What Does a Developer Evangelist Do? | Interview with Dev Evangelist

watch this video if you are curious about what developer evangelists do or if you want to become one hi everyone my name is sejo i make algorithm tutorials and solve lead codes and career tips in tech so if you're new here consider subscribing and like this video today we are going to have an interview with vikki li she is a developer evangelist at a startup and she is also a future author she is writing a book and about web securities and she's also a blogger and a youtuber and podcaster so if you're interested in learning about web securities and developer evangelist consider following her as well alright let's move on to the interview yeah all right let's let's start let's start yeah yeah so today i invited vicky she is a developer evangelist and today we're gonna talk about what she does as a developer evangelist and uh some other fun questions so all right let's begin um so vicky what are you what do you do as a developer evangelist uh yeah so hi everyone my name is vicki lee and i am currently a developer evangelist at an application security firm called shift left and a developer evangelist is sort of like a communicator between a tech company and outside developers my main job is to communicate with developers learn what they need and the security product and then bring that back to my company and work with my colleagues to make that happen and another part of my job is that i do a lot of developer security education and outreach in the form of like blog articles and podcasts to let people know about our product and sort of have a conversation with developers about how our product can help them with their work oh you actually do podcasts too yeah i do i started uh i started working on one of my colleagues podcasts a few months ago and we've recorded like three episodes now like having different security people on the podcast is really interesting it's called sources and syncs so check it out okay i will um have all that stuff on the on the description so you can actually check uh vicky's youtube channel and uh podcast as well so yeah um yeah let's get back to the interview so you you mentioned that actually um privately you were a software engineer you did some freelancing and now you were the developer evangelist so why did you make that career change so i think one of the big parts about me taking my current job is that being a developer evangelist i know would require a completely different skill set obviously for me it's still extremely important for me to work in a technical position because i really like to deal with the technical aspects of things like you know the principle behind the technology and how you implement things in software development but another very important thing for me at my point my career is that i want to learn new things and a very important aspect of my job is communication skills like writing speaking to people presenting and being a developer evangelist will force me to learn these things which was one of the main reasons of me taking the current job yeah that's that's really great reason i think yeah communication is really important for many different jobs and i think for uh developer evangelist uh having good communication skills i think is really really really important because that's that's the job and yeah that's the job so i'm not saying like as a developer i didn't have to communicate with people i obviously still do but it's just like it now it's a much bigger part of my job and i'm challenged in many more ways than my previous job as a freelance developer so can you talk about those challenges that you had as a developer evangelist um for instance one of the one of the challenges that i've had is that i'm not you know the most organized presenter ever i tend to just ramble on about whatever i want to talk about and that is something that i really want to improve on right because um i want to what one of my main aspirations unquote is that i want to help developers write secure code and i want to keep on doing this security education thing and you know spread the word about how we can create more secure software and if you can't present well then that's out of the question right so i think that's something that i really really need to learn and that's my main challenge for now that's that's great and also actually another like big challenge that i've just learned about being evangelist is that you really need excellent organization skills because you have so many different projects going on i see i see so it's not just like one product right it's you know the podcast the vlog videos working with outside creators etc okay i see so uh can you introduce some of the products that you are doing right now uh the product or the the company's product itself or some of the projects that i'm involved in uh let's let's talk about both so let's with your uh employers companies uh product like yeah so our company is an application security company um so i think most people would um categorize our current product as traffic analysis scanning um so our project right now it's called shift flat core it's a platform that allows developers to um scan sort of assess the security of their application in many different ways like scanning for open source vulnerabilities scanning for the vulnerabilities written into source code etc that's awesome yeah i agree it's a very cool product and then so what i do for my company right now is that i have many different initiatives going on um i write um technical blog posts um on our company blog and i also produce different kinds of like promotional documents that we need aimed at developers because for these kind of documents you really need someone with technical background to understand what developers look for and what would resonate with developers the most and i also host a podcast obviously um and it's a podcast focused on the security audience like in the past we've talked to live overflow which is a penetration tester youtuber and we also interviewed kt paxton fear which is who is like a researcher in cyber security okay so at your work you were managing blogs writing writing blogs post about securities and also uh talking to uh security professionals on your company's podcast is that yeah for sure yeah so that's a lot of like a different type of projects that you were doing in parallel right so i i think that's maybe that's why you're saying you mentioned that organization skills is pretty important because you have multiple products going on like that yeah organization skills are crucial i would say um but i hope that i i just started my job like not three months ago right i hope that eventually i'll be able to find like a rhythm to things i can actually get a better handle on things right now i think i'm still like trying very hard to figure out what i'm doing sort of you know but i'm pretty sure eventually i will find you know my path that's awesome yeah the thing about being evangelist also is that um you really get to decide like what the direction of your work will be okay so do i want to do a podcast or i want to do a youtube channel do i want to make a coursera course it's it's very much up to you so it's up to you to decide what direction you want to go with your job to okay as a developer evangelist how do you balance your learning um technical side of learning and working on those posts and podcasts and stuff like that i guess because i'm asking this because in order to write blog posts you kind of have to know yeah for sure so how do you how do you do that like yeah i would say like for now i'm still fairly new to my job and i'm still trying to find a balance in everything but the way i see it is that the you know these content creation job responsibilities i have goes in tandem with my learning okay right because in order to and like you said in order to create like a really technical blog post that developers could understand very well in order to present the information well you first need to understand the information well and that's what i've always known since like i started blogging two years ago but the thing with being a technical blogger is that in order to to blog about something you need to understand it very well first so everything goes together in that sense learning is part of my job that's awesome actually the learning is part of your job that's awesome um uh next question uh what are some of the most exciting experience that you had as a developer evangelist i would say like this job really opened the door for me to meet a lot of interesting people like because as a part of my job i need to you know learn about developers experiences and then bring that feedback back to my company so i got to talk to a lot of different developers about their work experiences about what challenges they face at work and i also i also got to talk about talk with a lot of interesting security professionals i think back when i was freelancing um there wasn't that much of a chance to communicate with security folks in other companies because i was just sort of doing my own thing as a freelancer and the only context that i have is either my personal security friends you know my the fans of my blogs and also um the people that i directly work with but right now the situation is more like i have all these connections to other companies through my company right so it opens new doors for me to meet new people did you always like meeting new people and you know building those relationships because i i know some people like uh some people don't want to yeah i've always loved talking to people actually i would probably categorize myself as an awkward extrovert like i'm pretty awkward on the surface but i really really enjoy other people um yeah and i think part of the reason actually another like small reason why i really really wanted a full-time job um the end of last year was that i feel like because of kovit and my freelance job i was becoming quite isolated right right yeah so because i wasn't meeting my friends and you know i wasn't i was just meeting like a few contacts with my clients at work and i really i really miss you know the camaraderie the bouncing off ideas with colleagues and yeah that's that's something i really enjoy right now at my place of employment too like to be able to work with smart people and you know have their ideas and like learn from their experiences too yeah that's awesome um yeah i think um having co-workers and meeting constantly meeting talking to people uh actually good for mental health like for me yeah for sure yeah so um before colby like i really like to go into office and talking to people and eat lunch together and stuff like that but yeah yeah yeah for sure i mean that kovis is like the worst for extroverts i think um because i mean that you know in college for example like a pre-coveted area i really like you know going to like these big meetups big parties you know i'm talking to different people especially i think one of the best things in like working in security one of the best moments is that when you talk to someone and they have the same interests as you you know right right like for instance for like a really niche interest like application security like how many people in the world like wants to talk about application security not that right right so when you meet someone like that it's just amazing right exactly yeah all right so next question um so do you have any preference like you worked on freelancing and you right now you're working as a developer evangelist um he's like developer evangelist more than actual actual um being a freelance developer i don't i don't really know honestly because i really really enjoy being a developer like it's a very it's a very cool job like you get actually get to build things that people will use and you get to design different you get to design what the product is made of and that's just that's amazing um but right now i think i enjoy my job a lot but also at the i'm still trying to find a balance right and find a direction as to how i want my job to be and i currently at shift left there is a lot of freedom for me in terms of what projects i want to pursue so my day-to-day responsibilities are changing quite a lot now so i don't think i can really say that i enjoy my job now more than i enjoy being developer i think the jury is still out to decide i see so how is your day-to-day uh life look like as a developer evangelist i think the day-to-day changes a lot i don't know if my day-to-day is ever gonna like stabilize or maybe just not and that's fine too um so i'll just tell you what i did last week right last week you know i wrote i mean three like articles and then i i interviewed two people i reviewed some blog posts i learned about some i learned about some technical aspects of of our products what else i i worked with a lot of content creators i last week i spent a lot of time meeting with content creators because we're trying to create this new like guest blogging and um for like a youtube show kind of thing for my company so i spent a lot of time talking to county couriers like oh what do you want to do like what kind of content can you create sort of brainstorm with them i also spend a lot of time brainstorming content ideas from my company as well yeah so that sort of worked yeah that's so that's a lot of work i think that's exciting work yeah yeah it's very exciting especially like as i said i really enjoy other people and last week i had these opportunities to you know sort of rekindle a connection with a lot of my contacts and you know create new connections as well like i get to i got to learn about you know really cool tech bloggers and their blogs because they reach out to me for the guest blogging opportunity for instance oh i see i see so i think the developer evangelist is a really great job if you want to talk to new people and create like uh projects to communicate uh the technologies and knowledges and also i feel like it it requires some sort of kind of entrepreneurship i think because i feel like creating all of all of these platforms like talking about the um company's youtube channels and all this stuff actually requires some sort of uh like a lot of planning and strategies and all this stuff yeah so yeah do you also think that they have evangelist uh kind of required yeah i i completely agree because so many uh especially at at my company right because our company is still i'm the first developer evangelist so i sort of get to like decide what we do and yeah so there's a lot of creativity involved too and like thinking oh how could i best present this product how could i best present um my company and how could i best present this technical aspect of our product those are all things that require a lot of creativity and ingenuity and that's that's i think one of the most amazing parts about my job is the ability to of the job to challenge me really i feel very challenged and i think that's a good thing that's that's awesome all right next question uh career related question so if you do you have any advice for people who want to become a dev evangelist um i would say so i got my job i think because one of my company's founders read my blog so i think one of my biggest advice is not just for the developer not just for people who want to be deaf evangelists but for people who want to get into technical roles in general to start uh like a blog a youtube channel or some sort of media outlet to document your learning because that way you can communicate to employers that first of all you're good you're a good communicator you might be a good writer or you're really good at explaining things and second of all you have the technical background to understand these concepts all right so for my technical blog i talk a lot about web vulnerabilities i go into the details of vulnerabilities explaining why that happen and how you exploit these vulnerabilities so i think that really showed me that blog got me a lot of job offers actually because i think that blog really showed me that i have the technical expertise but also i can present information really well yeah oh that's awesome advice uh yeah thank you for sharing your advice um yeah so um check out her uh blog post and youtube channel because her her blog has a lot of really great information about web security and youtube also talk about uh securities as well and all the contents are great so uh check her channel out i'm gonna uh put that on the description all right so think so much i mean yeah that's important when you think about it when you think about it it's like a side project too right it's it's like developers they have their like software engineering side project security people our side projects like a blog right so what's your channel's name vicky my channel's name is vicky lee dev it's v-i-c-k-i-e l-i-d-e-v yeah it's all right so that's my domain as well link is on the description yeah thanks so much no problem so um do you do any side projects um and do you actually do you want to formally like go through what your side projects and resources are because i mean we kind of like talked about it but can you introduce formally yeah for sure i i i mean now my biggest five project is are not it's not my blog or my video actually um like my big big side project now that's eating up all my free time is working on my book about web packing it's yeah so it's called bug bounty boot camp and me and my publisher we plan on releasing it in august so right now it's sort of like it's crunch time you know it's a lot of editing a lot of revisiting a lot of like preparations going on in the joe's it's crazy and sort of that that's eating up all my time that's why i haven't been so active on my blog or youtube right now that's i mean that's really great uh wow so bulk bounty boot camp okay i guess it talks about the web security can you introduce what this book is going to you know have like who reads who should read this book uh so the people that should read this book is um are people who want to learn about web security and in particular people who want to learn to hack web applications the book is called blog bounty boot camp because of the bug valley industry you know bug valley is sort of a program where companies pay hackers to hack their applications and my book is about learning how to hack web applications with some tips to help you get into bug bounties and actually earn from bug bounty programs that's that's awesome um so that's gonna be published on uh when i missed your actually hopefully august but i think it really depends on like how much time i can put into it hopefully august maybe sometimes before i'm not sure yet okay cool um yeah that's really amazing that you're writing a book yeah that's really awesome yeah and yeah yeah so um yeah so um stay tuned so her book is going to be out very soon yeah yeah hopefully i mean it's it's the thing is like writing a book is way more work than i anticipated you know especially so i i started writing this book last year in april and by december i have the first draft right right but then after that oh like so much editing like technical edit copy edit art edit coming soon and it's just i was like oh wasn't i done with all this work but no it's still like that it's a huge process to refine the book and make it something that's actually a good book you know because the manuscript is written very like my book manuscript contains all the technical information but we also need to make sure that we are presenting it in the best way possible so that people can absorb it well and people can actually learn from the book it's a very different it's very different like process of just putting the technical information down to you know refining the content and making people learn well from it yeah well it must be really challenging to keep balancing um you have your work and you have some side projects going on youtube blog posts and then you're writing a book that's a lot of work yeah yeah it's a lot of nights and weekends but yeah i really enjoy i really enjoy it because as i said i really want to help people learn about security that's awesome yeah thank you for sharing um about your effort and what you're doing yeah so yeah i think i ran ran out of questions let me actually quickly check if i had more questions actually i wanted to ask you why did you start a youtube channel um but i feel like you kind of talked about it but i can still talk about it why did you start youtube channels i like talking did you want to become a popular youtuber or was there any different you know uh why did i start a youtube channel like i didn't want to become a popular youtuber at all why not that was that was not my intention at all i i started my youtube channel on a whim really like i guess my you know my quote-unquote social media presence started from my blog and then two years into my blog i felt like i really needed a new challenge in terms of side projects no i needed to learn something new from my side projects so i started youtube because i wanted to learn all the skills that goes into being a youtuber like script writing recording video editing animation presenting and so i started my youtube channel as a way to force myself to learn those things right right um yeah and also part of the reason was that uh quite a few of my followers have reached out to me saying that they learn much better with video rather than just blog posts so the youtube is sort of a way of making my experimentation sort of of making security education more accessible because i think with my blog is like it's this huge block of english text right it's it takes a lot of time to read and you need to like sit down and be there for a long period of time and some people just don't learn that way some people want more something more visual or something that's you know from audio for instance and i want to experiment with those mediums and see how people respond to different ways of learning that's great actually i kind of started my youtube video to actually improve my communication skills as well um after after copied like i was you know everybody stuck at home you know we don't really meet people and like my wife is an american we speak english at home but um my wife understood me as soon as i say like one or two words and we just know like what we're talking about but most of the time in real life if i say one or two words to native english speakers they would not know what i what i'm actually talking about right so how do i wanted to improve my communication skills as well that's why i kind of started my youtube channel so yeah i guess a lot of people uh actually learn things um during that journey i think yeah yeah for sure because by making youtube videos really difficult you know it's not as easy as it seems at least as what it seemed to me i thought it'd just be like oh you just talked to camera right there's so much that goes into presenting information well there's so much that goes into making a video engaging interesting right but yet you know with enough technical information right exactly and also like at first when i was looking at the little camera lens and my brain kind of like freezed oh say anything um yeah for sure i mean like totally right it's it's so hard it's so much harder talking to a camera than a person people yeah i i love this now right now like talking to people and it's amazing yeah it's much easier right right it's way easier yeah i mean i'm still staring at the camera but it's different oh i'm not i'm not steering the camera at all i still can't i still can't get used to it honestly oh really i still like to look at faces when i talk i think yeah maybe i should like stick a face on my camera just like the face the little tiny face next to them yeah maybe maybe that would help yeah yeah yeah i know that's a problem with me on these interviews actually i never look at the camera and then and then people are just like oh why aren't you looking at the camera like because i'm looking at the person that i'm talking to right and then other person for other person you're looking at looking a little down yeah exactly that's something that's not where you're supposed to right youtube video obviously yeah yeah all right um i think mike i think this is my end of the question um awesome yeah so is there anything you just wanted to you know talk about um i think my um in my channel my subscribers are currently um starting computer science and i think they are they're the audience i my channel is small i have like 88 subscribers uh thank you so much guys for subscribing my channel um is there anything you just want to you know casually talk about yeah sure just in general working in tech like you know i think i really i mean touching on my previous point about blogging i obviously i really really enjoy blogging and i really enjoy writing and i think it's it's the same principle applies to all the people who want to become you know software developers developer evangelist engineers in general it's really really important to when you're looking for a job to find a side project that you really enjoy and that you can excel in because the quality of your work is very important and it communicates many many things to the employer so if you can find a side project format that you enjoy then you can make that side project really good and then um job opportunities would just come naturally from that that's really great advice vicky um i really appreciate it yeah all right so let's this is the end of the interview with vikki so uh thank you so much for uh joining me and sharing your uh what you're doing and advice and stuff uh we i really appreciate it thank you yeah thank you so much for having me say hi all right all right uh yeah so um i'm going to have all the links and everything that we talked about like vicky's channel blogs post and podcast on description so please please check them out if you are interested in web securities or if you're interested in becoming a developer evangelist all right thank you so much everyone yeah thank you so much everyone bye [Music]

Channel: Seho Lim

Views: 337

Keywords: developer evangelist, dev evangelist, web securities, web security, vickie li dev, what is developer evangelist, what does developer evangelist do, developer evangelist role, how to become a developer evangelist, software development, developer, evangelist, developer evangelist at a startup, developer evangelist interview, interview with developer evangelist, tech blog, tech blogger, tech youtuber, seho lim, human in tech, people in tech

Id: l3ilKXgnmuk

Length: 30min 54sec (1854 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 29 2021