Asking the right questions, with Suze Shardlow, Head of Developer Community with Redis

Ask the right questions to be more effective and successful at DevRel. Start at your job interview and continue from there!

This week’s guest on our podcast is Suze Shardlow, Head of Developer Community with Redis. The interesting thing about developer relations is that people end up in it both from the developer side and from the marketing side. Suze started off as a marketer and is now a coder. Not only is she a coder, she is a speaker, an event emcee, and a published tech author.

In this podcast, Suze offers a really good insight into the relationship between sales and DevRel and how you have to be really careful in your organization not to position DevRel as just another part of the sales funnel. Because nothing turns off developers or damages a community of developers, than trying to sell to them directly. We just don't work that way. We also talk a little about how Suze got into speaking and how being an event MC is not quite the same as doing a talk. For the full, interesting chat, visit our Fireside with Voxgig podcast.

Here we look at some excerpts that cover the questions Suze believes must be asked AND ANSWERED for a DevRel activity to be in with a chance of success.

Richard Rodger: [0:01:46] Where does developer relations live in the organization? [0:01:46]

Suze Shardlow:  [0:01:47] That is definitely the age-old question, and I don’t think we – I think if we were here for 50 years, we still wouldn't have the answer. But – and this might sound like a bit of a cop out, but I think it depends. What we are seeing now is a lot of companies are saying, "We want developer relations. We need a dev rel department. We're going to hire somebody to do this thing." And I think a lot of the time these folks don't really know why they need developer relations.

I think what's clear is that every company wants to make more sales, and a lot of companies, they want developer relations to cut speak to that, which is, everybody's got to work towards the high-level company objectives. And where developer relations sits depends whereabouts on the continuum or how involved you want dev rel to be involved in that piece.

Dev rel's a multidisciplinary thing. We do a lot of different things; we overlap with a lot of different functions or tasks. And in some companies, I would argue, small startups that are quite new, if you're going to hire dev rel you probably want them to contribute to the sales process a lot more than if you've got a mature product. You've been operating for a long time, and maybe you've already IPOed. Probably not so much, you're probably more on the education side, and the awareness side, and maybe product development type thing.

So, it depends, but personally, if I was going for a job in dev rel, I don't think I'd want to be in one of those. Even though I'm a dyed in the wool marketer and that's where I started off, I don't think I'd want to work in a dev rel department that reported into marketing. I'd prefer to work in one that reported into engineering or product. So, yeah, it depends; here's no right or wrong answer., but the job is definitely different depending on where dev rel sits.

Richard Rodger:  [0:03:50] You're getting at an interesting point. This discussion – I'm sure other –if you've listened to other podcasts or whatever, you've heard this discussion before. But I think you're raising a point that I have not heard before, which is really interesting. Which is whether the organization sees dev rel as part of the sales funnel or part of the brand awareness community building. And that's the underlying decision or strategy which drives how you position dev rel, right?

Suze Shardlow:  [0:04:25] Yeah, it does. And that's not necessarily what people are signed up for when they decided to go in developer relations. So, you've got to be really careful when you look at job adverts to see exactly what's expected of you. But every company wants to sell more. A lot of dev rel teams, even if they don't sit in marketing, that's one of their metrics. They've got a code that they can give out at talks and things like that, so they can measure sign-ups and stuff. So, it might only be the free tier, but we know that the free tier is part of the funnel, isn't it?

Richard Rodger:  [0:05:01] Absolutely, yeah.

Suze Shardlow:  [0:05:01] So, there's no getting away with it. No getting away from it, yeah.

Richard Rodger:  [0:05:04] Would that come out? If you're doing a job interview for a dev rel position, what questions do you ask to tease that out? Are you – do you have sales metrics, or how would you find that out?

Suze Shardlow:  [0:05:15] If I was going for a job?

Richard Rodger:  [0:05:16] Yeah.

Suze Shardlow:  [0:05:20] I'd just go in there and say – I have done this. Because I haven't got anyone in dev rel at the moment. I'd just say to them, "Why do you need dev rel now? What problem is dev rel going to be solving for you?" and then listen to the answer. Silence is quite a good tool in these situations.

Just asking somebody why they want dev rel, and then that just gives you the answer as to where they think it sits. Because if they want dev rel because they want more sales, then you might not sit in marketing, but you're going to be aligned to that.

If they want dev rel because they want to raise more awareness or they want to get feedback from community, then that gives you an idea of what's expected from you as well. So, that is my main question that I would ask. Also, the general questions that I would always ask, like where am I – who are my main relationships going to be with if I get this job? That's quite telling as well.

Richard Rodger:  [0:06:20] Yeah. That would tell you. I think you're right to identify the fact that in a smaller startup at an earlier stage, everything is really about sales or the company's dead, so you know what you're getting. But in a more mature, in a larger organization, you end up working in a dev rel team, right? So, what's that experience like? Have you had both of these experiences, where you were the only dev rel person perhaps, or one where you're in a team? And how does that differ?

Suze Shardlow:  [0:06:53] Okay, so at the moment, I'm the only community person in the dev rel team, which is kind of similar. And in the past, I've been the only marketing person in the company, which again is quite similar. So, to be that first hire is really hard, because if I haven't got anybody doing any of that activity and they want – naturally, they're going to want everything, because they're so excited to have somebody on board.

You've got to manage their expectations as to what exactly you can do and what they should be doing. And what you find is, a lot of people hire you and they say, "I hired you because of your expertise," and then they don't go on to use the said expertise or ask you for your opinion. Or they ask you for your opinion and then they just ignore it. And that happens to everybody.

But when you're in a bigger team, it's easier, especially if you've got a good manager, to play to your strengths and have those opportunities to build up knowledge and experience in the areas that you're not so strong at and you want to develop in so you can help each other. But there's definitely more – there's more scope to play to everybody's strengths and make sure that things are being covered that way rather than stretching yourself thinly over things that it's not necessarily what you want to do or what you can do.

And also, there's all different ways of dividing things up. Some people do things geographically, don't they? We don't do that; we do things by language. So, we don't say, "Right, you're going to be the MBA JavaScript dev rel." You're the JavaScript dev rel and you cover every geography as far as you can." I know some companies have had massive teams, haven't they? And-

Richard Rodger:  [0:08:36] Yeah, absolutely. I know. 100 people even.

Suze Shardlow:  [0:08:39] Yeah, 40-plus people.

Richard Rodger:  [0:08:40] I'm going to pick up on a little thing you said. No need to name names. Let's frame this question a little way, a little differently. What are common dev rel mistakes that people make, where your expertise perhaps might have taken them in a different, more successful direction?

Suze Shardlow:  [0:09:10] Not listening to dev rel when they say, "This is how developers want to communicate" or "This is how they want to hear from us." Not looking at the bigger picture, thinking strategically, but this is something that I've noticed in every job that I've had. People tend to focus on the tactics and then – because they're the things that you see, right? That's the end product of what you're trying to do. That's the visible piece of work.

Nobody goes back and says, "Can I see your strategy, because I'm really interested in that?" They'll see your presence. People tend to look and see what other people are doing and are like, "Yeah, we need to do that." And my question – the question that I've been asking everybody since I first got my first job is why. Why? Like you said at the beginning, why do you need dev rel? Why do you need to go on TikTok? Why? Just because somebody else did it.

Those are the two big things. And a mistake that new people coming into dev rel make is that they do look at the tactics and they see it as a sort of influencer role, when actually, yes, there are influencers in dev rel, but there are loads of people working in dev rel who you've never ben head of. So, that is a bit of a misconception amongst a lot of people, but again it comes back to that whole – what is dev rel? And if nobody can really answer that question convincingly in a way that's the universally accepted answer, then you can't blame them.

It can be so valuable in a company to have a voice asking “Why? How does this serve our strategy?”. It can be particularly important in DevRel as some organisations get to grips with how best developer relations can meet their needs effectively.

Keep up to date with voices from the DevRel community through my conversations with experienced coders, developer relations professionals and business leaders on our Fireside with Voxgig podcast.