It’s a Saturday morning in Austin, Texas, and I learned (again) that going outside in 101° heat to start a vlog is a terrible idea. Once I made it back inside where humans can actually function, I shared the real update: I got a new job… kind of. I’m still at Slack, but I moved from Senior Developer Advocate to Staff Developer Advocate—your boy got promoted. In this video I give some context on my path: self-taught coder, Air Force transition, and how I landed in DevRel (even when I didn’t fully understand what a developer advocate was at first). I talk about why I’m staying on the individual contributor path instead of going into management, and how my scope is what’s really changing. My goal this year is big: help teach a million developers how to build Slack apps. I also break down how I approached getting promoted: figuring out “time in grade” by looking at how long other seniors took to reach staff, and using that to avoid burnout from doing next-level work too early for too long. And honestly, the biggest hack is having an amazing manager—because when promotion talks happen, you’re not in the room advocating for yourself. Your manager is.