This thread is awesome.

I want to reframe the "can't be a dev advocate without being employed as one" as .. you absolutely must learn on the job. The scope/skills are particular to the role. Everyone when first becoming a dev advocate is an apprentice. https://twitter.com/bitandbang/status/1309198003274747904

There are totally skills you can learn prior to the role that help you understand whether you'd like the role AND help an employer qualify you for the position. https://twitter.com/bitandbang/status/1309198006001033217

Some senior roles may help you advance relationship building skills but in my experience these are rarely incentivized/understood. Building bridges is essential to understanding devops and one of the key points that mattered to me. It's SO crucial. https://twitter.com/bitandbang/status/1309198008735731715

All of this builds to this point. This is the hot seat. Being authentic, listening, empathetic. Thinking about customers (whether they pay you money or not), community builders, facilitating cross-organization development of standards.. https://twitter.com/bitandbang/status/1309198009633329152

Working FOR your company, while working FOR your community and for the broader industry as a whole.

Navigating these spaces are hard. Recognizing when your job is pulling you away from that and speaking up is hard.

Having a multitude of perspectives helps keep us aligned.

If you have ONLY known engineering roles prior to devrel without community you may not balance out priorities of your company, community, and industry at large.

if you ONLY hire folks into devrel that have 10+ years of experience you are missing on a lot of detailed perspective.

if you don't include onboarding and development to your devrel strategy...

as with ALL roles in this industry, we are failing massively to think about the future of the industry and people development.