Hey Steve!

I think the role that you're thinking of is something similar to our DX Engineer role.

I love career advice questions btw and this one in particular as someone that was having the exact same thoughts in the past before landing my first DX / Community gig. So thrilled to see this here

I wrote this blog post a couple of years back when I landed my first role in this space. Might be helpful for you to reference! Here are other posts I've written that are related to this career path that may be helpful:

• https://www.pawlean.com/posts/2-years-at-gitpod
• https://www.pawlean.com/posts/my-community-building-mistakes
• https://www.pawlean.com/posts/navigating-layoffs

My portfolio is also a resource I share with folks to give them an idea of what the "path" could look like. I say "could" because it's not the only way to get in the space, there's so many stories out there of people pivoting in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways.

My advice whenever someone asks this is literally just practice. Keep shipping. You'll get better!

Let me know if you've got any follow-up questions! And thanks again for starting the discussion. I hope others can also jump in!

Hi Pauline,

First of all, thank you so much for your response. I just went through your blog and watched your YouTube video from a few years ago. I got so much out of both.

I feel like I am at a similar point to where you were in April 2021, when you asked yourself, "What do you want?" You were still figuring out the smaller details, and that really resonates with me. Right now, I know that I want to pursue software engineering, focus on the technical side of education, and hopefully build community and help others learn. It may sound weird , but I genuinely get a kick out of helping people have that a-ha moment. There is something really satisfying about making a concept click for someone

Looking at your portfolio made me realize that what I have been missing is personality. That is something I will actively work on and make sure to include. It is also really encouraging to see that you did not come from a computer science background and still made it to Vercel. That gives me a lot of hope.

Again, thank you very much for sharing this. Looking at it helped me a lot, especially in understanding what to focus on and improve.

The best way to get into this space is to just do it

Hang out in communities, help people out, write tutorials and examples for things you see come up often. You can pretty quickly build a personal brand as an expert, and people will start sharing your content for you when other folks ask questions

Once people keep running into you every time they search for a problem, and you always have the solution, you're golden. Prior to Vercel a lot of my freelance work came from people who only knew me from my blog

And from there you'll have enough of a portfolio to reach out to any companies whose tools you like and be a solid candidate for going full time

You're welcome! Always happy to help

I actually have been meaning to update that YouTube video, I've learned and grown so much since then.

To Jacob's point: build in public. That is the way forward. You're already following the right steps being in this community and sharing your work and helping people out!

This is something I started doing just recently and it’s amazing how small interactions can lead to something greater , but you are right, I think tend to over think things and strategize but really it’s just about putting things out there and starting even though it isn’t perfect.

Honestly you should! Would be great to see what your learned and whether you would do things differently.

As for the building in public, that’s definitely something I will emphasize more and get better at.

Good luck out there, Steve! Happy to answer any more questions on this.