I thought Ashley Willis did an excellent job explaining the role in What Is Developer Advocacy? (2025 Edition).
We’re still here to serve developers. And we’re still doing the messy, meaningful work of bridging the gap between what a company thinks developers want and what developers actually need.
I liked the perspective that it’s actually better for a developer advocate to be a little removed from day to day development at the company itself:
… our value often comes because we’re not too close to the implementation. We can see the experience from a developer’s point of view. We notice when onboarding is confusing, when SDKs are missing critical examples, when the documentation skips the “hard but honest” parts.
Some Q&A from Brian Rinaldi on the topic is interesting as well.
