Why Every Business Should Consider Having A Developer Advocate

In the last couple of years you may have noticed an uptick in job postings for a specific job title. Technology is constantly innovating and growing. These technologies affect businesses more and more as technology becomes increasingly more integral to conducting business.

Within the past few years more services have been created for software developers. This is why you may have seen an uptick in jobs for the position of developer advocate.

Business Must Have A Developer Advocate

Within the last year companies such as Camunda have seen an increase in needed developer advocacy positions which used to sit around 40-50 positions a month to now over 200 positions per month. In this article we will discuss why your business should consider having a developer advocate as part of your team.

Never heard of the term developer advocate before? A developer advocate is the link between the people using a product and those building the product. Why do companies need this link? Well developer advocates take feedback provided by users of any given product and report the information received back to the company and its developers.

It is a developer advocate’s job so they can use any given product created by the company’s engineers in addition to evaluating if the product can be used at all skill levels. It is a test to see if beginners, intermediate, and high advanced skill levels are able to learn and use the developers products. In essence, a developer advocate’s main objective is to make sure software developers are successful.

This role can also be defined as a developer evangelist. It is sometimes called this people part of the role of developer advocate is someone who preaches to developers about new technologies. Developer advocates can do a lot with their position.

They may travel the world speaking at tech conferences or may be hired for a few hours by a company to test a new product. Their overarching goal is to make sure software developers and engineers create successful products.

What can a developer advocate bring to your company? Developer advocates can bring a lot to the table to your business. They bring empathy, passion, and a new perspective. The health of your developer community is extremely important to the overall success of your company’s products and services.

Developer advocates are known to be very empathetic. They are able to pick up on subtleties within the community. They are able to do this because one they have technical backgrounds so they understand developer’s struggles from a technical perspective as well as they chose this profession to assist their community.

Having someone who understands developers inner communal language can help other departments understand their own needs and the needs of the project in development.

Having an advocate helps everyone across the board be more productive. According to a study conducted by the State of Developer Relations in 2020, the results showed that the top listed skill an employee needs to have a successful career in developer advocacy is empathy. It is an advocate’s job to help developers in any way they can.

Advocates also bring passion for engineering to the table. Passion for a new product can manifest in many different forms. It is very common for developer advocates to create content regarding your new product. Advocates have been known to give presentations, write blog posts, film and edit step by step tutorials, and more!

Trust us when we say developer advocates love to talk about new features and products. You want someone boasting about your progress! It gets your team excited as well as the greeted developer community. People who are passionate about software development like to share their knowledge with others.

Which is exactly what your company wants! Another positive benefit of having a developer advocate as a part of your team is that they can bring a new perspective to a product. This is because they are not a part of the physical development team. Providing a third party perspective into designing a product can lead to new innovation!

When you ask yourself the question why should I hire a developer advocate, you must remember these key points. There is a distinct reason why developer advocates are a full time position. Your software developers work really hard to create new and exciting products.

At the end of grueling days of coding your team does not have the bandwidth to do all the tasks that a developer advocate is happy to do. Your developers will not have the energy to help show the products to new customers, facilitate good health of the community, provide unbiased user advice, and generate hype about the product.

This is why it is essential you hire a developer advocate. For the best work possible you need someone to fill the gaps between design and customer usage.

There is a reason why more and more companies are looking for developer advocates. Start ups and innovative tech companies see the vast potential of how a developer advocate can benefit their businesses. Stay ahead of the curve and invest in hiring your own developer advocate today!