Developer relations as a strategy

Bruno Borges: When companies decide to build a developer relations team, that becomes a strategy. Developer relations can be something that an individual ends up doing naturally. For example, someone working with open-source foundations in their free time could be described as some sort of developer advocate, but that's more just community engagement.

The formal structure of developer relations within any company is about engaging with the users of a product, service, platform, or API.

For that reason, the company needs to see the discipline of developer relations as having a strategical structure. That structure could be inside the product management team, the engineering team, the marketing team, or even the sales team. Depending on where developer relations is situated, the company's strategy, purpose, goals, and metrics will be influenced.

Not every company can simply go and start up a developer relations team. Sometimes...