

Ask HN: What is a "developer evangelist"? - tzaman

During last week's PyCon events with Adria Richards, the role <i>developer evangelist</i> was mentioned a lot. We don't have those where I come from (or at least I'm not aware of), so please enlighten me what the official duties of a <i>developer evangelist</i> are, how do they fit into a company, and how their success is measured?<p>Thanx
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danpalmer
Last summer I was working at a small company and Adria came to 'evangelise' to
the developers (I think) about using SendGrid in our product.

She came to the office, took the dev team out to a local ice cream shop (hot
summer day, greatly appreciated) and then seemed to hang around after for a
little while talking to our PR person, and a little to the CEO who is non-
technical and wasn't going to make a decision about which email service we
used.

To me, that didn't seem particularly good evangelism for developers.
Conversely, I have seen a Twilio developer do a 5 minute talk for other devs,
and it was basically a short bit of code, and a really cool 'wow' moment that
got us all interested. That evangelist was a developer.

Maybe Adria wasn't a good developer evangelist, maybe this was because she
wasn't a developer, I don't know if the two are linked. It is possible that
she didn't really come to see us to preach the virtues of SendGrid, but rather
just to make sure they were on our radar, which the free ice cream certainly
helped with.

------
wallflower
Jeff Barr, the Chief Evangelist at Amazon Web Services, strikes me as my model
for a Developer Evangelist. Communicator, connector, storyteller, passionate.

He gave a very good presentation on Amazon Web Services. Not just technical
content but enough marketing content to make you feel like AWS was something
worth investing your technical learning time in. If someone had a question
about S3/EC2 that he could answer, he answered it to the best of his ability.
More importantly, if someone had a question he could not answer, he stated
that he did not know the answer and he knew someone on the larger AWS team
that he could (and would) get the person in contact with (if they gave them
their business card after the meeting).

In his talk, Jeff threw in some entertaining anecdotal/behind the scenes
stories about AWS. For example, Smugmug (at the time) was charging all of its
AWS fees on a Corporate Amex card. Which qualified them for multiple round-
trip airplane tickets to Europe or wherever every month.

For the developers in the audience who weren't using AWS, I felt like this was
another positive push towards the tipping point to start using it - _even_ if
our current jobs were not cloud-oriented.

And, boy, he was passionate. Not in the sense of Steve Ballmer yelling at
developers but evangelical in wanting to spread the good word of AWS.

------
iopuy
I have had a serious question about this all week. From everything that I've
read this woman is very demanding in her professional life and not always the
easiest person to accommodate. Why on earth is she in the one role the
requires the most community interaction? Why would you not select someone for
that role who tries to put their best face forward and represent your company
to the best of their abilities while being judicious in their interactions
with others? I am really lost on this one.

~~~
metajack
Perhaps she is really good at her job despite these drawbacks you claim she
possesses? Perhaps because her professional interactions normally don't
contain anything that pushes her buttons?

I've interacted with tons of people in similar positions (though not Adria
specifically), and I've never had the relationship get anywhere near any kind
of button pushing, aside from some friendly competitive banter (oh, you use X?
you really should try our Y...).

~~~
iopuy
Sorry I should have cited my source:

> Amanda Blum a female figure in the tech community shared her thoughts on the
> situation. She defined the entire fiasco as a loss for everyone and pointed
> out that Richards, "is not an easy person [to work with]". Blum suggests
> that Richards doesn't have a positive track record in the tech community.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/female-tech-community-
adria-r...](http://www.businessinsider.com/female-tech-community-adria-
richards-2013-3)

I don't claim to know anything she possesses, only what I have read. Still I'm
left wondering, is the role of "developer evangelist" mainly not one of
community interaction? And if it is, is it not outside the realm of
possibility that she will encounter things that "push her buttons"? Geez, I
would feel awkward being in the same room as this lady knowing this is one
step away.

------
healsdata
From <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_evangelist>:

 _...a person who attempts to build a critical mass of support for a given
technology, in order to establish it as a technical standard in a market that
is subject to network effects._

Essentially, a PR person for the company who works by interacting with
developers. They attend conferences, respond to developer concerns regarding
the product, etc.

~~~
aviraldg
How can a non-developer be a _developer_ evangelist? I'd prefer to get my
share of dev evangelism from someone who actually uses (and is one of the
developers of) the tools & technologies s/he's promoting. (a great example of
this is Paul Irish)

~~~
ameen
Most(if not all) Developer Evangelists are developers and do other functions
as well (Afaik).

A Dev Evangelist needs to talk to developers and get them interested in their
product/service and convey its efficiency to them, only a fellow developer
would be able to do that.

------
hashset
I'm finishing my undergrad in CS this year and was approached by Microsoft to
interview for a "Technical Evangelist" position. The only questions related to
programming were:

1.) "Describe Polymorphism" and 2.) "What are the differences between
Inheritance and Composition"

The other questions were very head-in-the-clouds, like "What is the biggest
problem in existence today that can be solved by software? If you had a budget
and a team, how would you solve it?"

So weird.

Anyways, I was dumbfounded at the simplicity as this was in the middle of
other hard-core technical screens from Amazon, Google, Facebook, and eBay for
software dev. positions and the interviewer claimed over and over again that
this was a programming position and your ability to code was #1. Why didn't
they ask me questions to help determine that?

I've since been onsite at MSFT for other reasons and sat down with Technical
Evangelists talking about different MSFT platforms. They seemed skilled at
programming, and had the background to seem legitimate as engineers. This is
what I think Microsoft and other companies really want. The job isn't
technical but you need to look credible to the people you are working/speaking
with. And above all I think you need to be diehard believers in the
product/company.

------
manicbovine
Based on some of the things I read on her blog and here, it seems like a mix
between "developer advocate" and "forward sales". She mentions something about
listening to developers talk about ridiculous hours, demands, etc.

It's a clever position for a company selling to other technology companies.
First they send a person who cares about your time, who speaks your language,
who _advocates_ for _you_ \- no, who _evangelizes_ you. This person is trying
to unite the developer community, bring in fresh faces, embrace unrecognized
communities... this person cares about developers. Next they tell you that,
although the industry really needs to change, _product x_ can ease your life
in the meantime.

My last position was at a education startup. They used the same tactic, only
instead of "evangelists", we sent former professors and teachers who were
simply consultants. Their ability to gain traction in schools depended on
their importance in the community -- hence, they give talks, blog about the
educational issues, etc.

------
itsprofitbaron
Developer Evangelist's are _not_ PR, Marketing, Sales or Recruiting and they
are _not_ coding all of the time either - although there are some of these
involved. Essentially a Developer Evangelist's role is like a combination of
Business, Product Development, Customer Care and everything that is in-
between/connected to those roles.

The main role of a developer evangelist though is as a _translator_. By
translator, I mean that they have to explain their product/technology to
different audiences in order to get their support. A good developer evangelist
gets people/developers excited about a product/technology by pointing out the
benefits to the developers who are going to be the ones actually using the
product. Thus, developer evangelist's need to be technical because, there is
some coding involved in their role and they need to express/find the story in
a technical message to get people/developers excited about a
product/technology.

------
mootpointer
I was hired as a technical community manager/evangelist. I've chosen to take
on neither of those titles in the few months that I've been in this position.
I've been a dev since high school and still consider myself to be one
(although sometimes it can be a while in between chances to write code).

I put "Vim Wielder / Cat Herder" on my business card. Turns out the cats I
herd tend more often to be executives than developers. Developers are great:
you show them a great product and help them to use it and they're on your
side. Helping executives understand how tech community works can be difficult
at times.

I can't comment on what particular brand of developer evangelist Adria
Richards was, but there are many kinds. I'd hope that she was one who writes
code and who contributes to thte community rather than just selling to it.

------
attheodo
e·van·ge·list: A person who seeks to convert others to the Christian faith,
esp. by preaching.

Where "Christian" you can put whichever company grows along with it's
API/code/lib usage and utilization by others.

As I see it it's a purely "hype" role and it's essentially a tech-aware
marketeer seeking to attract fellow developers and engineers to work and
experiment with his company's platform and products.

~~~
ecspike
It depends on the role. It can range from a tech-aware marketeer to an actual
software engineer by trade who writes code samples and materials for the
company's website or some combination there of.

------
ayi
i can suggest watching the Visual Studio Documentary from MSDN
([http://channel9.msdn.com/Series/VisualStudioDocumentary/The-...](http://channel9.msdn.com/Series/VisualStudioDocumentary/The-
Visual-Studio-Documentary-Part-One)). In the series, two woman explains what
they did while MS tries to popularize their IDE and new programming languages
back in 90's. Women were (and still) developer evangelists at MS. They arrange
events, they give free MS software to developers and they support developers
7/24.

By the way, sorry for my bad english.

------
thekevan
Someone who (most likely) isn't a developer but works to get developers who
don't work for the evangelist's company to like said company.

------
mansigandhi
I don't have the answer, but thank you for asking it! It never occurred to me
to do an Ask HN.

