Comment by Catalin Pit 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!"

Hello Lee 👋,

First of all, welcome to Hashnode and thank you for doing this AMA!

I am a big admirer of you and your work, so I am glad I can drill into your knowledge! 😁

Let's start!

How do you avoid burning out? Keeping up with all the technologies + creating content + social media can take a toll on people.
How much experience do you think one should have before jumping into Dev Rel?
Can a junior developer start with Dev Rel straightaway?
Should Dev Rel report to the Marketing department?
Some companies see Dev Rel as a "nicer marketing for developers". How do you make sure you get into a proper Dev Rel role rather than a marketing role?
How do you stay up-to-date with your coding skills? Isn't it easy to "lose" your skills if you don't code full-time?
What are your top tips for people wanting to transition to Dev Rel?

I am looking forward to seeing your thoughts. Thank you in advance for your time!

Sounds simple, but take time off to recharge! And importantly work at a company that supports you through this.
It depends 😁 I don't like saying you need to have prior programming experience to do DevRel, but at the same time, it's critical you understand the content you're talking about.
Same as above ^
To be honest... I don't think it matters much! Whether you report into product or marketing, what really matters is what metrics you track and hold yourself and your team accountable for. If these are more product-focused, then you're likely doing more product work.
There's a negative stigma to developer marketing, but if done right, it's exactly what folks want. See quote below. But, DevRel (or a larger DevExp) can't be all marketing. It's important to be the alpha/beta testers of new features or products and be willing to give unfiltered feedback to the product/engineering teams before the general public.

Marketing doesn’t have to feel gross. Sharing what you’re working on, writing about the behind-the-scenes process, and documenting hard problems you’ve solved is all marketing, and people are excited to see that sort of stuff, not put off by it.
Build stuff! I still code quite a bit.
Start today 😁 Write a blog, create a video, or create some content and put it online. Then do it again tomorrow. Keep it up for a month... and you already have a portfolio of content ready for a job interview.

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