Discussion on "Hey, I’m Lee, VP of Developer Experience for Vercel and Next.js, and I help developers build a faster web. Ask me anything!"

Lee Robinson · 2021-11-22T19:09:15.731Z

Hey! I’m Lee. I’ve been a developer for 10+ years, formerly doing Product Engineering and now doing Developer Relations. I create content online (programming courses, YouTube videos, and more) and help educate developers about web development and ar...

How will vercel or next.js migrate to web3.0?

Hi Lee, I'm really interested in learning about DevOps, could I get some kind of roadmap or something to start with.

Hi, I'm Fru Boris. Do you think it's wise to go full stack or stick to either front end or back-end?

Personally, I believe strongly in the frontend. More and more services are available as APIs, making it more obtainable than ever for frontend developers to move into the fullstack.

Hey Lee, another question for you :).
Could you tell us about time management w.r.t to project deadlines in your team?
How do y'all decide on deadlines and how do you manage with buffer or deadline skips?

Deadlines are usually based around KPIs, which I talked about above. Most of the time they're flexible, unless it's for an event, then we have a certain date we're aiming for :)

Thank you so much Lee Robinson

Hi Lee. Thanks for doing this. I traditionally come from a windows desktop development environment and a bit distanced from web stuff. I learned Selenium automation a few years ago. I can code all kinds of algorithms but how would you suggest i can rapidly apply my experience to say Javascript and React. Cheers

Hey! It's a great time to learn :) I'd recommend trying to build some JavaScript and React applications. Also, start thinking about how you learn best.

Hi Lee. Thank you for everything you have done and are doing to spread the gospel of Next.js and Vercel.

In your opinion, what are some the best online tutorial/courses that are available, paid or free, that one can take in order to master this wonderful framework that is Next.js?
What other web development tools/libraries/frameworks do you foresee taking over this field by storm in the future like Next.js has done?

Hey Lee, thanks for this AMA.

First of all I would like to thank you for being the person who got me into NextJS and Chakra UI. It has really helped me do a lot in the past months 😁

So, my question is what skills do you think are necessary for a web developer now and also how many of these skills will be relevant in the future, maybe even 10-15 years later? I am talking about basic skills like Javascript, HTML, CSS etc. and as well as more advanced things (or if I put it that way, newer technologies) like rust, deni, NextJS, remixjs etc.

Also what are your insights on open source and web3?

Also, generally, what should be the ideal way of managing school, studies and coding, altogether as I often don't find myself much time.

In your opinion or from your experience, is a college degree or masters still a barrier in getting employed at companies like vercel? And for instance does it always play a significance in terms of promotion or employment in higher ranking positions at companies.

Nah, it's not a requirement. There's quite a few people at Vercel without a university degree, including our CEO. In general industry-wide, folks with a degree have higher pay. I think that's starting to normalize, though.

Hi Lee,

Do you believe that the demand for software engineers who have fluency in the Rust language is going to greatly increase over the next 5 to 10 years?

Ohhhhh yes, 100%! See my thoughts on Rust here.

In your recent blog post you wrote

…This comes back to hiring. Finding people I could trust, and then working to strengthen that trust, has made our team highly effective.

What are you looking for, for people interested in interviewing for Dev Advocate position at Vercel?

I felt stagnant in my career, longing to spend more time being a creator and less time as a product engineer

Did your prior experience as product engineer enabled you to make the switch to Dev 🥑. If so, what were the strong points / skills from your experience that came super handy when you interviewed for Vercel? ( I'm basically trying to gauge a path for myself trying to see where I stand in terms of skills and valuable experience 😅 )

A couple of points from other questions:

Our culture values folks who can work successfully fully remote, which means being able to write well and communicate clearly. This is extra important when you're dealing with people all across the world and trying to collaborate together!

Start creating content online! That's your best portfolio. It's much easier to get a job in DevRel if you already have established work to show (blogs, videos, etc).

I'll share more about what we're looking for once we open up Developer Advocate roles again for hiring in 2022 😁

Did your prior experience as a product engineer enable you to make the switch to DevRel?

Yes, it certainly helped! See my answer here.

Hi Lee, heard that module federation is coming to next.js. is it true? we have zones, redirects but that doesn't solve what we are trying to do. like common app shell. maintaining state between redirects etc.

Must one have a large Twitter follower count to become a developer advocate?

Nah, the impact of your work is more important than your Twitter following! Especially if you're working at a company that will then amplify your work.

Steph on my team had a few hundred followers when I hired her. The quality of her work spoke for itself 😁

Thank you very much. Lee Robinson

Hi Lee, thanks for this AMA, could you please say what the roadmap to being a developer advocate is.

Hey Lee!

First of all I'm a huge fan of what Vercel and Next.js offers and you guys seem to be killing it recently 🙌.

I noticed one of your suggested topics is 'Working at Startups' so what is both your favourite, and least favourite thing about working at a startup.

Thanks!

Hey, Kieran! Thank you.

Favorite: Being able to grow exponentially in my career and having the autonomy to own & tackle large projects.
Least Favorite: Not being a public company 😜

Thanks Lee! To change the pace a little, can you share a bit about your role in product engineering and how that differs from traditional engineering? How did it help you get where you are today?

I call my previous work "product engineering" because, in my mind, there's product work and infrastructure engineering. That breakdown helps you separate whether you're working on customer-facing parts of the application, or whether you're helping support all of the product engineers.

This work was critical for me to become a successful developer advocate, in my opinion, because I can emphasize with developers. I've seen that massive codebase with spaghetti code that no one wants to touch. I've been in those difficult conversations where you're deciding where to cut scope, where to make sacrifices, and how you compromise and iterate forward.

This experience helps me dig deeper when folks ask questions and give more pragmatic recommendations. For example my latest video, "Should you learn JavaScript before React?".

Hi lee

Is vercel planning on doing anything like remix / blitz or redwood? That is some kind of ruby-on-rails based on React?

And now that Rich harris is on the team, is vercel planning / considering some kind of library agnostic framework like marko?

just curious because the front-end world seems to be evolving around/beyond react itself

Hi Lee- Thanks for taking time to host this AMA! Now that Remix Run has been released will NextJS be adopting any of the features from Remix?

Thanks!

Hey Lee, How did you come up with a startup idea?

What did you put into practice before starting one?

Hi Lee- it might be an unimportant question. But I love programming so much, and I want to learn all about programming languages and web development from scratch, how to start and where to start.

Hey, having passion is excellent, that's not unimportant! YouTube is one of my favorite resources, there's just an abundance of great content. If you want a specific recommendation for a language or framework or similar, I can try to narrow my recommendation now.

Lee Robinson Yes, please. Suggest something that makes me capable no matter how hard it is, I like programming, so suggest anything. You were a developer for 10 years, so you know where to start.being a developer or a programmer is amazing. To sit in front of a computer and do programs or games. To discuss with my colleagues and collaborate on a project that's just amazing. I wish I could be a developer. Literally learning programming languages. That's amazing. And thank you very much for answering my question.

I would learn JavaScript and start building websites, then!

beginnerjavascript.com

Hi Lee, first of all, thank you for the wonderful content you constantly post, it is really helpful to all of us.

What advice can you give anyone planning to apply for a software engineer position at vercel? What skills / experience do you consider most important to be accepted? Any insight you might share about the interviewing process?

and do you have any particular advice for someone with many years of web development experience, but very little experience with React (I've been on the Svelte side of things for three years)?

Thank you 🖤

Vercel's engineering roles should be similar requirements to other companies our size (150-300 employees). Our culture values folks who can work successfully fully remote, which means being able to write well and communicate clearly. This is extra important when you're dealing with people all across the world and trying to collaborate together!

Prior React exp. isn't a pre-req for joining Vercel 😁 It certainly helps to know React or Next.js, but if you're a great web developer, you'll be able to succeed here regardless of that. Exceptional developers are able to learn new things quickly, especially if you already have an established career as a web dev (a lot of skills transfer).

Hi, Lee Thanks for the AMA!, I'm curious to know your thoughts on these questions:

what do you think of remix?
what are your thoughts on vite ecosystem in general?

Hi Lee, I need help with the integration of Snapchat oauth on a single page application. I have gone through resources online but no end. Is there any way you can help?

One solution could be to integrate with Firebase Auth, which has lots of resources around it. Another could be Passport.

Hi Lee, thanks for the AMA. Nextjs is evolving. My question is, Nextjs recently announced Rust compiler which provided a significant boost in compile time.

Since this was a big change, how does the team handle it internally? Basically, what strategies does someone call follow to ship a big breaking change confidently?

I have found it difficult to collaborate on a bigger feature especially when 1 person is dependent on another and vice-versa. Would you like to share some tips to collaborate with the team effectively in an async fashion? How does working at Vercel look like?

Hey there!

We take breaking changes seriously and try to avoid them at all costs. Especially for Next.js. This means that for new features like our Rust-based compiler, you're still able to opt-out and keep using Babel if you prefer. This makes incremental adoption much easier for folks.

On async work, writing and communicating clearly is incredibly important to make this process smooth.

Hi Lee - Big fan of your work and I'm a Next.js stan for life! Super glad when I heard you joined Vercel and was stoked when you became the Head of Developer Relations. Well Deserved!

I have two questions.

I want to know due to the growth of web3 adoption in recent times, are there plans on adopting web3 in Vercel and also in Next.js?
I tried being a community manager myself but mehn it isn't easy. How do you manage your time, brand and still have time to support the developer community?

Hey, thank you so much! I appreciate that.

The web3 / crypto / NFTs community is growing exponentially. Lots of them are choosing Next.js and Vercel too, which is fun 😁 We have some unofficial content around this right now, but we're working to help these folks succeed as well. We already are involved with some things here, like sponsoring Developer DAO.
Working with communities is difficult and often thankless work (so thank you again for the nice words). I try to make a portion of my day available to the community every day, answering their questions and helping them succeed - but it's important that's not all I do, otherwise, I wouldn't have time to help my team succeed (as a manager) and also have a personal brand and identity.

Hey Lee,

Firstly, thanks for all the work you have put into your content and the community, it's helped me out a tonne over the years.

I'm curious to know what a day in the life of Lee looks like, and how you can get so much done consistently!

Appreciate the kind words, Jarrod!

Almost every day I'm responding to or helping our customers in some way, whether that's on Twitter, emails, support forms, StackOverflow, Discord, and more. First and foremost, I'm a member of the larger Vercel and Next.js community, so I want to be there to help others out.

I also take the community feedback about Vercel or Next.js that maybe isn't as smooth and funnel that into suggestions to make our product better or how we can help customers succeed.

A few things that help me get things done:

Following my calendar – I put almost everything on there, including "work blocks" of deep work.
Trying, mostly failing, to get inbox zero for email.
Using Slack Reminders and muting channels so I'm not overwhelmed by notifications.
Making sure to take time for myself and my family and fully disconnecting from work!

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Hey, I’m Lee, VP of Developer Experience for Vercel and Next.js, and I help developers build a faster web. Ask me anything!

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Hey, I’m Lee, VP of Developer Experience for Vercel and Next.js, and I help developers build a faster web. Ask me anything!

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