Becoming the first DevRel at Tailscale

by nivethan on 1/31/2023, 4:17 PM with 51 comments
  • by citruscomputing on 1/31/2023, 5:02 PM

    Great article. Glad xe's figured out a role that works well for xerself. I struggle with this. I manage at least the expected baseline (for my skill level, averaged over time), but sometimes simple tasks feel like molasses because my brain decided it's not what it wants to work on. This is so immensely frustrating, and the self-recrimination keeps me there. (To an astonishing degree, programming requires emotional skills. I did not realize this until the past few years.)

    Sometimes everything clicks and it's fantastic, I get a week's worth of work done in a day. I don't have control over it, and it's terrifying because when I'm in a slump I have no idea when I'll get back out again. But it better be soon, or people are going to start asking questions!

    Trying to reconcile ADHD with the expected mode of production feels futile. Cool to see there are jobs that align better. Gonna think about what this means for my future.

  • by ketzo on 1/31/2023, 5:24 PM

    One of the things I love most about working in tech is that really talented, weird, multi-disciplinary people like Xe are often given the freedom to just go do weird shit and see if it works out for the company -- and that it often does, in surprising and amazing ways.

  • by latchkey on 1/31/2023, 4:45 PM

    This (arguably clickbait title) blog post sounds like what they shared with their manager in order to justify their position...

    "I started working on Developer Relations (DevRel) at Tailscale in Spring 2022."

    "In Spring 2022, I sat down and started to take DevRel seriously at Tailscale. I had heard about the practice in the past, but I had never done it before."

    "I got permission from my manager to get a 50/50 split between what I was doing (work on internal tooling that was not sparking joy) and this new experimental DevRel thing."

    Edit: Since I'm getting downvoted. To be clear, I'm not trying to attack the person... it isn't about proving the individual's work. I'm sure they are a great contributor. What I'm questioning is the need to publish this on the tailscale website, it is something I'd expect on a personal blog. I'm questioning the clickbait title.