Tell us a bit about yourself.

I’m a Developer Advocate, focused on community engagement, content creation, and collaboration. I enjoy learning new things, helping other developers be successful, speaking at conferences, and contributing to open source. I’m an Angular GDE, technical writer, and a maintainer of the NgRx project building libraries for reactive Angular applications.

What do you feel is the most important part of your job?

I feel the most important part of my job is helping developers be successful, and connecting with them in the right ways to do so. I’ve often tried to always work to be the best individual contributor I could be, but helping others has always given me much more satisfaction and helped me want to get better also. Giving back to the developer community has paid me back many times over, so to keep that cycle going is very important.

What is something you’re struggling with?

I struggle with saying no to people, even though it may turn out to be more than what I was comfortable doing. I always want to be mindful of opportunities given to me as a black person in tech, and to be in a position to take on opportunities, and in turn give those opportunities to others who look like me. There is always a balance to be had when deciding which opportunities to take on for my own mental health, but I want to always treat those opportunities as if I may not get another one.

Tell us about a time you were inspired by someone or something in DevRel.

I’m always inspired by people in DevRel who are relentless in helping others find their way and find jobs in tech. That amount of dedication to creating content, hosting safe spaces, and building communities challenges me to do more in that area, and be in a position to open doors and inspire others to get into the field also. There are many challenges to getting into tech, but I think that it’s definitely worth it for those interested in starting a career or making a career change.

What’s one change you’d like to see in DevRel?

One thing I’d like to see in DevRel is more education and training for those moving into DevRel. The responsibilities of DevRel are different from job to job, but there are some things that are common between them, such as creating content, connecting with the developer community, tracking different types of metrics to gauge engagement and adoption, and more. The strategy and metrics side of DevRel was one that I really had a challenge with moving into DevRel full time as opposed to it being a smaller role as a software engineer. A natural part of DevRel is learning new tech, tools, and strategy, and I’d like to see more information out in the open about the journey and the process.