We’ve invited Rohit Ghumare to speak with us in this episode of the podcast, not just to ask him about his impressive Twitter following (although this will come up), but also to find out how he organises his time as a community organiser and developer advocate. As Richard knows all too well, startups require everyone to become a multi-hyphenate. But even in bigger organisations, with a whole team surrounding you, the work of a developer advocate can never be categorised simply. So Rohit talks us through what an average day looks like for someone in his position. From advocacy meetings to speaking at conferences, to coordinating between large groups of people. You’ll see why people skills are a must-have.
As we mentioned, Rohit has built up an impressive network across a variety of social media platforms. He’s fortunate in this regard, as follower numbers have become more of a concern for developer advocates in recent months - no thanks to the increase in job openings with follower requirements. How does Rohit feel about these roles? Well… they’re a bit of a red flag. And although he says not to quote him on that, we can’t help but agree. For him, it’s about what kind of person you are. Hiring someone with a high follower count may get your company some engagement, but it doesn’t mean that the person themselves will gel with your team.
He also has some great insights on the point of internal vs external hiring. What are the pros and cons of both? When it comes to speaking, he prefers to bring in people who already possess those skills. But for other devrel positions, he believes that people already working on your team have knowledge and interpersonal skills that would take an outsider months to grasp. By giving them a chance to prove themselves, you potentially unlock parts of people they themselves wouldn’t have thought to access. We think this logic checks out pretty well!
Interview Intro
Richard Rodger: [0:00:00] Welcome to the Voxgig Podcast. We talk to people in the developer community about developer relations, public speaking and community events. For more details, visit voxgig.com/podcast. All right, let's get started.
Today I am speaking to Rohit Ghumare. We talk about how he got to 49,000 followers on Twitter in pretty much one year, and then we talk about how the number of Twitter followers you have is not actually that important for a developer advocate. Instead, we talk about a day in the life of a developer advocate, what the work involves, and why you do need to be a generalist. Because you end up doing so many different kinds of things. Finally, we talk about how your first time public speaking is going to be the worst, but after that, it’s all gravy.
Okay, let's talk to Rohit. [0:00:53]
Main Interview
Rohit Ghumare
Richard Rodger: [0:00:54] Rohit, welcome. It is great to have you here on the Fireside with Voxgig podcast, talking about developer relations. I gotta start right away – I’m so jealous. You have 49,000 followers on your Twitter handle. Let’s start with that one. What’s the story? How did you go from zero to 49,000? [0:01:17]
Rohit Ghumare: [0:01:20] Hello, Richard, first of all, and thanks for having me on the Voxgig. It is one of the best dev rel podcasts. [0:01:26]
Richard Rodger: [0:01:27] Thank you.
Rohit Ghumare: [0:01:28] Talking about Twitter stuff, it happened randomly. Last year around May, I started creating - writing random stuff for dev ops, like what is dev ops and what is cloud, native cloud, and how I started my journey, how I learned this thing. So, that’s how I learned this, so I started to say it publicly; that is learning in public and sharing it public for everyone.
Being honest with the audience – the audience also loved that content. And I didn’t ask for follows at the start; I didn’t ask. It was like they were learning about the content; they were hitting the Follow buttons. And also, in three months or something, I came up to around 10,000+ followers. I – that was too fast; I was in shock. So then- [0:02:31]
Richard Rodger: [0:02:31] Wow, that’s amazing.
Rohit Ghumare: [0:02:34] Yeah. After that, it was daily posting the content. If you – if anyone wants to grow on Twitter, it is simple. That just have to write – pick up any lists which is – they are familiar with, then write and deliver it then in the form of threads or tweets. Be genuine; don’t copy are something that will not help for sure. And [inaudible, 0:03:00] part; make your strong own brand name. So, that’s how it will proceed.
Other than that, make quality connections. I got my job, this job, from Twitter, so that is one quality connection. And that can bless you in any different ways. Having a social media presence is not compulsory, but it is nice around your profile; I would surely bet on that. But before joining Solo, I didn’t have followers; it was just 500 or 600 followers.
At that time, Solo reached out to me on Twitter by checking my Kubernetes [inaudible, 0:03:39] . So, it is nice; Twitter is working really nice now. I just shared daily content on different dev ops things, cloud things and random trends, technical trends. I reached 49,000 followers, I guess, so if God blesses, we reach 100K one day; that is another goal. [0:03:58]
Richard Rodger: [0:03:59] It’s very impressive. Let me get this straight. You went from 500-600 followers to 49,000 in about 15 months? [0:04:11]
Rohit Ghumare: [0:04:13] Yeah, 12 or 15 months. [0:04:15]
Richard Rodger: [0:04:17] That’s amazing, wow. Hire this guy for your developer relations. If you could do that, what are you waiting for? But from what you said, it sounds like the secret is consistent posting, so how many times a day to you post? What do you post? [0:04:37]
Rohit Ghumare: [0:04:39] At the start, I was quite consistent and being on the point; it is like I was posting twice or thrice a day. And weekly, that will be one thread. That is one tweet and they’re different. So, one thread per week and twice or thrice tweets per day. That’s how I posted at the start. But after six months, I didn’t have that much time to post regularly, but only one tweet per day or two tweets sometimes a day, that kind of thing. [0:05:18]
Richard Rodger: [0:05:20] So, do you – is it – you also have content outside of Twitter, articles, blog posts about cloud computing, all that sort of stuff. Are they deep – is that deep technical content? [0:05:34]
Rohit Ghumare: [0:05:35] Yes. I create technical content, but one of the famous blog of mine, I would say that reached around 8 million views. That blog is not on the – it’s not a technical blog. It is just how you can grab the [inaudible, 0:05:54] for free. That blog was – I created wo or three years back, and it crossed views like anything. It was just simple financial steps. But I if you – I write on the trends, then dev ops, then cloud review, AI, and whatever the – if company comes to me and they ask me to write, then that is different. [0:06:18]
Richard Rodger: [0:06:21] So, do you think your strategy would work for anyone, or was there some aspect of what you did that is unique to who you are? If somebody wants to be a developer relations person today, maybe they have five years’ experience as a developer, but they have zero content that they’ve written, could they copy what they did and also get to 49,000 or is it… [0:06:50]
Rohit Ghumare: [0:06:51] Yeah, that’s what I told – you need to be genuine with audiences. You’re just like, you create original content; then only people will recognize you. You’re going to get the followers, but they will not be – you are getting the best content. So, not the company will detail for you, not any you will not create any genuine monetization or maybe convert it into job. It is not possible.
So, how the things work is, create original content and create different types of content, and be consistent with whatever you’re doing. And have patience; these things will not give you fruit in 2-3 days. It will sometimes take months, sometimes take years, but one day you will achieve your fruit of life. [0:07:39]
Richard Rodger: [0:07:41] And did you focus only on Twitter? Did you- [0:07:43]
Rohit Ghumare: [0:07:43] No.
Richard Rodger: [0:07:44] You have similar numbers on other – which other platforms do you post on? [0:07:48]
Rohit Ghumare: [0:07:50] In that period, I was doing technical content and everything on the LinkedIn first. The LinkedIn, I started posting the blogs, started – LinkedIn is one of the platforms where you can get clients easier. Right now we are doing – whatever I learned, I was learning dev ops. Whatever I was learning, I was sharing links on the LinkedIn, in the form of a LinkedIn article, or whatever blogs I’m writing on Medium. I was selling the link here. I was creating daily LinkedIn posts.
That helped me to reach the right audience, that converted into clients of mine, and so they converted into customers. Or many companies’ employee are there on the LinkedIn. So, if – whatever you are doing are the real time use case and you are share it in public, they have that in their company use cases. So, they will reach out to you for freelancing opportunities or sometimes job opportunities. So, that works best. .
Other that, I create content currently on Instagram, YouTube and also Medium publication, so Medium. There, I have a lot of blogs, so that Kubernetes blogs helped me to get on the job for sure. Because I created multiple blogs in just one series, and that helped many of the people to learn about Kubernetes. And also real time use cases there, so, how you can deploy the application just by Kubernetes and various [inaudible, 0:09:26].
Richard Rodger: [0:09:32] And I’m looking at LinkedIn. You have 27,000 followers on LinkedIn, which again, it’s pretty impressive – well done. Here’s the question. Working as a developer advocate, working in developer relations, how important is this? Because I know people who work as developer advocates, and I’ve interviewed them on this podcast, who would have pretty small followings.
But they’re still effective in their job. And I know, because other people like yourself, that are much more active on social media, have many more followers. And sometimes you see jobs now for developer relations people where it says “Minimum 5,000 followers,” this type of thing. What’s your perspective on this? [0:10:23]
Rohit Ghumare: [0:10:25] As I said-
Richard Rodger: [0:10:26] Is it critical?
Rohit Ghumare: [0:10:28] As I said, I got my developer relations job without any following on Twitter, just with random DM. That time, I didn’t have any followers. But developer relations job doesn’t mean social media following. It should never mean. If it is there in the job description, it is a red flag.
Don’t quote me on that, but it is my words, my views. Because developer relations jobs come with a different set of challenges. You have to work with the product team, marketing team, engineering team continuously. And it is not about just social media following or marketing; it is about what kind of developer you are first. Then you can make developer relations.
It is not [inaudible, 0:11:19], but it is nice to have connections which can help you to get the collaboration activities like this podcast. Similarly, you can make the content collaboration with other developer relations – developers at our level that -- follow them; you can check what they are doing. And reach out to them. It is – doesn’t require any followers. You just have to reach out and they will love to collaborate with you. [0:11:44]
Richard Rodger: [0:11:45] This might be a mistake that some companies are making, mixing the idea of an influencer with a developer advocate; they’re not the same thing. [0:11:55]
Rohit Ghumare: [0:11:55] Right, completely different. I would not – there is some kind of influencer work in developer relations but it is not social media influencer. [0:12:05]
Richad Rodger: [0:12:06] Yeah. Because you have worked as a – you’ve worked in developer relations; you’ve worked as a developer advocate. Let’s talk about that then. When you were doing that for various companies – what does a day in the life of Rohit look like, the developer advocate? What does a day in the life look like? [0:12:34]
Rohit Ghumare: [0:12:35] It is really funny. Most of the people think we just travel, but it is not like that. You have to be quite active. Because I was working remotely, so in doing the times I was going – we had the workshops, so I was planning for the workshops. Then I was creating the technical content, because I had the technical content pipeline. So, I have to maintain that pipeline; I have to write some blogs or create some content for the videos or livestreams. [0:13:07]
Richard Rodger: [0:13:07] So, every day you would write a blog post? [0:13:08]
Rohit Ghumare: [0:13:10] No, not every day.
Richard Rodger: [0:13:11] Not every day.
Rohit Ghumare: [0:13:13] Yeah, not every day. But we had the content pipeline, so to put the content out on the time, we had to plan it ahead. Other than that, then there is what kind of content you will be – you have to go on the website and see if everything is working properly. Then you have to check on the open-source contributions of others.
If your company is based on the open-source projects, like you [inaudible, 0:13:38] , then you have to keep an eye on that for how the things are working. Then you need to be active in the community. And that’s how you can gain the developer experience smoother with your developers.
That is one other thing; then my focus was on the platform on the website, the platform engineering side. So, I have to say what technical the engineers are doing and how I can make their life easier. That was one of the things, and other tasks was CFPs. There are – after COVID, there are a lot of conferences are happening everywhere, so, we have the CFPs everywhere and see how those units are going on.
And in – you just – I travel a lot. In just two weeks, I was attending different meetups and different conferences. Monthly, there were around 2-3 conferences, so I travel a lot. That is not – everyone travels a lot, different things like that. But I’m at the age where I can hustle, so that’s why I was doing random things; it’s a lot of things at the same time. Most of the dev rel don’t do for that.
Other that, we covered the technical element and our documentation restructuring, website restructuring. And then we had the content pipeline; then we held meetings. I was working remotely for the US companies. My day ends at 7pm in Indian time and theirs starts at 7pm, so I have to attend meetings in the evenings.
And that’s how my entire days go into the dev rel work, but I enjoy it a lot. That is not for everyone; no company will force you to attend meetings at night. But to attend that because that helps you to see where you are in the process. I never- I would not like to be at the back of whatever is happening, so that’s how.
And other than that, you have the advocacy meetings weekly, and other than that, you are going to conferences, speaking, giving the talks. That will be another thing that you will check; what are the sponsorship activities you can do? Which conference to sponsor, which to not. As well as, there are different – there are three major points as information in our diagram. Community, then you have the developer experience; then education.
You have to maintain that learning platform of your company, if it has, so you have to see how the workshops will go. Other than that, community. On the community side you have to make the developer experience further, as well as you have to check community is community is launching the community is easier, but retention is a lot tougher than you can imagine. [0:16:47]
Richard Rodger: [0:16:48] Yes, I know; I know. [0:16:49]
Rohit Ghumare: [0:16:51] Yes, you have to keep an eye on that. Other than that, we covered everything. So, all activities comes under the developer advocate job. [0:16:51]
Richard Rodger: [0:17:00] I have several questions from- [0:17:01]
Rohit Ghumare: [0:17:03] Go for it.
Richard Rodger: [0:17:06] First of all, a very specific question. You mentioned content pipeline. Have you used any specific tools to manage the content pipeline, or do the companies you work for use any specific tools? Or was it just a spreadsheet somewhere? [0:17:19]
Rohit Ghumare: [0:17:22] There are different tools companies use. Asana is – the notion is the Corel platform is there, and then Sprout Social for the social media. At least there are some tools we used a lot in my previous companies. And if you are on the community building and start communities, so Orbit is really nice tool to- [0:17:43]
Richard Rodger: [0:17:43] Orbit, yes.
Rohit Ghumare: -[inaudible, 0:17:45] Slack or Discord. [0:17:46]
Richard Rodger: [0:17:48] So, there’s – that’s one of the aspects of the developer advocate job, is you end up using a lot of different tools. You don’t just live inside VS Code or something like that; you do a lot of other stuff. The other question that I had – and this is something I struggle with, and it’s something that sometimes people leave developer relations because of, is context switching.
When I like to write code, I like to sit down for three or four hours to concentrate. But if you work in developer relations, it’s very hard to get a three or four-hour section. Maybe if you can manage timezones, maybe that helps. But a lot of people in developer relations struggle because it’s very hard to get more than one or two hours of focused time, because you have to go to a meeting. You have to- [0:18:47]
Rohit Ghumare: [0:18:47] Yeah, these things-
Richrd Rodger: [0:18:47] -write some content. It’s very difficult. [0:18:49]
Rohit Ghumare: [0:18:51] Yes, these things generally happen when you are doing the hands-on demos at the conference; you have to prepare the demos. And every time, it should be unique; you have to bring some value into that. But you don’t have that much time, but as a dev rel, you need to be hyper active for sure. Your job is completely different from other developers or engineers or marketers or product or anyone. Because you need to be hyper active.
Getting the time is too tough, but if you set some kind of schedule for yourself, you can get time accordingly, proper time for different things you want to do. But me time, will be a lot less than you think. So, at the start of joining any company, you will get a lot less me time, because you have to do your company developer relations review, out of – as to why they should hire you. At the start of the company, starting off any company you are joining, that 3-4 months will be hectic. But once you say you set- you maintain something for months ahead, then you can get the time; slowly you will grab it, and then you will drop it. [0:20:16]
Richard Rodger: [0:20:18] Yeah, and it raises another question, again, given the list of things you did – a day in the life of Rohit. A lot of stuff. In a startup, one person is doing dev rel; they have to do all the stuff, but then a company gets bigger. Should every developer relations person in the company do all of these things? Or should the team specialize; should you have one person who’s more about code and one person who’s more about community? What do you think? [0:20:49]
Rohit Ghumare: [0:20:53] As I – if I am the dev rel manger or director or something in the future, then I would give – I would lead the time. But I would give them time; go see what works best for you. Try everything; what best – works best for you. One person can be expert in developer experience; one can be expert in education, the communication you’re doing. Then another will be lot active towards going into conferences; organizing the meetups, conference or talks, social activities and stuff.
Give them some time; they will explore. And if they want to specify in only one thing, then I will allow them to do, because that will manage their time accordingly. And other thing is, you can expect the metrics from the KPIs from them, what they are doing, and how the things going. And it will be easier for them to track and measure [inaudible, 0:21:58] Whereas at a smaller company, as a startup, at smaller seed round or seed stage or something, then that time you don’t have that much budget for, so you have to do everything. [0:22:09]
Richard Rodger: [0:22:11] Yeah, okay. And then the next question on the same theme is, if you were a developer relations manager and your boss, the CEO, said, “We need to do more stuff,” and here’s some budget,” do you spend that budget on another developer advocate or do you go to some of these new companies that write content for you? And – or an event management company to help run your meetups.
Do you – on a strategy level, is it better to focus on hiring developer relations people internally, or do you start using the budget with external service providers, people who write content, freelance content writers, event organizers, this type – do you outsource the development of SDKs, sample code? What do you think is the right strategy? [0:23:17]
Rohit Ghumare: [0:23:19] It completely depends on the budget and the activities you want to do, but hiring developer relations, other developer relations, will not be tougher for sure. It will not cost you more than what you can pay for the freelancers and event management companies. But then you have to go through the process and still you don’t hire; you don’t think you should – you can hire the new person. And you will not get the right person for these activities.
I would recommend to go and check it out with freelancers and service provider companies. There are a lot of companies providing dev rel services. But that is quite tough. You can get the content, technical content from them; you can get the videos from them, you can get some organizing meetups kind of thing. But dev rel completely different from these activities, because this is the person that anyone going this profile, he or she, they are going with their profile, they will see this person is working in this company, so that is one kind of benefit.
Other than that, this person is can do the things very effectively than any freelancer you can hire, any event management company you can hire. But then you come to the other problem, which is where you want to focus. So, you if have the state of parameters created by you – you want to focus in this region or you want to go on this market.
And you want to do the market analysis here or something, then you can go and hire developer relations. But you just want to explore what activities we can do ourselves. Then freelancers can make their choice, but as I told, there are not more benefits hiring a – there are lot more benefits hiring a developer than hiring a freelancer. [0:25:24]
Richard Rodger: [0:25:24] Got it. Okay, I have one last question before we finish up, which is about public speaking. You do public speaking, and it’s a skill that you have to learn. So, the question has two parts; a) how did you learn to do it and b) let’s go back to Rohit the dev rel leader. Would you hire speaking coaches and do training for people in your team or would you expect somebody who does a dev rel job to already have the skill? [0:26:10]
Rohit Ghumare: [0:26:12] Yes. As – I started public speaking on – I went to the online conference and I held a talk. First time I was sweating like anything, but from the second- [0:26:28]
Richard Rodger: [0:26:28] Yes, I know that feeling.
Rohit Ghumare: [0:26:30] From the second time, it was quite common for me. After that, I was going to various meetups, conferences, and now it is a lot easier. First time it was a little bit tougher, but after that, it is not tougher. If you know the technology and if you know what you want to speak, then public speaking is easier than what you can expect. That I come to know after the first talk, but you have to go to the stage and speak the first time. After that it will be a lot easier, if you know the technology, if you know your company, if you know what you want to talk.
And second question, would I hire these public speaking coaches? I don’t think I will spend the budget on that, because I will say dev rel people – team under me, “Give it a try; see if it works for you. If it doesn’t, we will see what we can do.” But give it a try. It will work out, because I believe it will work. If you have learned the thing and the first talk, I would recommend you to you to make some flash cards and something for you to try. But after that, I didn’t create anything, but that’s why I was sweating. But I would recommend you create it and that will help you a lot. [0:27:53]
Richard Rodger: [0:27:56] Rohit, thank you so much. This has been super interesting. If I was a developer advocate and you were the manager, I would work for you. I’m feeling very good; I’m feeling very good about what your team would be like. So, thank you so much. Wonderful stuff. Okay, goodbye. [0:28:13]
Rohit Ghumare: [0:28:14] Thank you. Bye-bye. [0:28:15]
Endnote
Richard Rodger: [0:28:16] You can find the transcript of this podcast and any links mentioned on our podcast page at Voxgig.com/podcast. Subscribe for weekly editions, where we talk to the people who make the developer community work. For even more, read our newsletter. You can subscribe at voxgig.com/newsletter, or follow our Twitter @voxgig. Thanks for listening. Catch you next time. [0.28.45]