Eighteen years in developer relations and not one year without an org change. The themes repeat though, and once you can name the four models the swings run between, you can usually see the next one coming.
Marketing scales close to infinitely. Relationships don't, and the arithmetic of why is what decides how many people your DevRel team actually needs.
Active communities run a lot of events, so people assume running events creates communities. That's cause and effect backwards, and it's why so many 'communities' dry up the moment the budget stops.
There's a single question that separates companies that need developer relations from companies that just think they do: can developers extend your product, or only use it?
DevRel isn't really about selling anything - it's about building a whole ecosystem so big that we can barely measure its growth because a rising tide lifts all boats.