This is super dangerous for so many reasons. Dangerous to the person they are hiring (more likely to leave the field), dangerous to the industry, and just dangerous to the company success. You can see more data in the report here:

Also, as I have spoken about in the past (), very few defined career paths exist. These two things combined make it really hard to find your way as you gain experience. Causing folks to disappear out of the role as they gain experience.

I've been seriously thinking how I can contribute to improving this. Find a way to help startups not screw up hiring? Consulting? Starting a podcast/blog for startup DevRel? Idk, but I know these problems because I live(d) them & care about the folks in DevRel & coming into it.

@taylor_atx i have some THOUGHTS about this

@learnwdaniel I've got a listening ear, publicly or privately

@taylor_atx This chart looks like it only focuses on years in devrel. What about years in development? I suspect your hypothesis is something about cost, so I am going to assume aggregate exp is also low. It’s not mostly ppl with 10-20 yrs dev switching into advocacy.

@jimleonardo from my experience, just because you were a software developer in the past doesn’t mean you can start up a new successful DevRel program. I’ve seen plenty have no idea how to do strategy, advocacy work, internal politics of DevRel, and other things needed.

@taylor_atx Would love to chat with you about this... I have *many* thoughts on this topic. Started to write about it here but need to update with everything we've been doing in the last year. But agree and this study just confirms what I've observed as well:

@taylor_atx Good call out. This is something I always advise startups against doing. You wouldn't hire a first year software engineer to be your founding engineer and architect, so you can't expect a junior DevRel person to own an entire program. It's doomed for failure.

@taylor_atx Finally had time to read the 2022 State of DevRel results (thanks @CarolineLewko and team!) and ... I'm actually pissed. I mean, super happy to see the explosion of #DevRel , the gender-pay-parity, and a bunch of other stuff. Pissed at how under-paid I've been for YEARS.

@taylor_atx 100% agree on this, it feels like we're back in the growth hacker moment. I do have some thoughts on how can we help, but every time I've tried to think further I feel deadlocked since leadership see successful DevRel teams on the surface and have the wrong expectations.

@taylor_atx @coder_blvck It’s the extensive explainer in the alt caption for me

@taylor_atx You know, I honestly have very mixed feelings about this. When I joined Twilio DevRel, straight out of college as my first full time job, their team was at the same stage (program only a few years old).

@taylor_atx I’ve seen this too. Probably would be interesting to compare notes.

@taylor_atx DevRel and DevAdvocacy are not that easy! They seem simple from the outside, but they are definitely not easy! #advocu