Tell us a bit about yourself.

Hey, I’m Yuri and I’m 22 years old.

I was a traditional college student before learning to code and breaking into the tech industry.

I’m a self-taught web developer, and I’m now motivated to learn more about Web3 and the blockchain.

I originally started Twitter in hopes of sharing my learning journey, especially things I’m struggling with. As a person with no technical background at all, I was hoping for other beginners not get discouraged by all the challenges I personally faced on my own learning journey. Every time I struggled with something, I made content on Twitter trying to explain that difficult programming concept in a way that’s easier to digest.

I got lucky with Twitter. Within 2 months, I gained 25,000 followers and got a job at Hashnode as an advocate for the platform.

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

I think that the most important thing about my job is being able to be the bridge between the platform and the people. You gotta have empathy and understand what it is that the people need and the struggles they are going through in order to build a community. I personally think that being able to relate to others in the community is a big part of the job; it helps you build meaningful relationships and helps you better cater to and help those people.

What is something you’re struggling with?

I honestly struggle creating content every day. I think that content creation is actually way harder than what it seems because of all the things you have to think about. It’s not just making one Tweet promoting the platform. You gotta think about your audience and how they would benefit from using the platform; you’re always putting yourself in others’ shoes, and that’s not always an easy job, especially when you have a big audience with different niches. It’s also very time-consuming, as you have to make sure that the information you’re putting out there is always correct. You also gotta think about saying the right thing with the right tone…you don’t want to come off as passive-aggressive or a know-it-all, or you don’t want to branch off too much from your own personal brand. It’s these small details that I personally had to worry about that made my job harder.

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

I honestly don’t know people in DevRel, and I haven’t been in the industry for long, so I can’t really pinpoint someone or an experience that really inspired me. I will say this though: when I first broke into the tech industry, I didn’t know that there were tech jobs that didn’t require much coding. I thought tech jobs were all 100% coding/programming type of thing. I didn’t know DevRel/Advocacy was a thing at all before I got a job in Hashnode. So I think that it was really cool and inspiring to know that the tech industry is actually HUGE and that you don’t have to be a master coder in order to break into it. I also gained a huge respect for other fellow content creators, this shit isn’t easy.

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

The stigma around it. The stigma around it is that we ‘just’ create content and that’s it. A really easy job. I feel like a lot of people, even in the tech industry, don’t really know what DevRel people or advocates do, whether it’s coding, writing docs, or ‘just’ posting on Twitter. Also, I’ve heard of people in DevRel that are expected to do coding that should be done by backend developers, or in my experience, I was rejected from a lot of advocacy jobs because they expected me to do/know coding stuff I didn’t know.

I understand that it can get confusing though, it’s like mixing two different things that usually don’t have anything to do with each other. I feel like it’s like the sweet spot between marketing and developing. It’s not really either-or.

I really hope to see one day that people in DevRel get the credit they deserve, DevRel/advocates work really hard! Also, I think that DevRel people belong to the DevRel team. I’ve seen that in newer startups they have a separate developer, marketing, and advocate team. So that’s a huge step!