From Code to DevRel and Leadership (with Marc Backes)

DejaVue

In the seventh episode of DejaVue, Alex sits down with Team Lead Marc Backes as our guest. Our conversation takes us on a journey through his career with Programming and Vue.js. Marc shares the beginnings of his coding journey, from the development of Software for a Mexican University and lessons learned from founding a startup and eventually joining a German company as freelance developer.

We also dig deeper into the world of Developer Relations (DevRel) and talk about Marc's transition into this field, as well as major achievements such as the CODE100 Coding Competition and the importance of ambassadors for frameworks such as Vue and Nuxt.

Further, Marc sheds light on his decision to leave DevRel and becoming a Tech Lead at the company he's been with twice beforehand. We explore how this transition addressed certain pain points and dive into practical strategies for handling legacy code and technical debt.

Enjoy the episode!

Chapters

• (00:00) - Intro
• (01:04) - Public Speaking and Conferences
• (03:15) - The Start of Marc's Coding Journey
• (06:49) - Building University Admin Software
• (09:42) - Startup Founding Lessons
• (13:27) - How the Journey Continued
• (20:40) - What is DevRel?
• (21:52) - Getting into DevRel
• (24:22) - Developer Advocate vs Developer Relations
• (27:20) - "Framework DevRels" and Ambassadors
• (29:38) - CODE100 Coding Competition
• (35:42) - Why leaving DevRel?
• (38:28) - Becoming a Tech Lead
• (41:44) - Did the role change solve the pain points?
• (46:57) - How do you handle legacy code and technical debt?
• (52:01) - Widen/Narrow approach for migrations
• (54:20) - How to please the developer and the business side
• (58:42) - Carté blanch for team managing
• (01:02:30) - Wrapping it up

Links and Resources

• dotJS Paris
• Vue.js Amsterdam
• VueConf US
• Ruby on Rails
• Vue Storefront / Alokai
• CODE100 Competition
• Syntax FM