The Everything Feed - All Packet Pushers Pods LIU003: A Chat With ‘The Cloud Therapist’
Oct 30, 2025
Chris Williams, known as the 'cloud therapist,' is a Developer Relations Manager at HashiCorp with a background in psychology. He discusses how his psychology studies enhance tech careers by refining conflict resolution skills. Chris shares insights on the role of a Developer Advocate, the importance of non-traditional backgrounds, and crafting talks for learners in DevOps. He emphasizes the value of community engagement for career growth and practical conflict resolution techniques that align stakeholder definitions to improve collaboration.
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How He Became The 'Cloud Therapist'
- Chris became known as the "cloud therapist" after using his psychology skills to resolve people problems in failing cloud projects.
- He was repeatedly brought into multimillion-dollar, on-fire projects to calm teams and drive outcomes.
Be The Customer's Voice Inside The Company
- Developer advocates bridge product, engineering, sales, marketing, and customers by speaking from hands-on experience.
- Take community feedback back to product and engineering to drive issues and improvements.
Get Onstage Gradually
- Start building public speaking and community skills by attending or organizing local meetups and volunteering to present.
- Practice speaking often, starting with lightning talks and scaling up to longer conference talks.