People who weren't there don't understand, but the world before "Ask Your Developer" was completely different than the world we live in today where developers are at the heart of how decisions are made, products are built and how the world itself is changing.
I joined Twilio in 2012 and I saw first hand how pivotal Jeff was in supporting the idea that in order for a platform to be successful it needed to treat developers like first class citizens, and not simply the recipient of a "directive to integrate" from the CTO.
This idea wasn't simply a fist bump to devs for cool points, it was a recognition that developers themselves held the key to innovation and creating radically new things. This culture led to entirely new ways of building API docs, designing developer dashboards, creating developer events, and so on.
So many of these things have become mainstream and the new baseline for platform companies that people forget how unlikely it was in the beginning and how hard Jeff had to fight to keep the company from treating developers as a means, and not as an end. And I think all developers who are happily hacking away on a free tier of a cool API with excellent docs and a vibrant developer community should tip their hat to a person who helped make this normal and influenced a generation of leaders to do the same.
I joined Twilio in 2012 and I saw first hand how pivotal Jeff was in supporting the idea that in order for a platform to be successful it needed to treat developers like first class citizens, and not simply the recipient of a "directive to integrate" from the CTO.
This idea wasn't simply a fist bump to devs for cool points, it was a recognition that developers themselves held the key to innovation and creating radically new things. This culture led to entirely new ways of building API docs, designing developer dashboards, creating developer events, and so on.
So many of these things have become mainstream and the new baseline for platform companies that people forget how unlikely it was in the beginning and how hard Jeff had to fight to keep the company from treating developers as a means, and not as an end. And I think all developers who are happily hacking away on a free tier of a cool API with excellent docs and a vibrant developer community should tip their hat to a person who helped make this normal and influenced a generation of leaders to do the same.