Over the last couple of months with extra time on my hands (re: currently unemployed) I’ve been looking at job posting and applying to web development jobs like crazy. I’ve been more active in some online dev communities, and browsing job boards multiple times a day. This led me to discover a role called a “developer advocate” or “developer relations”.

在过去的几个月中，我的空闲时间更多(例如：目前待业)，我一直在寻找职位发布并申请诸如疯狂的Web开发职位。 我在一些在线开发者社区中更加活跃，并且每天浏览工作板多次。 这使我发现了一个称为“开发者拥护者”或“开发者关系”的角色。

I initially had no idea what a developer advocate was, what their role meant, or what they contributed. Do they write code? Do they advocate for their team and push back on project managers or other teams that make scope creep the thing of nightmares? Who are they?

最初，我不知道开发人员倡导者是什么，他们的角色意味着什么或他们做出了什么贡献。 他们会写代码吗？ 他们是否为自己的团队提倡并退回项目经理或其他使范围变得噩梦般的团队？ 他们是谁？

I did some digging, and I realized the confusion I was experiencing of reading a job posting that seemed to be requiring such disjointed skill sets such as writing blogs and writing code were, for this role, completely logical. And then I let some folks educate me. I reached out to a small handful of complete strangers on LinkedIn who had the job title of developer advocate, and asked to start a conversation. These individuals were able to provide context for the confusing and seemingly massive job description of a developer advocate.

我做了一些挖掘，然后意识到我在阅读一份职位发布时遇到的困惑，似乎需要这种脱节的技能，例如写博客和编写代码，对于这个角色来说是完全合乎逻辑的。 然后我让一些人教育我。 我在LinkedIn上与一小撮完全陌生的人接触，他们拥有开发倡导者的头衔，并要求开始对话。 这些人能够为开发人员拥护者带来的混乱且看似庞大的职位描述提供背景信息。

The first thing I learned is that the role of a developer advocate, or those in “DevRel” (developer relations) is currently changing. While the primary role of many developer advocates at tech companies has been to attend conferences and give presentations (sometimes referred to as a “road warriors”), conferences are cancelled and presenters are grounded due to the current Covid-19 situation. Many companies are shifting to digital engagement via blogs, live-streaming, webinars, and third-party social media platforms as the primary means of communication and user support. What this also means is that each tweet or blog post had a new, increased value. I also learned that developer advocates are typically communicating regularly with other developers — not customers — who use the platform or services that the developer advocate represents and supports. Developer advocates work for companies like Google, Facebook, IBM, and these companies all have products or platforms that the developer advocate must be an expert in the functionality of the code base, road maps, features vs. bugs, all while being fluent in the development language and the language of developers.

我了解到的第一件事是，开发者拥护者或“开发者关系”(DevRel)(开发者关系)中的角色目前正在发生变化。 尽管许多科技公司的开发者倡导者的主要角色一直是参加会议并进行演讲(有时被称为“道路勇士”)，但由于当前的Covid-19形势，会议被取消，演讲者被停职。 许多公司正在通过博客，实时流媒体，网络研讨会和第三方社交媒体平台转向数字互动，以此作为交流和用户支持的主要手段。 这也意味着每条推文或博客文章都有新的增加的价值。 我还了解到，开发者倡导者通常会与其他开发者(而不是客户)进行定期交流，而其他开发者使用的是开发者倡导者所代表和支持的平台或服务。 开发者拥护者为Google，Facebook，IBM等公司工作，这些公司都拥有产品或平台，开发者拥护者必须精通代码库的功能，路线图，功能与bug，同时还要流利的开发语言和开发人员的语言。

A developer advocate may need to write a snippet of code to troubleshoot a Twitter question one minute, and then transition into a larger body of work such as a series of digital learning lessons the next minute. They need exceptionally strong written and verbal communication skills. It seems as though a developer advocate is an individual who is an intermediary between the primary platform development team, the developers who use the platform, shareholders who make decisions on feature builds and resource costs, and the casual developer by-standard who gets to watch things that don’t directly concern them unfold. They get to meet and talk to a lot of different kinds of people, and ideally, they should enjoy doing just that.

开发者倡导者可能需要编写一小段代码来在一分钟内解决Twitter问题，然后在下一分钟过渡到更大范围的工作，例如一系列数字学习课程。 他们需要非凡的书面和口头交流能力。 似乎开发者拥护者是一个个人，该人是主要平台开发团队，使用该平台的开发人员，在功能构建和资源成本方面做出决定的股东以及偶然看到的标准开发人员之间的中介与他们没有直接关系的事情正在发展。 他们可以见面并与许多不同类型的人交谈，理想情况下，他们应该喜欢这样做。

So, I’m going to do something wildly uncharacteristic and tell you why I think I’d make a great developer advocate.

因此，我将做一些非常不典型的事情，并告诉您为什么我认为我会成为一名出色的开发者拥护者。

Those of you who know me, know this already — I don’t have a traditional background in computer science. I have a Liberal Arts background with Bachelor’s degrees in English and Philosophy, and a Master’s degree in English Literature. “So, what?” my potential future employer may be asking themselves, while reading this blog post. What this means is that I’m capable of writing. And not just writing, but writing and finishing major bodies of work (like a graduate thesis), in addition to smaller pieces. It’s one thing to start a project, but it’s another to finish it.

那些了解我的人已经知道这一点-我没有计算机科学的传统背景。 我拥有通识教育背景，具有英语和哲学学士学位，以及英语文学硕士学位。 “所以呢？” 我的潜在未来雇主在阅读此博客文章时可能会问自己。 这意味着我有写作能力。 不仅是写作，还有写作和完成主要作品(如研究生论文)以及较小的作品。 开始一个项目是一回事，但是完成它是另一回事。

From the information I’ve gathered on developer advocates, at the heart of what they do is content creation. Whether it’s content like a step-by-step guide to setting up a new sandbox, to troubleshooting and documenting developer issues, or writing blog posts, the developer advocates themselves are responsible for that content creation.

从我收集的有关开发人员支持者的信息中，他们所做的工作的核心是内容创建。 无论是像设置新的沙箱的分步指南，对开发人员的问题进行故障排除和记录，还是撰写博客文章等内容，开发人员都主张由自己来负责内容的创建。

Why else would I be a great developer advocate? I can talk. When the topic of conversation is something I really enjoy and feel passionate about, I can talk your ear off. A developer advocate needs to be someone who can have engaging conversations with people about shared interests and keep the conversation going, and match the technical (or non-technical) level of the dialogue.

我为什么还要成为一名出色的开发者拥护者？ 我可以说话。 当谈话主题是我真正喜欢并充满激情的事物时，我可以不理会。 开发者倡导者必须是能够与人们就共同的兴趣进行有趣的对话并保持对话进行并与对话的技术(或非技术)水平相匹配的人。

And what about traveling for conferences and writing papers and presentations when the pandemic is over? I attended conferences as both a presenter and attendee during graduate school. I even chaired a panel once.

大流行结束后，参加会议，写论文和演讲会怎么样？ 在研究生院期间，我以主持人和与会者的身份参加了会议。 我什至曾经主持过一个小组。

If those reasons weren’t enough to convince anyone and everyone (and even myself) that I’d be a great developer advocate, my six years of development experiences working for a variety of companies should be a strong consideration. I’ve worked for Fortune 500 companies as well as small start-ups and digital agencies, and have had all kinds of experiences. Many of these companies I’ve worked for have offered me the opportunity to work on internal documentation for our dev teams, in addition to working on SOWs with project managers. I once presented slide decks to Directors and SVPs on technical recommendations. While putting together a PowerPoint presentation left me exhausted and burned out, it was great to see the project to completion and maybe even implementation.

如果这些原因不足以说服任何人和所有人(甚至我自己)相信我会成为一名出色的开发者拥护者，那么我在各种公司工作的6年开发经验应该是一个值得考虑的问题。 我曾为《财富》 500强公司，小型初创公司和数字代理机构工作，并拥有各种经验。 除了与项目经理一起进行SOW之外，我工作过的许多公司还为我提供了为我们的开发团队处理内部文档的机会。 我曾向董事和高级副总裁介绍有关技术建议的幻灯片。 虽然将PowerPoint演示文稿放在一起会使我精疲力尽，但我很高兴看到项目完成甚至执行。

So, to all the companies that have rejected me so far for developer advocate roles I’ve applied for — that’s alright. I know the landscape of developer relations is changing right now, and a lot of companies are screaming, “pivot!” and the top of their lungs.

因此，对于到目前为止我拒绝了我申请的开发者倡导者角色的所有公司来说，这都很好。 我知道开发人员关系的格局正在发生变化，许多公司都在大喊“枢纽！” 和他们的肺顶。

To all the companies that might be seeking out my Medium posts to judge my blogging ability — I hope you’ve made it down this far, and thank you. In a nutshell: recognize my value, pay me what I’m worth, and let me write for you.

对于所有可能正在寻找我的中级职位来判断我的博客功能的公司-希望您到目前为止做得还不错，谢谢。 简而言之：认清我的价值，付给我我所值得的，然后让我为您写信。