How to land a job as a developer advocate

For me, it's a balance between a) the things that excite me the most, and b) the things that stand to have the biggest impact. The leadership at MUI encourages me to lean in on the things I do best, while also regularly challenging me to improve in the areas where I may be less inclined to contribute for lack of experience/confidence.

My role at MUI has turned out to be a great fit because the thing that excites me the most—writing and improving documentation—also happens to be the place where my efforts have the biggest impact. I also try to introduce at least one new experimental project into the mix each quarter (more or less), to see what kind of impact I could be making in other ways.

Sam Sycamore That sounds like an ideal situation - you get to play to your strengths and passions while still exploring and growing. I am struggling to find anything not to love about MUI's culture.

Are there certain skill sets you hope the new dev advocate will bring to make the team stronger overall and allow for growth in new directions? What would you be happiest to have the new person take off your plate? I have my own ideas of what I would be excited to contribute but also want to get a better sense of what is needed.

Eric Jakobsen MUI is a great place to work! I have thoroughly enjoyed the last year with the company.

From a DevEx perspective, MUI faces a unique set a challenges: it's a small, young, bootstrapped start-up, and its core product is one of the most popular open source projects on GitHub, with a history dating back almost to the beginning of React itself.

We really want to invest more time and energy into a) thoroughly revamping all existing documentation and b) creating new multimedia content that caters especially to the early-career React devs who may be encountering our products for the first time on the job and need to quickly onboard. I spend the majority of my time on A, so I'd really like to find someone who can handle B. (That said, if a killer A candidate showed up, I'd consider pivoting to B myself.)

Ideally, this person has some prior professional experience working with React, and possesses the kind of charisma I talk about in the article here—they should be someone who's fun to listen to in a YouTube video or on a podcast. They should enjoy talking to strangers at conferences and building relationships with users and content creators alike.

It's a lot to ask for, and this ideal candidate is tough to find. Still, I'm hoping that by putting this wish out into the ether, maybe that perfect someone will show up in our ATS soon! 😇

Sam Sycamore Sounds like an exciting time! I love everything I have heard so I went ahead and applied. I view myself as a killer B candidate who would be happy to help out with A projects as needed.

I will be releasing a MUI-focused video on my YouTube channel by the end of the week so you can see those B skills in action. I would love to chat more about the position with you when you are free!

Best of luck!

Thanks for reading!!

Hmm, I don't think I've encountered any part-time job listings in my searches over the years. I have seen start-ups hire contractors on a not-quite-full-time-basis though. You'd probably be better off contracting on a per-article basis as a technical writer, and establishing some repeat clients over time.

Thanks Sam Sycamore, I'm already writing articles and want to expand my services, this is why I asked.