What does it actually take to be a developer advocate? And how do you measure the impact of developer relations when everyone seems to disagree on the metrics?

In this episode, Daniel Afonso, Senior Developer Advocate at PagerDuty, walks us through his journey from writing prank bash scripts as a 10-year-old in Portugal to becoming one of the most active voices in the European DevRel community. Daniel breaks down how developer relations sits at the intersection of engineering, marketing, sales, and product, and shares hard-won lessons on what makes DevRel programs succeed or fail.

We also go deep on developer experience, covering the three pillars every SDK and API team should optimize for: reducing cognitive load, fast feedback loops, and keeping developers in flow state. Plus, Daniel shares his take on on-call culture, why postmortems matter, and the books that shaped his career.

🔸 Topics Covered:

Growing up drawn to tech and competing in national programming competitions in Portugal

Transitioning from backend (Java, C++, .NET) to frontend and falling in love with React

How blogging, learning in public, and meetups built the foundation for a DevRel career

Developer Relations explained: the Venn diagram of engineering, marketing, sales, and product

Measuring DevRel impact: from vanity metrics to Developer Relations Qualified Leads

Why DevRel programs fail: unreasonable expectations, pitch-fest conference talks, and missing business alignment

The three pillars of developer experience: cognitive load, fast feedback loops, and flow state

How React's JSX and Solid's signals represent great DX initiatives in practice

Staying technical as a developer advocate through side projects, code reviews, and community work

On-call culture: reducing alert fatigue, owning your services, and changing the "I hate on-call" mindset

Book recommendations: Thriving on Overload, How to Win Friends and Influence People, The Phoenix Project

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction to Developer Advocacy

01:15 Daniel's Journey into Programming

07:28 Transitioning to Front-End Development

12:49 The Path to Developer Relations

18:43 Understanding Developer Relations

22:53 Measuring the Impact of DevRel

26:45 Common Pitfalls in DevRel Programs

30:39 Marketing and Developer Relations Missteps

33:47 Avoiding Developer Pitfalls at Events

35:53 Staying Technical in Non-Technical Roles

40:06 Defining Great Developer Experience

46:56 The Importance of Documentation

52:41 On-Call Experiences and Incident Management

01:02:12 Book Recommendations and Personal Favorites

01:06:52 Wrap Up

🔗 Follow & Subscribe:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@neciudan

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/senorsatscale

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/senors-at-scale

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/neciudan

Newsletter: https://neciudan.dev

🔗 Guest Links:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/danielafonso

LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/danielafonso

PagerDuty: https://pagerduty.com/

📚 Resources Mentioned:

Thriving on Overload - https://www.amazon.com/Thriving-Overload-Strategies-Manage-Information/dp/XXXXXX

React Documentation - https://reactjs.org/docs/getting-started.html

Cloudflare Use Effect Postmortem - https://blog.cloudflare.com/postmortem-incident-XXXXXX

SolidJS - https://solidjs.com/

Frictionless by Abhinoda & Nicole Forsgreen

The Phoenix Project

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

#DevRel #DeveloperExperience #DeveloperAdvocacy #SoftwareEngineering #PagerDuty #OnCall #DX #TechPodcast #SeniorsAtScale #DeveloperRelations #OpenSource #TechLeadership