s like, it’s also one of the gray areas of my like, it’s something that I’ve personally struggled a lot with, being in Deborah. And it’s actually something Ali mentioned, in the video of like, Deborah and Dev advocacy, your life kind of blurs a lot of the time, meaning like, sometimes you don’t have a nine to five, you’re I’m like an especially like, even when I was working, I was like I was just on my slack, I’m just gonna respond to three things real quick, otherwise, three sentences. So outside of tech, I do run a comedy show, we have an AI comedy show that I run, I’m a co producer in if you’re in the New York area tonight at 8pm at Crystal Lake, but one of the things there soft shell there, um, but I, I actually used the tool that I was formerly employed by in the development of this comedy show. And I’ve actually done a technical. Now I’ve submitted things that I’ve built for the comedy show, as a technical exam in the interview process as well. I had someone who had attended our event as the comedy show, they not only attended the event, but they later was like that was really cool. How do you build it, and I’m talking through them how I built it, and blah, blah, blah. And they showed up to the workshop next week I was hosting at my day job. And they would have never found out because they were just like random person in the comedy scene. But again, it was loosely related, is that everybody know most people didn’t, but like, I still track three people who came that they first heard about is through this comedy show varies.

Brian Rinaldi 34:03
And to be clear, I’m not saying those things are useless. I’m just saying like, ultimately, you know, when that’s the primary goal, when, you know, they’re, I think, you know, the important DevRel activities are much more easily tied, like the content activities as Mandy was talking about, or, like, I can much more easily tie that to a clear business benefit. You know, I, you know, I like where, where does this content sit on the funnel in terms of like, you know, how it helps us, you know, either bring people into the top of the funnel or help move people along in the funnel kind of thing, like, you know, so that they, you know, is it some sit somewhere like that helps somebody in the purchasing process, make that decision kind of thing. I may not be able to tie it to actual revenue, but I can tell you where it fits into that process.

Matty Stratton 34:54
I mean, there’s a lot of stuff in marketing that you don’t tie to direct revenue. I mean, like there’s lots of things that are valuable in In an organization that are not that are very, Anna, you know, like your jig making a lot of leaps to get it to the revenue. I mean, but I mean product is the thing. And that’s the other thing too is like you sit there and say, you know, think about the idea of a developer advocate or DeVol person have the right type, like, again, because not everybody is the same shape. Who is customer zero, right? Who is providing and this is one of the things like we the reason we don’t say evangelists anymore is twofold. One is because it’s colonist and not great. The other is because evangelist implies a one way conversation. And I always like to say, and this is why I’m telling you that I’m in an ops person and in for persons, I say that developer advocacy is full duplex, right? It goes both ways. Now, this also gets us into like, the whole work as imagined versus work is done thing. And we need to have reality about where we sit in that spectrum. That said, so if you are in a DevRel group that is connected more closely into the product thing, and then you have that tight feedback loop into product and giving fast feedback back into there, that’s all, you know, very easy to connect to business value, the same way that the rest of your product organization is what it’s got to be part of where that’s happening. So like, all these business goals exist, and everybody else in your company deals with them. Right? You know, when it’s like I used to say, in my DevOps talks, I’d say, Do you know how your company makes money? If you don’t go find out, I’ll wait because we can’t have any other conversation, if you don’t know what your company is how you’re connecting to value, like nobody employs you to just have fun. And the reality and the problem is, and I this here, I’ll get spicy now is there’s a whole bunch of us, maybe myself included, for a certain amount of time when money was cheap, over the last few years, when you literally could be employed as a DevRel. And your job was to have fun. It doesn’t mean you didn’t work hard. But we were able to do that. And that’s not the case. And that’s not because I mean, partially Yes, you know, late stage. I mean, actually, it is because of late stage capitalism, that’s totally fine. But that’s what happening, like, we can rail about it all we want.

Matty Stratton 37:12
But if you want to have a job, we need to figure out where this goes. So for at least for a while, we have to go back and work for a living for a bit, you can’t have a job where your entire existence is that you get to go you get to like, do things that are so far away, that are so long tail, and it’s just totally fun. Those days will maybe come back, or maybe they’ll come back with a different thing. But nobody holds your breath. Because in the meantime, telling you the bank ain’t gonna accept a mortgage payment. That is, I’m just waiting until money is cheap again. In the meantime, you know, I’m going to do these things. And, again, I’ve told you, I’ve referred to myself as the cynical devil, because it’s like, it sucks like it. None of this is me saying it’s right. But it’s the world. You know, and also, you know, and this is the other thing, too, I think you alluded to this a little bit, Aaron, when you’re talking about your scenario, and you know, it’s tough out there, that was sort of like kind of my my talk at DevRelCon was saying, hey, it’s tough out there. And what I’m seeing is that the jobs are there, but the bags are small, right? You know, and that’s the you know, and you mentioned that and it’s funny because I am not looking for a job. If to know my boss is not listening to this, because I just like saw that he’s on the Silicon Angle in the cube live stream at Google Cloud Next right now. So he’s on a different stream. So I’m okay. But, but I’m not, but I know people who are so I actually take a fair number of calls from recruiters because I’m doing a little filtering for my friends to say, Hey, is it worth your time to call this person back? Because again, because it especially when I know I’m not looking, I’m happy to ask for what the number is. I’m like, where are you looking at? And I had someone I talked to who was like literally, they were basically hiring, they wanted a CMO when all was said and done. It was like going to be a VP of marketing or whatever and so they get $100,000 You know, but also but then it’s like, oh, what you get all this equity and you’re like cool, guess what, I can’t pay with equity. My mortgage child support dog food does not you don’t spend with that. So it’s it’s rough, but that sucks.

Erin Mikail Staples 39:23
But like, you know, I think unfortunately, we’re doing this I’ve done the job search in August of last year now the job search in August of this year and I actually think this year is a little bit easier and maybe I’m just saying that prematurely. I’m currently not employed but like I feel like maybe this year is easier, but I don’t know who knows. Um, and I don’t know if that’s the experience you’ve kind of encountered buddy or

Matty Stratton 39:49
um, yeah, and it’s like Laura says, you know, I see that and it’s really frustrating from a perspective again, I should definitely say this is primarily even though I in my context on one side, when I’m looking for to help my friends find jobs and help them do that. They’re almost always stateside where that comes in. Whereas me, I have a global team. So when when Maddie is hiring and Maddie isn’t hiring right now, but Maddie might be at some point. That’s not a promise. That’s just saying you never know where things are going. And I hope that we are very fair and stuff. The one thing that does suck, and I’m not making an excuse about to Laura’s point about like, they’ll say it’s a remote job. But it’s us only is it’s a lot of just dumb bullshit about like, where you have a presence in the company, you know, and, and it’s like, oh, yeah, the remote anywhere. But Colorado. Yeah, I think people have stopped doing that. Because that’s a big, that should be a big red flag to you. Because that means we don’t actually want we want to try to pay you as little as possible. But I think that’s the Yeah. I don’t remember adult.

Matty Stratton 40:56
Maybe it will get slightly less terrible eventually.

Brian Rinaldi 40:59
Yeah, I think I think it definitely well, I mean, I’ve been, I’ve been in DevRel, for. I’ve been trying to figure it remember exactly like 13 years. So it’s been a while. And I’ve been through some ups and downs in dev rel. So like I’ve seen, you know, stuff like this before, we’re different teams, you know, had what we thought at the time was large, several teams, but then got worth too much later. But like, you know, getting cut back, including, when I was on the dev rel team at Adobe that kind of like, they’re like, oh, yeah, we’re not doing developer things in DevOps, it was mostly kind of, but so I’ve, I’ve, I’ve seen this stuff happen before, I think, you know, the right now feels a little weird at times, we just because so much of the growth to me was a femoral was in startups that now have had to kind of really, because of lack of VC money have had to really cut back on, on their spending on this kind of thing and be a little more cautious about spending in dev rel. So I think that’s part that’s affecting the salaries in general specifically is, is there’s less

Matty Stratton 42:12
money isn’t cheap, like it was yeah, you know, that’s the it’s terrible, but like, but one of the things I was thinking about, I was talking to a friend of mine, who is like, not pleased with their job, and that doesn’t narrow it down. Because lots of us are not pleased with lots of people are not pleased with their job. I’m very pleased with my job. boss who’s not watching because he’s on the cube right now. But yeah, thanks. Well, I kind of assumed the gross was for me, because it’s well, who’s in the chat who’s like, that’s, that’s, that’s where that goes. Um, but you know, they’re like, Hey, I’m in you know, and the one advice I would give, and maybe it’s, if things are real bad where you’re at, get out if you have to, but try to stay as much as you can. Because what happens is because those salaries are lower. And as someone who was in a situation that did a reset, and how long it took me to get back. So I got laid off, this was not in devil, but it still applies, I got laid off. As an ops person 20 years ago, I think it was about 20. Ish, about about 2020 years ago or so. And I, you know, in the process of looking for a job, it was a very tough time, this was, you know, circa 2002, which, you know, some of us will be triggered by that and say, like, oh, and I ended up having to take any job I could get, and it was a good 40% pay cut. And it took me four years to get back to where I had been. Because once you’re in there, you’re fighting this fight up there. So if you can hold on to what you have, you know, but if things are awful, you know, we care to speculate about when the market will bounce back. Well, if I knew that, yeah, no, but I mean, I think it’s gonna get better before it gets worse, because we’re starting to see, I don’t want to say see, the purse strings loosen up a little bit. But I think there’s a re recentering, a recalibrating that is happening. And I think there was a bit of a of a glut, right. Like it was sort of like cool. And we saw this on both sides, right? We saw this in situations like Ali talked about Ali had, which was the, I just gotta get somebody or whatever. And then it’s like, oh, shit, you’ve been here for a while, or someone’s been here for a while. And now I’m like, I don’t understand what you do. So I’m going to reframe you.

Matty Stratton 44:39
But then on the other side, we saw this at some of the really big places where they’re like, money is cheap. We’re going to throw around millions of dollars to hire up like 35 people to like, do this thing. And then it all comes back when eventually the balance sheet balances right. And so this is also why I think there’s value in like fig During out how we get more cross functional, when we get more like a try because like, the less the more general you can be in some ways, and I’m not saying T shaped, right, like I know people get, that becomes a thing. But like, if I have some sidecar stuff, because it’s also what sets you apart, because the other thing is when you can do more than one thing you can hold on, when the one thing you mostly do isn’t as much in demand, you can find the thing that you’re also really good at. So yeah, but I think, again, I would say to for me, you know, the people that are reaching out to me, it’s a lot of like, seed round AI startups that want that DevRel team of one who’s also, like Ali said, is also your technical content marketer, and it’s also your demand gen is also all of these things. And I mean, here’s the reality, right, at a certain point, like, you gotta take what you can get, you know, I mean, it’s, you know, certain point, like, you can’t pay your rent with pride, you know, but, but also go into it, like, knowing wherever that is. And I think the other the other thing in general, and this is, you know, and I’d love to hear, we’re getting a lot of really great, there’s a lot of smart people in the chat, who have a lot to say, that we should listen to, you will find, and this was something I’ve seen, as I’ve seen people having success, and this is harder to do for new folks, because Cassidy just said, this is rough for new folks. And part of the reason is this. There are companies that have short term cash, but not long term cash. So like, especially when you look at a company that’s dealing with their runway, and everything like that taking on a higher is a long ish term op X cost paying you as a contractor, as a consultant, $30,000 to do one thing, that money is there.

Matty Stratton 46:54
But it’s funny, because it’s like, hey, we could Erin, we could hire you. Like we could contract it basically say we’re gonna give you this, this check to do this one thing, and you’re like, holy cow, that But wouldn’t it be cheaper for you to pay me less than being an employee that like, you would think that wouldn’t shoot. But especially when you’re looking at what your board is looking at, because you’re looking at your runway, and when we bring you on for $150,000, or whatever, we have to plan to be able to keep paying that. But actually, you know, but short term, I can sit there and I can write you a check, because that’s capex, right? That’s like, that’s, that’s the thing. But that’s very hard to do when you’re new, because you can’t sell yourself is like, I’m good at this. So like, that’s, that’s hard, you know, so there’s not a perfect solution. But I’m seeing a lot of places that when I’ve seen people talk to them, and they’re just like, Dude, we can’t hire you. Or, you know, maybe we can’t hire you. But you want to consult, you know, because that money I have, you know,

Brian Rinaldi 47:53
yeah, I you know, I agree with some of the comments in the chat that it’s the bounce back has kind of started. I feel like I mean, I’ll put it this way, I think the best place to find jobs in DevRel, right? Like, it’s always been, like, for the past few years has been the Deborah collectives slack in their jobs. Right. And that jobs board went through a period, I think, like starting sometime late last year, for like six months, where I swear, there was almost nothing, it was almost silent. Only the only posts you’d get were people looking for jobs, or losing their jobs. And very few jobs. And it’s, it’s, it’s felt like it’s picked up, I do think, to somebody’s point, I can’t remember who in the comments here. It’s, it’s a lot of seed stage. Because, and to me, this makes sense. Because seed stage is like, Hey, I’ve got X dollars, right? Like I need, I need to like move really, really quickly. I need to like build, you know, I have this much runway and, and the other companies are all like, once they’re past that seed stage, they’re all like, oh, well, now we need to prove for our next round that we’re being more efficient with our dollars is the thing that all the VCs are looking for now. So it’s like, you know, the Endeavor doesn’t really fit into expanding, you know, that our efficiencies, you know, or can but I mean, my point is, like, I’m just saying from their perspective, so. So I think it makes sense. It’s a lot of see brown folks, and the bigger companies to me are all like, I think they saw an opportunity to kind of trim the, you know, trim a lot of people and said, hey, you know, we’re gonna cut it not because they there was no value in their dev rel, but because I’ve worked for big companies, they always like we’re like, okay, downturn, we can just make some slices even though we’re making record profits.

Matty Stratton 49:42
Can I make a little bit of a hot take here? Absolutely. This may get away from me, and I apologize. And this won’t. What did you say? Mentioned pickles.

Erin Mikail Staples 49:51
I said spicy pickles.

Brian Rinaldi 49:52
Spicy relish.

Matty Stratton 49:53
You really want to make a joke. Erin has a really really good joke about pickles. She’s dying to make

Brian Rinaldi 49:57
All right. Okay, let’s, I want to hear this spicy Spicy take

Matty Stratton 50:03
Okay. So one of the things, we’re always like, oh my god, I hate that they hired a devil when they really want to technical content marketer, hey, you know what maybe go be a technical content marketer for a minute, for two reasons one is like, because it will actually help you do your other job better to learn how to do that and or you might actually be good at it. And the again, it gives us that sidecar thing. So if at a certain point where you’re like, Hey, man, I really, really want, like, the thing I want most in the world is to like, you know, be a racecar driver that drives golf carts, and they’re like, well, there’s, that’s not a thing that happens right now. But what you could do is, like, get a lot of good practice driving golf carts, like, you know, in some other way, like, maybe you could do that, and it’s adjacent. So I think that’s sort of the thing too, and it doesn’t have to be I’m naming that one. There’s lots of other Dev Rel adjacent like, like, do that make us better at what we do as a dev rel for whatever kind of DEV role you are? Now, if you’re not the kind of devil that writes, then yeah, then probably don’t try to go get a job as a TCM, because it’s probably not the first one, you’re not gonna be able to get the job most likely, and it’s not going to help you. But maybe there’s some other engineering role. Maybe there’s some other product role. Maybe there’s some other thing you can do. And I know I’m not and by the way, none of this is like, Oh, it’s so easy. Just go do that. I’m just sort of babies sort of saying like, can we reason about like, ways to do things that are adjacent? You know?

Brian Rinaldi 51:28
Yeah, yeah. That kind of reminds me of a period when there was a point in my career, I moved all the way up to director. But it was like director of content, it was lose in marketing. Anyway. I, it I didn’t get in, I ended up loving that job, for multiple reasons. But I decided I want to get back into like a icy default. And it turned out to be really, really difficult to do because everybody’s like, Oh, I only been in that job a year. And I was doing a lot of that writing into like, oh, you’re a director and marketing. And I don’t know, what what can you bring to the table. So I literally spent like the next I, the next six months, or so, as I was working, I spent, I wrote a new blog post every single week on different topics, like I made sure every week, I had something and it was, it was not like the I don’t think you have to stick to that schedule. But the point was, I was trying to build my resume back into the role I wanted to fit into, by doing or doing things that was outside my job. I like it, this was nothing related to work. But it helped me be able to say, well, actually, I do. Like I can do DevOps, I have done that, well, look at all these blog posts I’ve written in the past six months, etc. So I think in a similar sense, if you’re trying to get into it, you can I think there’s ways to find to build that skill set, or at least beef up your resume, even if you don’t necessarily have the role yet.

Erin Mikail Staples 53:06
But I think that’s like the advice that a lot of people like have been giving is like, you know, do the job, you have to in order to get the job, you want you to do the job before you’re ready to do. And I think that’s, it’s, it’s, uh, you know, so much like, you know, I’m an adjunct at NYU on the side. And so much of my job is like, charge for your work. Like, these are graduate students, like they’re not 19, they’re many times have 10 years of work under their belts. And they’re, like, on one hand, I’m like, charge for your work. But on the other hand, I’m like, but you need to be out there and be present. And it’s a hard, it’s like, it’s a hard balance, but it’s also like an I’m a big believer of like, you know, always give more than you can like, give more than you take, you know, put it out in the world and it’ll come back to you but yeah, it’s an adventure. Yeah,

Brian Rinaldi 53:57
I mean, and I know, I recognize that, like, it’s a hard thing to do. Like, it’s not always I don’t want people like say give up all their time, their weekends or whatever. But I I kind of determined I had to do it to like, get back to job. Anyway, um, we are running low on time here. We got like six minutes left. And and we have so So Maddie, we didn’t tell you about this. The pre show but we this is the key moment in our show where no pressure or anything? No, no, no, don’t worry. This is all on Aaron because I’ve never I’ve never had Oh, good. Okay, it’s two things. There are two things First of all, obviously, the show because that relish is themed around pickles. So and you may not know this about Erin, but Erin is an amateur pickle pickler.

Erin Mikail Staples 54:54
Fermentater? I think

Brian Rinaldi 54:56
they’re right pickler. Yeah. Yeah.

Matty Stratton 55:00
So she’s an amateur Pickler because she’d like to be able to compete in the pickle Olympics. That’s why she’s not going pro.

Erin Mikail Staples 55:06
Oh, I do like this I like where we’re going with this DevRel job career path. I’m going to be a pickle comedian and professional pickle comedian.

Matty Stratton 55:16
What if you’re a professional pickle comedian you can’t compete in the Olympics. So I want you to think this one out. You might be being short sighted.

Erin Mikail Staples 55:24
I like these job titles coming in. Brinesmith Yeah, that’s a good one. Oh, that’s a good one.

Brian Rinaldi 55:30
Yeah, that’s a fermentationist this Yeah. Okay. Brinesmith. Okay. Yeah, you know on that note before you get to give us your pickle fact. Like you really do have like a white I mean you’re you’re a tickler a comedian you were a journalist and and into that role so like, you know, I think that covers all the bases if the bases were pickles comedy and yeah,

Erin Mikail Staples 56:03
things I’m not good at being my desk clean there’s a nice pile of books right here that are cleanly off camera so yeah, yeah, don’t bring me for that.

Brian Rinaldi 56:15
But I would lead with the pickles and their job search for sure.

Erin Mikail Staples 56:19
For sure. And I will agree with Matty the best pickles are sold out of a barrel because the fermentation process is very fascinating. But

Matty Stratton 56:27
also my friend who works at the Ren Faire learned this year as many years as you worked at the Ren Faire that if you go to the pickle barrel people with your flag in full of ice with your flag and they will fill it with ice pickle juice for you and he was like sitting in his shop drinking pickle do like I was it taken me how many 10 plus years of working here to not understand this was the thing you could do.

Erin Mikail Staples 56:47
Oh my goodness. I love that to use the line that does pick on my fancy Ah,

Brian Rinaldi 56:56
that’s done okay. Perfect. Let’s

Erin Mikail Staples 56:59
get away um, so I actually went to an academic journal for today’s pickle facts and in case you were wondering, be pickling the bacteria in pickle is this is probably when not when you’re like a germaphobe I guess. But it’s actually one of the highest strains like you can find the most diversity in bacteria in lacto fermented pickles so there’s over 49 different strains of bacteria found to make a successful best tasting pickles according to this journal article. And it is actually some of the best bacteria for your like metabolism in your microbiome

Brian Rinaldi 57:40
yep, I had the same thought by the way as Cassidy more or less I was like well there’s there’s academic journals about pickling

Erin Mikail Staples 57:47
the I learned a pickle off of…I learned to pickle as part of a class I took in grad school it’s a whole nother tangent but um yeah the there is a guide that I use to pickle is actually from Washington state’s Department of Agriculture and it is an open source book and guide to how much brine and salt in your acidity that you need to not to kill the bacteria to be good bacteria.

Brian Rinaldi 58:14
Yep, I think Maddie two shoots quote can close this out. That CPO okay. I think yeah,

Erin Mikail Staples 58:22
yeah. I’m sorry Laura. I probably grossed you out all the bacteria but you know what? I will eat all your pickles for you or fermented Bloody Marys mix because that’s my that’s my other jam.

Brian Rinaldi 58:38
I do love how the end of the show always just kind of goes way deep into pickle related, like play on words and stuff like that. So yeah, the comments and in the show. It’s it’s my favorite part. Well,

Erin Mikail Staples 58:57
yeah, I mean, yeah, aside from this is like the best Google search I do all week is this but Cassidy I got you in the blessed Bloody Mary. I make up what if fermented Bloody Mary if you’d like a good spicy brine. Takes a week. It’s very good.

Brian Rinaldi 59:13
So with that? We are out of time, man. This was a really really awesome conversation. I had so much fun. And thank you to everybody in the audience. It’s been like raising and all these kinds of

Erin Mikail Staples 59:30
audiences here like Absolutely. If you want to be on like, shoot us a DM of like, all of that stuff because I would like so many of you are brilliant. Cassidy was on the show.

Brian Rinaldi 59:43
Yeah, yeah, we Yeah, we’d love to have you all as guests. If you haven’t been a guest. We want to talk about DevRel, but we will be back next month. I will be posting that soon. And also please check out sci fi CFE.dev For we’ve got up bunch of stuff in September coming up tons of free events.

Matty Stratton 1:00:04
Can I promote one thing I realized I should have said this when people were paying attention. That podcast I talked about that I do arrested DevOps. We just released an episode. That is about building your personal brand with Cassandra Ferris that is maybe interesting to lots of people watching this. So go to arresteddevops.com find it in your pod catcher. Listen to it. Do Oh, yeah, I

Brian Rinaldi 1:00:25
did post the link earlier. But yeah.

Matty Stratton 1:00:28
I don’t know why I didn’t put the connection that earlier that I was like, Oh, actually, maybe interesting. That’s not about Kubernetes. We barely ever talked about Kubernetes and we talked about is platform engineering now, but anyway. Awesome.

Brian Rinaldi 1:00:39
All right. Thanks, everybody. We’ll see you next time. Bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai