How come theres no x-relations in other jobs?<p>You never hear about Nurse Relations or Mechanic Relations.
Tons of traditional companies have x-relations employees, they're just not titled as such. Attending trade shows, developing distributor relationships, constructing and distributing demo materials, building local/state/federal government support networks, driving the branded truck around town — all of these are very common in non-tech industries and are basically analogous to DevRel engineer responsibilities.
This is an excellent question and the answer is maybe not too surprising. Where mechanics buy their own tools and nurses have little tool purchasing power, developers produce machinery that is costly to change and if they struggle to use something (activation risk) then we can't get that lock-in to stick. DevRel isn't for the individuals, it is for influencing the aggregate so they get their companies stuck with the solution.
I always thought of developer relations as essentially a tech-sales role. Isn't that ultimately what its trying to do, "educate" people to use your product?