--- title: "DevRel Roundtable episode 2: Debbie O'brien and Lucie Haberer" description: "Welcome to the second episode of the DevRel roundtable series where I invite developer relation people to a roundtable discussion to converse on whatever topics we feel are relevant. In this episode I invited two titans: Debbie O'brien from Bit and Lucie Haberer from Prismic." date: "2021-03-08T12:00:15.000Z" url: "https://timbenniks.dev/videos/tim/053-lsxu_q-8rrc" youtube_url: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSxU_q-8Rrc" playlist: "tim" image: "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/lSxU_q-8Rrc/maxresdefault.jpg" tags: ["cms", "frontend", "developer-experience", "devrel", "career"] --- # DevRel Roundtable episode 2: Debbie O'brien and Lucie Haberer Welcome to the second episode of the DevRel roundtable series where I invite developer relation people to a roundtable discussion to converse on whatever topics we feel are relevant. In this episode I invited two titans: Debbie O'brien from Bit and Lucie Haberer from Prismic. Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSxU_q-8Rrc ## Transcript hello both of you how are you welcome to another episode of the death rail round table wow that sounded like a game show i am so ready for this so to kick this off would both of you maybe introduce yourselves and starting with lucy please okay hey so i'm lucy i'm working as a devex engineer at io so it success editing an endless cmss and well i started like you years ago and since then i'm building a team with a colleague of mine and we are growing our team as a devex engineer team awesome and debbie so i am debbie i am head of learning and developer advocate at nuxt and my job is to nuxtify the world basically make sure every person on this planet knows about nuxed and uses it and loves it just as much as me and you know what that's working because both lucy and i are using nux basically for everything that's good um so one thing i didn't mention is that i'm working at prismic as a dx engineer but as a next gstx engineer so and so oh that's actually you just gave me an idea for a question because i've seen this also at netlify that some people are splitting up a bit and scoping their death rail right you have next people or few people and react people are you guys doing the same or how does that work at prison yeah for example yeah okay well that's really well when i joined prismic like there was like no devex team and i think it was the same for you debbie when you joined next and so while i started like building the team like on my own working with my colleague noah which is like more of a marketer profile and um since then like well i wasn't in like mainly next but also doing a bit of uh next years and gatsby like to help support like the world community on my own even if i'm not like too much of a react person but anyway and since well since then like we actually like just like hired someone and that joined us this week and this person is currently working on next gs part of the devex side of prismic and so this is quite a relief for me because i can now focus fully on next and also like this will basically like as we say like he's my other alf but for react no that's interesting so this is starting to happen because i am actually starting a deferral position myself in like a week and my new boss just asked me hey can you speak at a gatsby conf i'm like yeah but maybe i should use gatsby like for a second before i start maybe so that's interesting maybe i should like try like a starter kit with react for a sec you know in the end it's all javascript right so i wanted to start with a question that's a little bit maybe complex i'm not sure let's see what you guys this one is for debbie so around like developers on our community i've sometimes heard somebody say some something awful like you become a death rail if you're not really a developer if you cannot cut it as a developer honestly i think that's totally untrue it's ridiculous but debbie do you feel like there might be some truth in that or it's like sometimes people say you teach if you cannot cut it in the business world like these kind of ridiculous things how do you feel about that and might there be some truth to it sometimes or i i personally haven't heard it right but let me put it in a way of taekwondo because you all know i love taekwondo right oh yes so in taekwondo you you obviously practice taekwondo you get to a certain degree and then you're like you're able to be a teacher you're able to internationally teach and you're obviously like not a master but you you kind of have mastered taekwondo enough to be able to teach it right so it all depends on what you do as a role so when i was a taekwondo instructor or teacher i was teaching so much that i wasn't practicing so i could basically help anyone break a board of timber like any age any person i could help them break it but then when i went to break it i couldn't break it because i wasn't practicing so you can have that mindfulness that you like know um what someone needs to do and then if you don't practice it yourself but i think that's on you so if you're a developer in in devrel and you're not practicing your code then yes you might get to that stage but it really is up to you to make sure and what do we do endeavor we do a lot of demos we do a lot of workshops we do a lot of of stuff so it depends on how far you go how deep you go i think that's up to the developer themselves oh yes you just saved that question because it could also be just no i didn't experience that but you know what that's exactly true because i've been like in a manager position lately and i think in 2020 for work i didn't code and i'm still a developer which is weird right so you kind of sometimes miss this but anyways on to the next so lucy you are i think you're still at school right but you're also finishing and i think you have to explain what school is right because for for lucy people are going to think like you know she's in like high school like right so what is it special right first of all okay lucy there we go two-part question explain the school you're going to and why it's so cool that you are there because i know it's an awesome school and then why did you choose a deaf role related job straight out of school without doing anything else so the question is also like is this now such a cool job role that it just inspires people to go into straight out of school so why and how so first go with the school part yes you're parting me on the dangerous part here but yeah probably we'll see so yeah well my school is like not like well so it's like college but like it's not like private college like the things that we have in france at least and uh basic asking like it's like i'm working toward like having a master's degree in computer sciences but uh in a private school set up so well kind of like college but like more like a sh shape let's say well and that's like the global thing so here i was learning like development of course but i also had a bunch of like marketing and design lessons and that i didn't like the or that i liked it like depends on the topic but anyway like that's like the generality of the school so you get to learn marketing design and also development but you also get to um work in companies a lot so hence like i already like have like almost like two years of work experience behind me so i worked for six months at so stagnant which is like an international banking company and also worked in multiple agencies and uh also worked as a cio on a student-funded company so that was like well that gave me still quite some experience like given my age let's say and i don't think that in my school like being well getting out of school as a dave expansioner person like is something common yet at least but well that was a topic that was interested in because like when i was working company i often found myself like doing work in order to help other developers around me like building like documentation or like reflect like refactoring like a bunch of utilities into packages in order for people like to have a consistent way of using them through the world software spectrum of the company and so yeah like i i wanted like to work in a in a field like where i can like work toward helping other developers rather than building applications for clients let's say and well that's all i end up at prismac and i'm really blessed that prismic accepted me as a really like junior-ish devex engineer and since then i'm working here you know what i love the fact that before we discussed that death rail is more for like senior-ish people and now you're completely destroying that notion because you're doing it so well and you know what's also fun is that you say yeah i'm helping other developers but and she really is she really is it's like it's incredibly true it's almost hard to believe because here comes the the train of how awesome you are but when we talked and you helped me on next stuff right i was like i'm gonna hire this lady i'm gonna put her in a senior position but back then i didn't know you were just out of school or still in school it's like yeah you talk on twitter right and you don't know what people say what they're doing you just like this is the beauty of twitter isn't it and so you are extremely talented and therefore i think this is a great position for you to be able to really go deep in code help others and then also help this prismic this idea of ahead the cms because there's help needed there so yeah that's cool so is there any particular reason why you chose this or is it just the coolest thing that came on your path and you just went for it i'd say that i didn't see myself like working full time as a developer on the product team anything like that because i i well i don't have much experience in it well i have some but not like years of experience in it but like i was feeling like that i will get bored doing that and that well i won't we don't enjoy like being a developer of all and hence like i found this position and yeah like that's like well i'm just like i'm blessed about it and i'm really happy yeah that's a good word because if you compare your path into tech with debbie's and mine that's that's is like the most opposite it can get i think debbie you've been a teacher a taekwondo person an entertainer all over the place everything yeah yeah yeah so same with me like i was a guitarist i was a nurse it's like anything goes right you go into tech and you're good so maybe i will end up being a taekwondo you know i might want to just hit some wood and see if i can do something there it might be cool though right anyway so debbie um you are also head of learning right and so that gives you slightly wider scope to this job so what do you know about the different roles within devrel like are you doing it differently than someone let's say at netlify or maybe lucy what do you know about this and what is your style i'm sure i am because i mean does anyone really know what people are doing in their devrel jobs in the sense of like i don't know what network i was doing i don't know what questions is doing i don't know you know everyone's doing things different and i mean remember that i got hired for this position um in the conference scene with a whole prospect of what i was going to be doing completely having to change and all of a sudden your role is now like oh yeah you're not going to be traveling anywhere so forget the conference scene which you still do talks but it's a half-hour talk as opposed to a three-day event right so your whole role changes and you have to reinvent it and nobody was ready for that so every devrel out there has had to actually just change the way they do things to try and better to try and figure it out and i don't think anyone has it right and i don't think anyone has it wrong i think we're just all different we all do it different styles different ways and and we're just trying to like reach the community help the community and and you know get the product um better known and help that people come on board easier and yeah how you do it is up to you yeah okay that's interesting because i'm supposed to do this job soon and i've never done it i just see you guys do it well you've already been speaking at conferences right you've already been yeah almost doing it just not doing it and and you know you're already like your youtube channel has amazing content you've already been creating that content now they're just paying you that's all that's the only difference i might just this is true i might just focus on it yeah so maybe i focus on that area and then see where it brings me because i might go into code way more or i just stay at content creation we shall see so lucy for you what for you are the challenges on your job in the scope of death row because there must be some i just don't know which and i need to know because i'm going to do this soon oh wow um and if you don't have any that's fine too but no it can also be very generous definitely a lot of changes i i think like well i'm quite passionate about like what i'm doing and one of the challenges i'm facing is mitigating like frustration of not being able like to satisfy everyone as for example like i don't like i like to skim github and like look forward of what's going on in github and things like that and so i see like a lot of issues that users are reporting to us and things like that and while we have some boundaries to manage some like we don't have someone wish to manage everything instantaneously and so like that's some kind of reason like i'm sad to tell you that like oh like maybe you should like wait like a week or two so we have some like so we will fix that because like but i'd like to fix to fix it no like you know and like that's like me tweeting at you please help and you always do so i might be one of the luckier ones but i can imagine if it's getting busy you just need more people maybe yeah so yeah like that's mainly like mitigating frustration but like not being able like to give like the nicest support to everyone and well that's i i'd say my biggest bp deaf rel is actually a pretty young job i'm thinking chris heilman might have been the first a couple of years ago but now it's more and more people but i'm thinking about the career path of a developer relations person right so what could be a career path how would you go to the next level what is the next level i think you just do the same thing but more or like like when you are a developer you can be junior senior principal blah blah blah on and on how does that work with the death row so what what's your opinion there are lucy oh is there anything because you've just started you might not have thought about it but for me i'm coming from this um conservative career not conservative but like how it used to be i started as a junior i went senior and then i changed companies i was a principal then i became manager and then a director and when i was about to become a global director i just quit and now i'm going that way but that path i'm not going to take with a deaf rail i think because how is that structured how do you guys see this kind of structure that that may might be an easier way to ask the question and there might be one you see i'll go first i don't think there's an actual set out path because like you said this job kind of didn't really exist like you know four years ago for example and now the because of the world the way the world is as well things have changed a lot even more and we've seen how important devrel is and i mean every company like prismic is a small company right and they have like devrel right so every single small company is taking on this these roles because it's necessary because the only way that we can have relationships between developers is through these devils and through these kind of things because we're not in the conference scene anymore when we don't have developers coming up to us at a booth and chatting and we're able to show off our products so we rely on these people in the future in the future i don't know when we can go out of the world and like actually be normal again will the devrel job change a little and possibly it will and only time will tell but i think it's up to the person like um i think there's always a lot of different ways you can go and you could decide you know what i want to go more into client kind of area and be more like a you know solutions architect kind of type role so there's always ways you can go you just have to decide where you want and what you want to do yeah and you know what the beauty is here we can make that choice ourselves because it's such an open field there's nobody telling you hey but you're just an integrator of jquery so you will never go too few like that used to be the case in france those kind of jobs but we can just pave our own path right so lucy do you know where which direction you want to go or you're just starting and just let's let's run with it yeah first like i will finish my studies and graduate but that's like that's actually like funny because like what's was what was the question that i got asked when i did like my report of my first few months at prismix and like i didn't really know like what one syrup are like yeah maybe uh like most likely i will stay in the devex field but like perhaps not at prismic perhaps at prison yeah i don't know yet and i feel like that perhaps like as the devex team grow at priests make like there will be some kind of like just like in a regular like developer team like some kind of like general junior-ish deveral and seniorist levelers that can help each other in different way and well if like being a manager is something that you're interested in i think that's definitely something possible out of working in devil like that's not something i'm interested in right now in to some extent and well i know well and yeah as you said also like i think that being a developer gives you like quite a lot of liberty to like where you want to evolve in a company especially i know that we have like the real device and product team and all kinds of stuff so yeah like if maybe like one day i want to get back to a praying thing that's something i'm about to do yeah the freedom is cool right so what if there's someone who is either not in tech at all or is a developer but wants to change debbie do you have any tips for someone who wants to become a deaf role and i secretly want those tips as well because i'm going to do that soon i think like if you want to be a like the endeavor you really need to be in the community and like you don't need the job to actually start doing it so i mean you could just start very simple by creating blog posts by speaking at conferences i mean i got my job because i was already doing the job um i was already like advocating for nooks way before i actually became part of the team and i was doing it because i love doing it and if you love something find the product you love and and go and advocate for it create those blog posts write those talks um do podcasts do whatever you can it's not always easy i know you know you have to be accepted to be speak at conferences but right now you can anyone can create a youtube channel right so you have a lot of freedom and people can do anything so just go and make yourself known make people know who you are because if you're out there if you're online people will find you if you're just stuck in your room and don't you know try and make those relations then nobody will know you exist and yeah yeah so it's personal branding on top of that too so with that bombshell and these wise words will hereby finish our discussion um i really want to thank both of you for taking the time out of out of your busy days as death rels to talk to me um thanks so much i'm gonna edit this down and see what happens cheers