The Art of Landing a DevRel Role | daily.dev's Francesco Ciulla

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1:07Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Dev Interrupted. This is your co-host, Connor Bronsden. And today, I'm delighted to be joined by Francesco Culla, developer advocate at daily.dev. Francesco, welcome to the show. Thank you so much, Connor, for inviting me. And I'm super excited to be a guest in a podcast. So I am a developer advocate at DailyDev. I'm also very active on social media, especially Twitter and YouTube. And yes, super excited to share something about me. Let's see if this can be helpful for someone. So thank you. I think we can manage to make it a little helpful for a few folks, particularly because you have a ton of experience, both as a guest and a host yourself.

1:45You had a circuitous past becoming a dev advocate, and you didn't really start your career as a programmer until you were 32, despite knowing how to code. But in short order, you complete your CS degree, got hired by the European Space Agency. To your point about Twitter, you took it from zero to 35 ,000 followers in just seven months. Today, you have nearly 170 ,000 followers. And you've also leveraged that to start a successful YouTube channel talking about the issues facing devs and the tooling, the processes, everything that makes developers are successful. One of the things that I really loved and that caught my eye first about you is that you, when you were starting that YouTube channel, you interviewed 100 tech leaders in 100 days.

2:25You've now interviewed nearly 200. And this has all been accomplished at really lightning speed. You've been in the industry for less than 10 years, really five years here now professionally. So today we want to give our community that opportunity to learn from you, like you mentioned, where you've done this incredible work, community building at daily.dev and elsewhere. And I know you have advice for folks who are either trying to talk to developers, be DevRels, or looking to replicate some of that career success themselves. So I think this is a great opportunity for those folks who are looking to level up their external promotion game and their ability to kind of do this sort of stuff and the content creation side.

3:02So let's start with how you got there. First, I understand you were a volleyball coach before you made the switch to programming and dev rel full-time what prompted that career change well that was a great introduction so i always loved computers so my first computer was a commodore 64 but i don't we don't have time to to hear all my story but just to give an idea classic i was also the first person in my class to have the internet connection so and i was in a k-12 so it's very hard to explain to someone else what internet is but let's go fast forward so i became a volleyball coach at 15 and I've always been that.

3:39So for 17, almost 20 years. But in the meanwhile, I always loved math and science, we can say. Maybe because I have two parents who are both teachers. One is a math teacher and the other one is a gym instructor. So probably I'm getting something from both of them. But I found that staying at PC for coding, it was super boring. So I preferred, of course, to stay in a gym. So except for games, this could make me sit for a lot of hours. But coding, for me, I always found it very, very low. So that was a blocker for me. That's how you say, no, I can't do this for a living. This is way before Twitter and developer advocacy.

4:21So long story short, when I was 32, I was already a student in a computer science degree, but I didn't like coding. So I was a computer science student that didn't like coding. Not very, very bad. you know, we have some moments in our life that we don't know what to do. So I said, because I liked math and physics, but not coding part. And then one day something happened. One, I did an exam and one of my professors, they say, Francesco, you will never be a developer because you have good theory, but you're not good at coding, which was true. But usually when someone, I don't think motivation, but when someone triggers you in this way, Then I remember me coming back at home and saying, okay, now I want to be a developer.

5:07So I made a commitment. Okay, I want to switch careers because I've already studied. I'm getting old and I'm joking for being a coach. So there are different reasons. And so I decided, okay, now I want to start coding. This is way before social media and stuff. So I started probably in the hardest way, which is to learn with game development. So Unity 3D and C Sharp, because I wanted something funny, Something was a bit engaging because I couldn't sit for more than 30 minutes coding some JavaScript HTML stuff. By the way, I did some coding at university, but usually universities, they are more focused on the theory, which I think is correct.

5:43So, a business degree, they will not learn how much to code, some theory about computers. So, this is the long story short. And basically, after two years, I did my first interview. It was for an internship position. and that was probably has been one of the luckiest days in my life at least from a career perspective because i got rejected so i got rejected for an internship position so if you get rejected for a position especially if it's not well paid probably this might be one of the luckiest days of your life because then i doubled down my efforts and after three months i made another interview for the European Space Agency.

6:23I'll be super fast here. So I would have never thought that. I would never apply for a job for the European Space Agency. So why did I end up working there? Because one of my professors at university, once he sent me an email telling, like, Francesco, would you like to work for the European Space Agency? I thought it was a joke. I said, okay, so this is a joke because we are like almost friends. And I said, no, no, no, it's true. You can go there and say, okay. So, you know, when bar is so high, they say, okay, so let's do it. I have no problems. I'm curious because this will never happen. So let's go.

6:59And I was super relaxed during the interview process because, you know, when you do a casting and you already know that you will never get there. So you are so relaxed. You are really yourself. It was funny during the interview. The other people were really stressed. I was super relaxed. And also they asked something about Git and Docker, which was probably, I was already kind of strong at this topic, which was new in 2017. And then after one week, I was working there full time. So this is the short story of how I became a new company. Did you have that moment where you're like, wait a second?

7:32Yeah. And you know what? Like, it was great because OPSP Agency has great open spaces. I worked there like in a group of 200 people. almost 50 % of the people are women in the group. So it was not what usually is in development because there's more like a science, let's say, environment. So it was great also for classivity and other stuff. So I worked in a great group. I worked there almost three years. And in January 2020, I decided to be more active on social media. The reason is that I wanted to promote one of the applications that I created using Unity. So remember that I started using Unity.

8:12So after three years, I ended up putting an application on the Google Play Store, which is not an easy process, but like I did this process. So this is why I didn't start my social media to improve my online presence or getting a job. This was like, I never thought that this would have been possible. I would say, okay, this is a scam. Someone offered me a job on social media. So I started being active on social media. Then in March, I decided to take social media more seriously. So it was March 2020. And maybe you remember what happened in February and March 2020. Now, if you're watching this video, probably 10 years, you don't know.

8:50But if I say to someone, March 2020, you know that it happened, the pandemic, the COVID pandemic. Also, in Italy, we had a very hard moments. one of the hardest lockdowns because it was like the second nation was hit we couldn't go outside to get the groceries so i don't know people survived some days so hard moments but the thing is that i started working from home so i started because before that i forgot to say this i was doing 100 kilometers of commute every single day i did this for almost three years so it's like two, three hours every day, which is basically, so basically going to work, it was a part-time job, like 12 hours per week.

9:32So it was a part-time job to go for work. Long story short, I felt in love with social media and then started the YouTube channel in August 2020. And I started making interviews. Let's make a break because this is like I talked to for a while. So this is like the first part, I can say. No, I love this because your story is so fortuitous. And I can see where you didn't really like plan parts of it necessarily. But once you realize something was working and you're excited about it, you double down and kind of said, Oh, like, how can I take this to the next level? So I'm curious based on that, what advice would you have for folks who are either switching into dev or dev roles, or maybe they worked in a different industry first and now are kind of making that transition?

10:26Yes, absolutely. So I would say don't take me as an example, because I worked and studied it privately, never using social media before, even getting my first role as a developer. This has been very tough. The problem is that if you want to learn something in private, if you get stuck, you can stay two weeks on a bug without nobody helping you, or maybe you don't have feedback from people, or maybe you are trying to deploy something to create something. So without feedback, it's very hard. But this was the only way I knew. So the first thing that I would say, you don't have to go hard on social media.

11:02I could do this because during the lockdown, we had not much to do, So I dedicated my more time to Twitter and social media. So I would say that the part of also making things public is important. So having a good GitHub profile, having all repositories, having your portfolio set. Because usually as developers, we like to focus on the real stuff, let's say coding part. But the communication, I think, is the most important skill for a developer. It's super underrated because we say, okay, but if I code well, even if we are developers, we are still humans, I think. So the thing is that we have to communicate with someone else.

11:46And the job of a developer is a really complicated one when we basically talk to a machine, but then we have to transfer this to someone else, explain this to someone else, even to some other developers. So that communication part is, from what I know, when the developers are a bit weak. Maybe this is a stereotype, okay, but many people are focused on the coding part and technical part and not much in the communication part, which I think is very important. So I know I'm also a proud introvert. It's very hard sometimes to communicate with someone else. We don't want to, maybe we chose an developer role because we don't want to communicate with people.

12:28No, I'm joking. But so I will say to curate also your social media presence because you really never know where you will end up. And since I started using Twitter properly, all my job offers, they came from Twitter. Freelancing, first of their position, second of their positions, also paid collaborations, sometimes I do. So I didn't know that this was possible. Now I'm here telling you that this is actually possible because you're basically talking to so many people. And if you showcase your skills, you can also be yourself, put some fun. I saw people being successful on social media with different styles.

13:11There are people who go like full meme, full funny mode. They are successful. I see people like who are super serious and consistent. They can still be successful because they adopt the strategy which is the best for themselves. So sorry for being a bit obvious, but being yourself on social media, I think is the most consistent. It's something that you can do consistently because you are yourself. It's very underrated because I'm older than social media. I'm almost, I'll be 40 in a couple of months. Oh my God. So I know which is the life before social media, but for people who are younger, they have social media for granted.

13:48They're like, okay, so we have this. And so the fact of appearing on social media and staying on social media is so important that it's more important than our lives. This is wrong because then you can't do this consistently. You can fake one day that I say, okay, I did something amazing. Okay, but then if you keep doing this every day and it's not true, you'll probably, I don't know, you start feeling like someone else that it's like your social media presence is different from what you are. You're not going to stay consistent. And you can't because you're basically thinking 24-7. It's like an actor playing a role.

14:24The thing is that when you go on some in-person events, you should look the same. For example, I never heard someone say, like, Francesco, you are different in person, like social media. For now, I never had this. So this is the thing that is important, even if you are a developer. So create also your social media. dedicate, if you have 10 hours, dedicate 30 minutes every day also to social media, not just coding. Yeah, I'm hearing two themes here that I see a lot of really successful folks emulate or talk about. One being kind of the iceberg effect, where people see the success you had on social media, but they don't see the years of self-taught work and challenge and building your GitHub profile and studying it in college that kind of came before that.

15:16So I think that's one piece where we always see like the tip of the iceberg. We just see what folks do post. And there's so much that went into your success before that, the effort you put in, the learning. And that second piece you mentioned around building in public and the value of that in our modern era, whether it's talking on TikTok or YouTube or Twitter, whatever it is, just simply building our GitHub profile, Like these kind of key activities that building in public nature is so valuable today because it opens you up to opportunities when you're being real and kind of demonstrating what you're attempting and growing on.

15:53And I think it's one of the things that makes you a really good DevRel is you're not afraid of saying, I don't know this. Here's how I'm learning it. Here's how I'm approaching it. And people really resonate with that. In your mind, is that the key to how you reach developers or what are the keys to your approach? I think that developers are usually very skeptical people. So they don't trust things like, well, this is something they don't like this just because someone says, like, try this. So this is why the developer role is so important for a company. So I think that the most important part is to stay authentic.

16:32It already happened many times that I was in charge of saying, okay, this feature is wrong or we are doing this wrong. So you are basically, as a developer, advocate the connection between the company and the developers, but also vice versa. So you are not just, I don't like the term advocate. It seems like you are just advocating, just going on the outside, but it's also on the inside. So getting the feedback from the people, from the developers, so we're also technical. I'm lucky for many reasons because, first of all, DailyDev is a tool for developers. So this does mean that we don't just have the developers for the product, but our users are developers.

17:16So we are doing a tool for developers by developers. So it's funny that sometimes on the feedback we get, like, you should really improve the border on these cards. So we get like a developer UI feedback for the product, which is amazing. It's been blowing. It's great. And also we do many things. We are very active, especially on Twitter. And also we started making shorts. We do many things. And also I want to say that I'm very happy to join this amazing group. I want to say something super fast. The reason why I work now at Daily Dev, it's because of a podcast. because I made these 100 interviews in 100 days.

17:58So basically, when I started my YouTube channel, the first part, it was very hard. So it was hard to find the time to have this full-time role and then find time to record videos and also being active on Twitter. So it was impossible. So I needed something fast. So what I did, I published basically a coffee chat, which was way less professional than what we're doing now. Now we are doing something professional. I also got some compliments for the microphone. But when I posted this coffee chat, then it slowly turned into an interview. I started recording coffee chats with my friends and also other people.

18:35And since I made months of connections and relationships on Twitter, I had many friends who wanted to join this event, let's say. So I was recording two, three episodes per day, and I was publishing one per day. So at some point it became, let's say, sort of automatic. one of the people i interviewed it was nimrod kramer the ceo of the leadev at the moment i interviewed him it was january 2021 there were three people in the leadev so just to give an idea now we are more than 20 when i joined we were five or six in october 2022 so the reason why i became a developer advocate for daily dev i don't want to say that it's just a podcast but that podcast that interview probably i don't know it's a door breaker i don't know if you could say this in english it's very easy it's easier it'll be easier for you because you already know that person so this is what i totally recommend you don't have to do the same things but you really never know and relationships is something that you don't build like that you do this slowly trying to find some common interest.

19:47For example, every time I do an interview, a podcast, I find, I don't know, we have something in common. I don't know, someone played volleyball, someone did something else. So even with my friends, because usually on Twitter, you don't tell all your life. But sometimes during a podcast, I find some common points. You know this pretty well, probably. So this is probably very important if you want to build solid relationships with developers. So not just talking about which is the best JavaScript frameworks. Yeah, I'd love to dive a little deeper on that, on how you build relationships with developers in your role as a DevRel, as a DevAdvocate.

20:27Now that you are being more intentional about this, what's your approach today and kind of what are, in your mind, the things that make a great DevRel? let's say three main things, which is the social media, your social media presence, the content you create, and the community, the community building, which is something else. You can be a great community builder, but maybe you don't create content or you are not active on social media. So there's like, let's say the three pillars where you base your social, your presence, personal brand, I don't like the word, but let's say personal branding. And then I think also we should never force connections.

21:06So like, I don't know, we can be friends, but for example, if you don't use Docker, it will be hard to make a collaboration. Or something that I really love about DedyDev is that it's super easy to connect with someone else. Because DedyDev was born, let's say, as a blog aggregator, but now it's way more than that. We have a community part, but it's basically connected with everything. Because we bring from sources articles for developers. So it's super easy. to be connected with someone because if you if you make a collaboration probably you already had one of your articles about one of your products so this is i think a hack we can say of being a developer advocate at daily dev it's super easy for me to connect with without the red it's also one of the reasons why i joined i said okay if i join daily dev as a developer advocate i will have the opportunity to connect easily with almost 200 ,000 people of the daily dev community.

22:09And this is amazing. I love that. What are some of the challenges that you faced in this kind of dev role role? So we've talked about some of the successes, how you're being successful, your approach, what you think makes a good dev role. But what are the things you face that are maybe challenging you? yes you know on social media we like to brag then showcasing entire life is perfect we did everything correct the truth is that as a devrel i think the main issue is that you have this feeling that you're never done let's say that you have to handle the social media twitter account is there a hand there no you can literally stay 10 hours of your working time on the twitter account but probably this is too much no so what four three minutes is probably not enough so it's hard to find the balance if you have to do relationships there is no end because if you if i tell you please build this wall you i'll build this wall and then i'm done i go to the bar and get a beer and i i feel amazing because i created something so the first issue is that many things things we do are remotely software things, so it's hard to touch them, we can say.

23:27So we have this feeling we're doing nothing. And this is even if you're a developer, we can say. But at least if you're a developer, you have an issue assigned, you create something, and when you do the PR, you're done. In the Vrel, it's very hard. Let's say, for example, we made a TikTok video. One of these videos on TikTok got half a million views. okay so half a million views i think it got like 20 000 comments so can i reply to everyone one by one maybe but that would be like a job of a month for three weeks so we have to find a balance especially on social media it's very hard because if okay if i create content okay i create four tutorials per month it's okay the social media part is very dangerous i can say as a devil and And so that's, I think, the main issue.

24:17And also trying to be authentic, but also advocating for the company, trying to find the good collaborations. I think this is a great one, by the way, because you are basically the front man, front person of your company. So you are trying to do the meaningful collaborations to find the good ones, try to also be not biased, but you're working there. So this is probably hard. And also giving negative feedback about the product. Like, I don't know, this feature, our users, they will not like it. Like telling this to someone, offer you a job, but it's not easy. But it's your role. Once you understand this, it's easier.

24:58Because now I know that that's my role also to criticize something of the company itself. But I do this because I want, of course, the company to be the best. So that's probably something that maybe for a beginner, maybe it's hard to criticize a couple after they also hired you. But Vico, you are doing this for the good. So this is also a bit hard. I appreciate that context. I think it's going to be really valuable for folks who are either looking to level up their DevRel skills or maybe are interested in kind of making that pivot from being an individual developer to taking more of an advocacy role.

25:34And one of the key things that I've heard you talk quite a bit and obviously is very essential to your success is that content piece. I think there's a lot of opinions about what's the best way to reach developers. Should you be on Mastodon, Twitter, TikTok, wherever else? What do you think it is? Is it writing, videos, social media, or does it depend? So I made basically everything. So I have some experience in this and I'll try to find an answer. Probably it will be hard because first of all, it really depends on the type of person. So I think if you start, let's say, from zero, you are not dev rel, you know nothing, you have your Twitter account with three followers, and you know some code.

26:13Okay, so let's start with this scenario. So I think that working on a social media presence, it's important. And I think it's important if you're looking for, maybe in the future, for a dev rel position, to don't just be obsessed with a dev rel position, because it's not, let's say, super easy. So I would work really calm and quietly for months, for one year, for two years, and then you build the relationships. That's the most important part. Because trying to just reach out and say, I would like to be at the VRAEL, it's a bit hard. It's like saying, I want to be a developer. But if you don't have the knowledge, if you don't have the skill, that's basically a dream, which is great.

26:58It's also good to have. But if to turn this dream into an actual thing, you have to put some work and also be very patient. So being very patient and also focusing on something I think that might really work. For example, for me, I started sharing Docker content consistently on social media. So first of all, after three months or four months that I started doing this consistently, I became a Docker captain, which is a volunteer role. But it gives you a lot of confirmation. It's a sort of ambassador, like GitHub Star. The day after I became a Docker captain, I received my first offer as a devrel, which was not a leader.

27:38It was another company. But to give an idea, how content can really bring you some real offers. So I got a real offer. And it was so strange for me because I was collaborating with this company just to make a video. But then this tour into a devrel position. So this is how powerful can be creating content if you are also a developer. I think it's super, super important, especially if you also mix this with a bit of social media, let's say. From platforms, I never tried Mastodon. And I think that the best is to focus on one platform for a while. So now you see me jumping on many different platforms, but now it's different for me because I do this also as a job, as a role.

28:29I'm also now used to Twitter. I made more than 100 ,000 tweets, so I stayed on Twitter for a while. So having one account, it's better. Someone said it's better to be Batman on one social media than Mr. Nobody on all the platforms. So having one strong platform, I think is the key. I stayed just on Twitter for, as I say, as you said, like almost one year. And then I started the YouTube channel. This allows you to focus on a platform for a while and then you start something else. So this worked for me. I'm not saying to don't start your YouTube channel until you reach 50 ,000 followers. But I think focusing on one platform and I'm saying focusing is like the effort you put.