Career development

Patrick McFadin: There aren't many options at the moment. In the industry, we're having discussions about what the path should be for individual contributors. Do we send them down a management path or an executive track?

If you're just starting out in developer advocacy, you can move up into more senior roles where you're managing groups of advocates, doing more substantial projects, and creating programs. Many people end up moving out of developer advocacy into pure engineering. I think there are many distinguished engineers who it could easily be said are developer advocates.

Geertjan Wielenga: How do you stay updated on the latest tech developments?

Patrick McFadin: Twitter is always a good channel. I have a pretty healthy diet of online sources, including TechCrunch and Hacker News. Hacker News is the bleeding edge of the bleeding edge. I just see what people are talking about, along with going to conferences and meetups. It&apos...