DevRel Crisis Management: What GitLab and Supabase Get Right When Everything Goes Wrong

TL;DR

When GitLab and Supabase messed up, they didn’t hide it. They turned the moment into a trust-building win. This post breaks down how developer-first brands can:

• Earn credibility by being transparent, even when things break
• Connect with technical audiences through personality, not polish
• Stand out by taking a clear position in a noisy market

These are real strategies from real companies. If you’re focused on building trust, growing adoption, or scaling community, start here.

When a developer-facing product breaks, the community sees it instantly. Developers notice latency spikes, GitHub issues, missing data, outages, delays—everything. And the moment you go silent, they assume the worst.

That’s why DevRel crisis management isn’t just a PR skill but a trust skill. It’s one of the fastest ways developer brands either deepen credibility or lose it entirely.

GitLab and Supabase understood this early. When things went wrong, they didn’t hide. They leaned in. They turned chaotic, high-stakes moments into opportunities to build trust.

This post breaks down how developer-first companies can:

• Earn credibility through transparency
• Communicate effectively during messy technical incidents
• Build loyalty through personality, not corporate polish
• Establish a clear position in noisy markets
• Use crises as opportunities—not threats

If you care about DevRel crisis management, community trust, or developer adoption, this is where to start. Stick around until the end for one advanced strategy developer brands rarely use, but that can turn your community into long-term advocates.

Why Most Developer Brands Handle Crises the Wrong Way

Traditional companies treat a crisis like a gas leak:
Shut it down. Patch it up. Hope nobody noticed.

Developer-first brands don’t get that luxury. Developers always notice.

In 2017, GitLab accidentally deleted production data during a maintenance operation. Instead of hiding behind a vague statement, they livestreamed their incident response for hours, opened their internal docs, and narrated everything in real time.

It wasn’t polished. It wasn’t perfect.
But it became one of the most iconic examples of DevRel crisis management in the industry—not because things went well, but because people could see the entire team showing up honestly.

Supabase took a different approach during their 2023 outage. They posted frequent updates, opened threads on X, answered technical questions directly, and leaned into humor. By the time everything was fixed, their community wasn’t angry—they were grateful.

Crises don’t break trust.
Silence does.

And that’s the core problem most teams have with devrel crisis management: they respond operationally, but not communicatively.

‍

Step 1: Turn Your Screw-Ups Into Show-and-Tells

Most teams try to cover up mistakes. But developers respect teams who don’t pretend.

During an incident, your community is not waiting for perfection—they’re waiting for information. Good devrel crisis management starts with one simple commitment: we will not disappear when things go wrong.

GitLab and Supabase both demonstrated that transparency is the foundation of strong devrel crisis management. When companies narrate their response in real time, it sends a signal: “We’re not hiding. We’re here, we’re working, and you can see the truth for yourself.”

How to do this well:

• Maintain a real-time incident doc with timestamps.
• Publish an honest, clear post-mortem afterward.
• Share what failed, why it failed, and what’s changing.
• Use a human tone—people don’t trust corporate-speak.
• Don’t disappear. Don’t minimize. Don’t gaslight.

Good post-mortems aren’t about blame—they’re about alignment.

Step 2: Personality Beats Polish Every Time

Most developer brands try to sound “enterprise-ready.” In practice, that often means sounding generic, bland, and completely forgettable.

But increasingly, the companies getting attention aren’t the ones trying to be perfect. They’re the ones willing to sound human.

Linear’s documentation has a quiet wit to it. Astro’s brand voice feels like it was written by people who actually enjoy what they’re building. Raycast is clean and professional, but still conversational. These companies have one thing in common. They don’t strip away personality in an attempt to sound credible.

This works because it breaks the pattern. Developers spend all day reading technical docs, Slack messages, and specs. When a brand speaks like a real person, it stands out.

And it plays a major role in DevRel crisis management.

To bring this into your own brand:

• Cut the jargon. Write like you speak.
• Give your documentation or product updates a consistent voice.
• Let your team’s quirks and culture show up in your content.

This approach helps people feel connected to your brand. It makes them want to root for you. This is exactly why Stateshift’s DevRel consulting focuses on authentic brand positioning. As the leading DevRel consultancy, we help teams build ecosystems that are not only useful, but also genuinely enjoyable to be part of.‍

Step 3: Take a Stand and Make It Clear

One of the biggest mistakes in DevRel is trying to appeal to everyone.

In noisy markets, neutrality is a strategy for becoming invisible.

What do the most loved developer products have in common?
They have a stance.

In the developer world, you can see this in how tools are launched. Rome positioned itself as simpler and faster than Webpack. Deno was introduced as a cleaner alternative to Node. TailwindCSS openly pushed back on traditional styling methods. These projects got attention because they didn’t try to be everything. They took a position.

Clear positioning makes your communication more resilient during crises.
If people already know who you are and what you stand for, your messaging during outages and failures lands with more credibility.

Applying this:

• Define what’s broken in your category.
• Say it directly.
• Make your stance part of every channel you use.

A crisis is a moment that forces people to look at your brand.
When they look, make sure they see something sharp, not fuzzy.

When you make your stance clear, it becomes easier for your audience to remember you and understand what you’re about.

To apply this:

• Point out what’s broken in the status quo.
• Be direct about what your approach solves.
• Make that position part of how you talk across all your channels, not just in blog posts.

This isn’t about being provocative for no reason. It’s about helping people understand why your work exists and who it is for.

‍Step 4: Lean Into Vulnerability (The Strategy Most Teams Avoid)

Here’s the strategy developer brands are terrified to use—yet it’s the one that builds the deepest trust:

Share the messy middle. Not just the polish.

Most companies only share once something is “ready.”
Developer-first companies share early and often:

• RFCs
• Internal debates
• Unfinished prototypes
• Tradeoff discussions
• Mistakes and learnings in real time

Vulnerability is the accelerant of developer trust.
Not weakness. Confidence.

GitLab proved this when they livestreamed their data-loss incident.
Supabase proved it when they embraced the memes during their outage.

The messy middle is where loyalty is built.

If you want advanced devrel crisis management, vulnerability is your leverage. It gives your community a front-row seat to how you think, not just what you ship.

Step 5: Make Trust a System, Not a Reaction

The best DevRel teams don’t improvise during incidents—they prepare for them.

A strong DevRel crisis management system should include:

Crisis playbooks

Clear responsibilities, escalation paths, and communication guidelines.

Transparency norms

Default to openness, not defensiveness.

A cross-functional incident team

DevRel + engineering + support + communications.

A consistent voice

So updates feel unified, not fragmented.

Debriefs that feed back into product

A crisis is wasted if you don’t learn from it.

When trust becomes a system, not a reaction, you stop scrambling—and start leading.

When trust becomes a system, not a reaction, you stop scrambling—and start leading. Your DevRel team stops being “the folks who tweet updates” and becomes a core driver of strategic devrel crisis management.

Wrap-Up: The Mess Is Where the Magic Happens

GitLab didn’t earn trust because everything went smoothly.
They earned it because they stayed visible when things went wrong.

Supabase didn’t grow by avoiding problems.
They grew by narrating their way through them.

Crises don’t damage developer brands.
Hiding does.

If you’re building for developers, stop trying to look perfect.
Start trying to look honest.

Transparency → trust.
Personality → connection.
Positioning → clarity.
Vulnerability → loyalty.

That’s devrel crisis management done right.

Stateshift helps DevRel teams build ecosystems rooted in trust—not through polish, but through authenticity and strategic communication systems developers actually believe. If this changed how you think about showing up during the hard moments, share it with someone still clinging to perfection.

Sometimes the mess is where your most loyal community begins.

FAQ: DevRel Crisis Management

If you want a real breakdown of how GitLab turned a crisis into community trust, Jono breaks it down in the video below.