The purpose of DevRel, as I understand it, is to bolster the engineering credibility of your product while fomenting community around it.
This helps in two ways: it makes the product stickier with its most vocal users, and, as a result of this, adds qualified prospective customers to the top of the pipeline funnel.
This is partly why you'll see the more social media savvy DevRel folks do things like post YT Shorts and TikToks: it drives engagement from actual future users.
At some places, DevRel is also a customer success function. They are the thought leaders that companies send out to the most strategic accounts to give talks and drive workshops. Martin Fowler and Kelsey Hightower (before he left Google and/or retired, I think?) come to mind here.
Unfortunately, DevRel is often a marketing function, and those budgets get decimated during down markets.
This helps in two ways: it makes the product stickier with its most vocal users, and, as a result of this, adds qualified prospective customers to the top of the pipeline funnel.
This is partly why you'll see the more social media savvy DevRel folks do things like post YT Shorts and TikToks: it drives engagement from actual future users.
At some places, DevRel is also a customer success function. They are the thought leaders that companies send out to the most strategic accounts to give talks and drive workshops. Martin Fowler and Kelsey Hightower (before he left Google and/or retired, I think?) come to mind here.
Unfortunately, DevRel is often a marketing function, and those budgets get decimated during down markets.