Productivity in developer relations
Tags: devrel, productivity, career
Published: 2023-04-06 22:57:30

There are many ways to remain productive while working on a developer relations team like ours at Slack. 

Activities like these will make a high-performing developer relations practitioner no matter what company you work for, which discipline you specialize in, or who your developers are. 

Doing these things will move the metrics you measure. They will make developers happy.

## Productive activities

- thinking about a developer
- developing like a developer
- writing a product idea or spec
- learning a new technology
- participating in a developer or other professional community
- coding something. Anything at all. For any reason.
- writing notes
- writing docs
- writing comments
- writing messages on Slack or other collaborative tools
- thinking about a problem
- thinking about a problem space
- thinking about API design
- recording videos!
- editing videos!
- watching videos!
- tweeting
- reading tweets
- subtweeting (but not too much)
- figuring out how to broadcast to developers in a post-Twitter world
- building tools
- testing tools
- building apps
- trying apps
- helping partners
- talking to partners
- building code samples
- building code for partners directly
- advocating for partners
- advocating for developers
- advocating for builders
- reviewing feedback
- tabulating feedback
- reporting on feedback
- planning a quarter
- asking questions
- reporting status
- telling jokes
- writing tutorials
- owning a problemspace
- creating a CMS
- comparing and contrasting CMS software
- struggling to get invoices paid through finance
- sharing your favorite kind of snack
- chipping in with the CE team
- reviewing apps for the directory
- doodling about the platform maybe?
- feeling out rough edges
- researching competitors and comparables
- just fixing the problem yourself
- reporting bugs
- writing lists
- paying attention
- paying half-attention
- backchanneling
- playing an instrument while you watch an all hands
- attending all hands'
- trying to figure out how to say or write the plural of all hands
- editing out possessive uses of your company's name
- attending 1:1s
- occasionally meeting in person even
- taking a walk while thinking about work
- taking a walk to think about anything but work
- surveying (the land | the platform | your developers | your team)
- taking the lead
- falling in line now and then but always with the
- calling out bullshit and
- believing your own
- going rogue
- reaching out to colleagues and comparators
- finding new ways to help people learn
- to help the platform grow
- to help people understand
- and do the best work of their lives whoever they are
- planning a week, a month, a quarter, a quietude
- talking to other companies about developer relations or platforms
- writing blog posts
- making something extraspecial
- documenting problems
- coming back from going rogue and sharing what you found out
- celebrating successes
- venting to a coworker
- responding to GitHub issues
- filing GitHub issues
- CLOSING GITHUB ISSUES
- but most of all helping people out
- translating
- doing it now
- saving it for later
- thoughtfully dropping it without telling anyone because it wasn't one of the things that mattered
- apologizing because it actually did matter
- adding metadata to anything you do makes it better
- automating and scripting your work
- documenting your process
- still reading this? Thank you.
- organizing your workspace, virtual or otherwise
- checking metrics
- defining metrics
- SELECT metrics FROM your.heart
- many fingers are typing in Slack.
- clicking in workday is work. Concur and okta too.
- playing a video game while watching an all hands
- doing work while watching an all hands
- turning that bad all hands off
- intentionally building community
- passively building community
- working on our CMS
- helping a coworker with the API
- helping a coworker with anything
- showing up at a conference
- going above and beyond at a conference
- TCB
- traveling across the world
- just staying put
- taking care of a kid while thinking about work
- taking care of a kid while taking a break from thinking about work
- the same but with animals
- the same but with yourself
- or any loved one
- napping can certainly be productive.
- calling out hubris
- committing hubris
- saying "hummus"
- forgetting things
- deprioritizing things
- managing teams
- picking things up on the fly
- picking something up out of the pig sty
- easy jobs. hard jobs. everything in between.

Thank you for being part of a productive, lovable, distributed developer relations team!