Tons of traditional companies have x-relations employees, they're just not titled as such. Attending trade shows, developing distributor relationships, constructing and distributing demo materials, building local/state/federal government support networks, driving the branded truck around town — all of these are very common in non-tech industries and are basically analogous to DevRel engineer responsibilities.
This is an excellent question and the answer is maybe not too surprising. Where mechanics buy their own tools and nurses have little tool purchasing power, developers produce machinery that is costly to change and if they struggle to use something (activation risk) then we can't get that lock-in to stick. DevRel isn't for the individuals, it is for influencing the aggregate so they get their companies stuck with the solution.
I always thought of developer relations as essentially a tech-sales role. Isn't that ultimately what its trying to do, "educate" people to use your product?
It depends but generally its a marketing focused role with an inherent sales pitch - helping you to solve problems with their software means you buy more of their thing and get their brand out there.
Seeing a lot of it collapse into "solution engineering" (tech focused sales) or "forward deployed engineers" which basically are all different versions of the same idea with less marketing focus.
On birds, nature, and being carefree
The good parts of DevRel
The difficult parts of DevRel
Arbitrary measures of success
Fighting to be valued and justify my existence
On being the face of a company
AI is killing developer education
What’s next for me
It took me quite a bit of time to realise this wasn't modern poetry, but the TOC.
I grew up when tech was us nerds making things.
Value was in building things and solving problems. Not in vague connection, curated vulnerability, or coordinating other coordinators.
You never hear about Nurse Relations or Mechanic Relations.
Seeing a lot of it collapse into "solution engineering" (tech focused sales) or "forward deployed engineers" which basically are all different versions of the same idea with less marketing focus.