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Flavors of DevRel: tummeling, docs, SDKs, meetings, and conferences
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In this episode, we reconnect for season 3, after a short hiatus to chat about life in Developer Relations (DevRel) at bigger companies, the avalanche of meetings that come with onboarding, the rollercoaster of prepping for big events like GDC, and the ongoing quest to create top-tier documentation and SDKs. We swap tips for maximizing AI tools, reflect on building the DevRel muscle from scratch, and share some fun side stories about local AI models, the surprising details that delight developers, and the importance of building reusable content for conferences.
Topics Covered
- DevRel at a Big Company
- Balancing one-on-ones, onboarding tasks, and project management meetings.
- Strategies for politely pruning your calendar so actual work gets done.
- Why dev advocates end up as “tummelers,” making sure every voice is heard in a bustling org.
- GDC & Conference Prep
- The crunch leading up to a big event—workshops, talks, documentation updates, and unexpected scope creep.
- Juggling multiple presentations and deciding what content should be reusable or recorded.
- First steps planning DevRel activities for major company conferences.
- Flavor Variations of Dev Advocacy
- Comparing DevRel at a self-serve startup (like Stripe) vs. an enterprise environment where devs aren’t always the decision-makers.
- How to navigate new responsibilities, from establishing YouTube channels to championing better docs platforms.
- SDK Generation & Documentation Challenges
- The pros and cons of self-built vs. third-party, auto-generated SDKs.
- Maintaining a polished, dev-friendly experience across multiple languages.
- Cleaning up an OpenAPI spec, ensuring thorough examples and descriptions.
- Balancing “thin vs. full-featured” SDK approaches (retries, pagination, error handling, oh my!).
- Insights on Tools & AI
- How many AI services are too many AI services? (ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor, Descript, ElevenLabs, local LLaMa, etc.)
- Encouraging new coders (like Logan!) to lean on AI-driven dev tools and embrace prompt engineering.
- Will auto-generated SDKs eventually make handcrafted clients obsolete? Maybe…but not quite yet.
- Write the Docs
- Excitement around giving a talk at the Write the Docs conference on open-source documentation.
- Lessons learned from letting the community contribute PRs, and how it all ties back to building dev relationships.
- Fun Developer Delights
- Appreciating the “little things” in product design—from underscore-only API keys that copy easily, to IKEA coffee mugs that drain flawlessly in dishwashers.
- Why it’s worth fighting for extra developer-experience polish (and how that shapes product love).
Resources Mentioned
- Write the Docs
https://www.writethedocs.org - OpenAPI Initiative
https://www.openapis.org - ReadMe (API Documentation Platform)
https://readme.com - Fern (SDK Generation)
https://www.fernapi.com - Speakeasy (SDK Generation)
https://www.speakeasyapi.dev - Stainless (SDK Generation)
https://stainlessapi.com - Orbit (Community Tools)
https://orbit.love - Stripe
https://stripe.com - Descript
https://www.descript.com - ElevenLabs
https://elevenlabs.io - Anthropic
https://www.anthropic.com - Vercel’s v0 (AI App Builder)
https://v0.dev
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