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Disclosure: I work on Google Cloud.

Both Emma and Sara are in our Developer Relations (aka Dev Rel) organization, like Kelsey Hightower and Felipe Hoffa.

They’re explicitly not in Sales, and their job is focused on explaining and demonstrating stuff to Developers. They go to meetups, give invited talks, write blog posts, and so on.

Sorry if that doesn’t come across as clear. They work for Google, are paid by Google for that work, but aren’t measured by revenue or anything.




The most effective sales is disguised as “not sales”.


That’s called marketing. Also sometimes pre-sales with solutions engineering and onboarding.


No, we have those functions, too :). It really comes down to how people are measured for their work, and how it's directed. Nobody told Emma or Sara to do the things they did. Nor is anyone going to go see "how much pipeline got generated".

DevRel is measured on how many people they reach, but even that only vaguely. Marketing events, by contrast, are more often measured by pipeline. And you can be certain that onboarding (Professional Services) and Sales/Solution engineers are measured on revenue and time to revenue.


I'm not trying to be snarky (I swear every second sentence I say starts that way these days, sad spirit of the times), but to me, that sounds like sales...




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